ME MUM pic.twitter.com/mfJYroKws8
— Florida Man (@floridagroyp) December 8, 2025
Finkelstein’s mum Mirjam Finkelstein (née Wiener; 10 June 1933 – 28 January 2017 was a Jewish activist. Family moved from Berlin to Amsterdam in 1933. In June 1943, Finkelstein was taken by the Nazis along with her mother and sisters to Westerbork transit camp and then to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
It appears Grandmum like many Europeans suffered from malnutrition at the end of the war. The wrecking of Germany’s basic infrastructure isn’t really part of that conversation.
Efforts were ongoing to evacuate the ill and starving. Members of the Finkelstein family were included as part of a prisoner exchange at the Swiss border in January 1945. With her two sisters, Ruth and Eva, Mirjam Wiener successfully pressed them to allow their safe passage on the train from Bergen-Belsen because their mother was too ill to move. Margarethe, her mother, died from starvation after her arrival in Switzerland. Daniel Finkelstein’s mum Mirjam survived the ordeal.
The dad’s family were Jews from Lvov. This is also largely unreported history. Many Jews were evacuated and saved by the Soviets at the time of Operation Barbarossa in June-July, 1941. Read: Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Russia Helped 1,750,000 Jews to Escape Nazis This is misreported by Finkelstein as sent to a gulag. A gulag would be very out of character for that period.
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