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Star of David patch worn by a German Jewish concentration camp inmate

Object | Accession Number: 2005.579.4

Judenstern badge worn by Hans Finke, a concentration camp survivor who became an aid worker after the war. Hans, his parents and his sister Ursula lived in Berlin during the rise of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933 with its aggressive anti-Jewish policies. Jews were forced out of their jobs and their businesses were confiscated. In February 1943, Hans, 23, an electrician by trade, was a forced laborer for Siemens when he was hospitalized with appendicitis. On February 29, his parents were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz. On March 8, the Gestapo raided the hospital and arrested staff and patients. Hans was transported to Monowitz concentration camp, and later sent to Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Flossenberg, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. Hans was in Bergen-Belsen when it was liberated by the British Army. His parents were murdered in Auschwitz, but his sister Ursula survived in hiding. Bergen-Belsen became a displaced persons camp and Hans began working for the British and then various aid groups. He met Alice Redlich, who had left Berlin for England in 1938 to continue her nurses's training. She volunteered with the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad and, in September 1946, left for the Bergen-Belsen DP camp in Germany. Her family was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943. Alice and Hans married on June 20, 1948, in the camp. The couple, with Alice pregnant with their first child, immigrated to the United States on August 29, 1949.

Date
use:  after 1941 September-1945 April 15
emigration:  1949 August 26
Geography
use: Bergen-Belsen (Concentration camp); Belsen (Bergen, Celle, Germany)
Language
German
Classification
Identifying Artifacts
Category
Badges
Credit Line
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Alice Fink
 
Record last modified: 2023-07-10 11:39:29
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn523756