Sara Finsij was a daughter of Izaak Finsij and Jeudith Ancona. She was born in Amsterdam on 18 August 1873 and married there on 22 June 1905 the diamond polisher Abraham Aletrino, who was born 5 August 1868 in Amsterdam as son of Benjamin Aletrino and Aaltje Izak Gompertz. The couple had two children, namely Alida Judith in 1906 and Izaak in 1907. Abraham Aletrino however passed away on 10 March 1937 in Amsterdam and was interred in the Portuguese Jewish Cemetery Beth Haim at Ouderkerk a.d. Amstel.
After Sara and Abraham got married in 1905, they lived at Ruyschstraat 17 in Amsterdam. In April 1910 they moved to Spoorbaanstraat 1 and in June 1914 Abraham, Sara and their two children Alida Judith and Izaak left for Antwerp, where they came living at Rolwagenstraat 24. But already in July 1915, they returned to Amsterdam where they found housing at Leeuwenhoekstraat 1. On 8 October 1928 they moved into a house in the Miquelstraat 28 1st floor, from where Alida Judith in 1930 and Izaak in 1932 left their parental home to be married and got their own address in Amsterdam and where Abraham Aletrino passed away in 1937.
Sara Finsij continued living in the Miquelstraat 28, until by demolition of the Amsterdam Weesperpoort station, the railway, her street and the construction of the Wibautstraat, she had to move on 21 May 1940. She had chosen to move to Middenweg 195, where during the Second Worl War the “Resthome Hillesum” was located, runned by Jacob Hillesum and Anna Hillesum-Tertaas.
On 6 February 1943, Sara Aletrino-Finsij was carried off from Amsterdam-East to Westerbork, where she had to stay in barrack 59, until a year later, she was put on transport to Theresienstadt on 25 February 1944. This transport of ±810 deportees, also included 308 Portuguese Jews, who had come from Amsterdam to Westerbork in February 1943.
Of the nearly 5000 Jews, who were deported from the Netherlands to Theresienstadt, 163 people died there. Almost 3000 were sent from there to Auschwitz. Only a few survived, but not Sara Aletrino-Finsij. On arrival from Theresienstadt in Auschwitz on 7 July 1944, the was killed immediately in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sources included the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Abraham Aletrino, archive cards of Sara Finsij, Izaak Aletrino, Alida Judith Aletrino; website Akevoth/Portuguese Israelitic Cemetery Beth Haim; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Sara Aletrino-Finsij, website joodsamsterdam.nl/middenweg and an addition of a visitor of the website.