Ship ticket of Awiwa Finkelstein
Gift of Aviva F. Blumberg
Id no. 2002.A.2, Document, Norwegian
Awiwa [Aviva] Finkelstejn sailed on the Norse American Ship Line, SS Stavangerfiord, from Oslo to New York in 1945 to reunite with her father, Chaim Finkelstejn, the only other surviving member of her immediate family. Awiwa had been born in Warsaw, Poland in 1931. Chaim Finkelstejn was in Switzerland attending The World Zionist Congress when the war started in 1939, was unable to return to Poland, and ended up in USA in 1940. He immediately began to try to get visas for his family to join him, this became impossible once the USA entered the war in Dec. 1941. Aviva, with her mother and sister survived together the many raids and deportations in the Warsaw ghetto. In the beginning of 1943 with reluctance and at the urging of her friends Aviva's mother agreed to let Aviva leave her and the ghetto to live with an non Jewish family, and pass as Aryan. With the help of friends and the Jewish underground which provided the money and an Aryan birth certificate, and just 10 days before the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, Aviva went to live with the poor Christian family of Jan and Marja Rychowiecka and their daughter Wanda. A few months after she joined the family Jan died of tuberculoses. Thus, Awiwa survived the years of the war, while her mother and sister did not. After the war, Awiwa reunited with old family friends in Warsaw who contacted her father and helped to reunite her with him. After receiving temporary care in a children's home in Otwock, Poland. Awiwa finally set out for her journey to the U.S. in September1945. She spent 2 months in Sweden waiting for an American visa then sailed from Oslo on Nov 17, her 14th birthday, and was reunited with her father two weeks later.
