DOCUMENTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS RELATED TO THE FAMILY OF MRS ROSENBERG

Mrs. M. Rosenberg was born in Berlin. Her father Hugo Priester was by trade a merchant; he was born in 1873 in a village called Grenzhausen, later he moved with his parents to Herborn. The donor's mother's maiden name was Rosa Skud. The donor's father died long before Hitler came to power but the donor's mother was murdered in Auschwitz; being in her 60's she was too old to emigrate from Germany.

The donor was one of 3 children. Her sister Edith died in the 1918 flu epidemic, aged 17. The donor's brother, Siegfried, was born on 28th December 1904. Before the Second World War he worked for a curtain and cushion covers export firm. In 1942 he escaped from a transport to Auschwitz and returned to Berlin where he survived the rest of the war in hiding. During the day he stayed with the Schleiermachers. Mr. Schleirmacher worked in the wholesale trade, he was non-Jewish but his wife was Jewish. Siegfried had no ration card and had to rely on the Schleirmachers for food. At night he had to go elsewhere, he had 7 or 8 "safe" places where he could sleep. Whilst in hiding he met a non-Jewish girl called Marianna, he later married her in Berlin and they lived here. The donor did not know what had become of her brother during the war, when World War II ended she was contacted by the Jewish Council who informed her of her brother's survival.

The donor worked at a Berlin advice centre for Jewish emigrants, for a year prior to her emigration from Germany in 1939. She recalls "Kristallnacht" in November 1938, when her local synagogue was damaged and stones thrown at the congreation. People came to the Jewish emigrants' advice centre, barefooted and wearing just their pyjamas, desperate to leave Germany; all these people managed to emigrate.

This Jewish emigrants' advice centre found a job for the donor as a housekeeper to a non-Jewish family in Wilmslow; it was a bankers family.

The donor met and married her husband, Alfred Rosenberg in England. Alfred Rosenberg was born in Herborn, Germany in 1907, he died in 1981. Alfred Rosenberg's father, Albert, served in the German army during the First World War and he was killed on active service on March 18th 1916. The donor's mother-in-law was in poor health from the time she found out her husband had been killed; she died on March 30th 1929.

Alfred Rosenberg was put in a concentration camp before the outbreak of the Second World War but he was released and allowed to go to England. His first wife, Berta Sara Rosenberg (nee Hersh) was taken to Auschwitz where she was murdered c.1941-42. Their children, Miriam and Hanna, left Germany for England on August 31st 1939. Alfred Rosenberg (the donor's husband) asked a Mrs. Phillips to see if she could find somewhere for his children to go to. Mrs. Phillips found a home for Miriam Rosenberg with 3, unmarried, non-Jewish women teachers who lived in Church Minshull and later moved to Wales. The donor's husband found a home for Hanna in Knutsford. Now Hanna lives in Jerusalem and Miriam lives near Appleton, and has 3 teenage children.