Sophie Finkelstein

Sophie Finkelstein received transit visa no. 8 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 24 July 1940. Aged 26 in 1940.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

German

Age in 1940

26

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife of #7

The journey

Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for USA.

What is known

Transit visa No. 8 issued on 24 July 1940 to Sophie Finkelstein, a German national, likely traveling with Louis Finkelstein.

Sophie Finkelstein's daughter Edith, three years old in 1940 and entered on her mother's page of the family passport, told the USC Shoah Foundation in 1998 how the family travelled (interview 54889). They had lived in Memel and left it in 1939. The Sugihara visas of 24 July 1940 — No. 7 her father's, No. 8 her mother's — were written into a German passport issued in Lithuania, which Edith still keeps (tape 1, 08:39-09:04; tape 2, 03:31-05:07, where she shows the visas, the American entry visa and her mother entered as Russian). The passage to Japan had to be paid in advance (tape 1, 09:04-09:18). They boarded the Trans-Siberian on 19 November 1940 and were in Moscow on the 20th (11:11-12:…

8 German ophie Finkelstein transit 7/24/1940 2

Where this comes from

• The JEWCOM register — the refugee register kept by the Refugee Committee of the Jewish Community of Kobe (Ashkenazim) at No. 6 Yamamoto-dori, 1-chome, whose cable address was 'JEWCOM Kobe'. Eighty-four pages on the committee's own printe…
  Entry 26 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 26, born at Odessa.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists… — entries for Louis, Sophie and Edith Finkelstein, 1940. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410, roll 367, "Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at San Francisco, California, 1893-1953"
  San Francisco, 1940, S.S. Nitta Maru, travelling with her husband and daughter. Born about 1914 — the register gives her age in 1940 as 26. The ledger's first line for her is damaged: it reads 'ophie Finkelstein'.
• Oral history interview with Edith Hamer (née Finkelstein) — USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, interview 54889, Houston, Texas, 11 Novemb… — Theodor Finkelstein, No. 1680; another relative reached Bolivia on false papers (13:02)
  Their daughter Edith, born Kaunas 14 May 1937 — the 'daughter Edith (3)' of the Nitta Maru manifest — gave a testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation in 1998 (Visual History Archive interview 54889, as Edith Hamer); the catalogue names Louis Finkelstein and Sophie Sonia Finkelstein as her parents
• Takayoshi Iwata, "Kobe and Jewish Refugees" (神戸とユダヤ難民), Kobe City history bulletin no. 26, March 2017 — English translation published by the City of Kobe
  She landed at Tsuruga on 3 December 1940. The landing endorsement on her transit visa, quoted by Takayoshi Iwata from the work of Takaharu Furue, says she had applied in Japan for a visa to North America, and that she was admitted for one month, to 3 January 1941, on the guarantee of the Jewish Community of Kobe. (Takayoshi Iwata, 'Kobe and Jewish Refugees', Kobe City history bulletin no. 26 (2017), English translation published by the City of Kobe.)
• The numbered Sugihara visa list, searchable text — the register of the visas issued at Kaunas, transcribed and reconciled by Dr George Bluman (University of British Columbia) and the researcher and author Akira Kitade. This is the text b…
• Prof. Dr Ruth Leiserowitz (Berlin), correspondence of 20 August… — research notes on six lines of the register, drawn from Lithuanian, German and United States records. What she found for each person is set out on that person's own entry.
• Oral history interview with Edith Hamer (née Finkelstein) — USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, interview 54889, Houston, Texas, 11 Novemb… — Theodor Finkelstein, No. 1680; another relative reached Bolivia on false papers (13:02)
• Catalogue still for the oral history of Edith Hamer (née Finkelstein) — USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, interview 54889 (the archive's public catalogue frame, 352x240); links to the testimony at vha.usc.edu/testimony/54889

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