Stainless steel fork with SS runes acquired by a Lithuanian Jewish concentration camp inmate

Getzel Jurgis Fingerhut (George Fine) was born on December 24, 1922, in Siauliai, Lithuania. His father, Josef, b. 1893, was a certified locksmith, as well as a professional skater and ballroom dancer, who had served in the German Navy on a mine sweeper during World War I (1914-1918). His mother, Miriam Geselsohn, owned a delicatessen. He had one brother, Eliahu, born in August 1927. George was enrolled at Polytechnic Engineering College in Kovno, Lithuania, during the period from June 1940-May 1941 when Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union. When Germany declared war on the USSR and invaded Lithuania in June 1941, George returned to join his family. The Lithuanians had carried out violent riots against the Jewish population before and after the German invasion. Now they joined with the Germans Einsatzgruppen [mobile killing squads] in murdering thousands of Jews. In August 1941, George's family was forced into the Siauliai ghetto, which was transformed into a concentration camp in September 1943. George was sent to the Linkaiciai labor camp, where he unloaded ammunition for the Wehrmacht. Later he was transferred to Baciunai labor camp to work mining peat for fuel the electric power plant. In early 1944, he worked in the outskirts of Siauliai at Heeres-Kraftfahr-Park 562, a Wehrmacht military vehicle repair depot. On July 21, 1944, the Germans deported the remaining Jews from the ghetto to Stutthof concentration camp. George’s father made sure his two sons stayed together, and in early August 1944, the three of them were transferred to Kaufering Camp 10, in Utting near Dachau, where George worked repairing trains and operating the diesel shovel. His paternal uncle, Lejbl, was in the same group. Most of the otehr inmates were also from George's home town, Siauliai. In April 1945, the prisoners were forced on a death march as the camp was evacuated. They were used as a shield to protect the German guards from Allied bombing. The United States Army liberated them on April 30, 1945, near Wolfranhausen, near Munich, Germany. His mother had died during the evacuation of Stutthof. George, his father, brother, and uncle were settled in the Feldafing displaced persons camp. George eventually returned to school at Polytechnic Engineering College in Munich. His brother, Eliahu, attended dental school. In 1947, Josef remarried a woman he knew before the war, and emigrated to Montreal, Canada. In April 1949, George left from Bremerhaven for Montreal, aboard the SS Samaria. He married Sari Marmor in 1951. Sari, originally from Romania, was a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, a Hasag slave labor camp, as well as a death march. Josef passed away, age 81, in 1974.

The fork was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1998 by George J. Fine.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of George J. Fine

Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.