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Józef Finkiel was born in Łódź in 1893. He was the son of Yekhezkel and Sara Finkiel. He graduated from the Trade School in Pabianice (Polish: Pabianicka Szkoła Handlowa), then studied medicine at the University of Warsaw (Polish: Uniwersytet Warszawski) and obtained his doctorate (also in medicine) at the Jan Kazimierz University (Polish: Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza) in Lviv. After graduation, he worked at a maternity hospital in Łódź.

When the Second World War started, he handed over his most precious possessions - his school and university diplomas - to the befriended family of Stanisław and Marianna (née Żuber) Błochowiak. He himself left for Warsaw. The Błochowiak family buried the documents in the garden of their family home in Pabianice.

Jozef Finkiel, however, never came for them. He died during the Holocaust. The Błochowiak family unearthed the documents after the war and kept them in the hope that one day they would find Dr Finkiel's relatives. Years later (in 2015) Jerzy Błochowiak, son of Stanisław and Marianna, decided to donate the documents to the Museum.

Thanks to the presented diplomas and certificates, we can reconstruct the educational history of this doctor from Łódź. They are also an interesting source of knowledge about what the educational process looked like at the time. We can learn what subjects were taught at the various levels of education, as well as in what language certificates were issued and what variation of Polish language was used at the time. The collection of documents also includes a receipt confirming that movable property belonging to Dr Finkel was also deposited with the Błochowiak family.

Marta Frączkiewicz

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