Rosenzweig and Ringelheim families papers

Marcus Rosen (born Markus Rosenzweig) is the son of Isaac and Frances (Zimetbaum) Rosenzweig. He was born October 16, 1912, in Krakow and was the youngest of four children. He had two brothers and a sister, all of whom were married by the start of World War II. As a young boy, Markus studied music for six years and later became a pianist in a jazz band. Markus completed a law degree at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow in 1935. He then began his five-year legal apprenticeship which was interrupted by the German invasion in September 1939. For the first 10 weeks of the occupation Markus remained in Krakow, where he suffered countless humiliations as a Jew. In October, he was dragooned by German troops into forced labor units, which were assigned such tasks as sweeping the streets in front of German quarters, carrying pails of coal from the cellar into the rooms of German soldiers, and cleaning their toilets. Fed up with this treatment and expecting the situation to get worse, Markus made the painful decision to leave his family and flee to Lvov in the Soviet-occupied zone of Poland, together with a small group of Jewish friends. They left on November 7. The following morning, after having crossed the San River near Przemyśl, Markus and his friends were arrested by a Russian patrol for illegal entry and suspected espionage and thrown into prison in Przemyśl. A month later they were transferred to a prison in Zhitomir. Another eight months passed before Markus was informed in September 1940 that he was being sentenced to three years in a Soviet labor camp. A few days later, he was transferred by train to the Nefto-Promysl 3 labor camp in Uchta (Komi ASSR) near the White Sea. There, he was made to fell trees and build roads in sub-zero temperatures while being fed barely enough to stay alive. Following the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Polish Government-in-Exile in London signed an agreement with the Soviets, which provided for the release of Polish prisoners in Soviet labor camps and the formation of a Polish army in the USSR under the leadership of General Władysław Anders. Immediately upon his release, Markus joined the new Polish army. He was assigned to the staff of the Osrodek Organizacji Armii (army central organization), where he performed a variety of administrative tasks. Though Markus himself did not suffer from anti-Jewish prejudice in the new Polish army (and in fact was promoted to corporal in March 1942), he knew he was the exception rather than the rule. Anti-Semitic feeling was prevalent, and there was a concerted effort by Anders and his senior officers to disqualify or discharge as many Jews as possible. This was particularly true during the period when the army was preparing to leave Russia. Even at the last possible moment at the port of embarkation in Krasnovodsk, efforts were made to leave Jews behind. It was only the threat of the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) to halt the evacuation if the Jewish soldiers were not taken, that prevented the Polish officers from abandoning them. In 1942 the whole army was transferred first to Iran and then to Iraq, where they underwent military training in the desert. It was at this time that the Polish army was formally incorporated into the 8th British Army as the 2nd Polish Corps. A year later, in the summer of 1943, the Polish Corps was transferred to Palestine. Markus' unit was stationed in Hadera (Gedera). During the next six months it is estimated that 2,000 Jewish soldiers in the Polish Corps deserted (with the assistance of the Yishuv and the tacit cooperation of the Corps leadership). Markus ultimately decided not to desert, out of an intense desire to fight the Nazis (as both a Jew and a Pole) and to rejoin his family (whose fate he did not then know). He also felt he would not be able to live with himself knowing he had deserted. In January 1944 he went with his unit to Egypt, and soon after, sailed for Italy, where he participated in the battle of Monte Cassino. Shortly afterwards he fell sick and was hospitalized. He never returned to battle. Markus remained in Italy until August 1946, when he was transferred to England. He was formally demobilized in March 1947. At this point he was given the option of remaining in England or returning to Poland. He opted for the former. For a time he lived in Glasgow, before moving to London. In 1949 he married Chaja (Ringelheim) Rosenfeld, and in June of that year immigrated to the United States. In 1946 Markus made contact with his brother Jehuda (Idek) in Krakow, who had been liberated at Sachsenhausen. From him, Markus learned that the rest of their extended family had perished in German concentration camps in Poland.

Chaja (Klara) Ringelheim (later Chaja Rosenfeld, Chaja Rosenzweig, and finally, Claire Rosen) is the daughter of Jacob (b. 1879) and Miriam (Reich) Ringelheim (b. 1883 or 1884). She was born December 5, 1911 in Jarosław, Poland. Chaja had three brothers: David (b. 1906), Shimon (Sidney, b. 1907), and Josef (b. 1921 or 1922). Chaja's father, Jacob, had immigrated to the U.S., where he was naturalized on May 5, 1903. The following year, he was joined by his younger brother Benjamin, who was naturalized in 1913 and remained a resident of the U.S. for the rest of his life. Jacob returned to Poland in 1904 or 1905, settling in Jarosław. There, he married Miriam Reich. Together with his brother-in-law Nathan, Jacob ran a flour mill and possibly also a marmalade factory. Jacob returned to the U.S. in May 1916 following a violent incident at the flour mill. He returned to Poland in 1920 or 1921. Two of his sons, David and Shimon, immigrated to the U.S. in 1924. The rest of the Ringelheim family moved to Przemyśl in the early to mid-1930s. Jacob eventually acquired co-ownership of a brick factory and several apartment houses. Hitler's rise to power was a source of great concern to Jacob. Already in 1934 he wrote to his brother Benjamin in the U.S. that he was worried about the impact of the Nazi regime on the political stability of Poland, and was considering returning to America with the rest of his immediate family. However, the difficulty of liquidating his assets in Poland seems to have prevented him from doing so. Chaja started to work for her father as a bookkeeper in the brick factory in 1932 and continued in that capacity until the end of 1937. In August 1937 she married Henryk Rosenfeld, the son of Chaskiel and Ernestyna Rosenfeld from Jarosław. The following year the couple left for Pisa, Italy, where Henryk continued medical school. Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Henryk decided to return to Poland. Chaja's mother tried to get her permission to return to Poland, but did not succeed. Consequently, Chaja remained in Italy, and on April 13, 1940 was issued an American passport in Genoa (on the basis of her father's American citizenship). She immigrated to the U.S. shortly thereafter. Her parents and brother Josef were killed in Sambor (Sambir, Ukraine) in 1943. Henryk was also killed in 1943 near Przemyśl. Chaja was living and working in the United States when she received a letter from Markus Rosenzweig, a Polish Jew from Krakow, who had survived the war as a member of the Anders Army. He invited her to come to London to meet with him. He was single, and when he learned that Chaja was a widow it seemed as if it might be an opportunity for them both. She sailed to London on the SS Queen Mary in 1948, and on January 22, 1949 Chaja and Markus were married. The wedding took place in Paddington, England, and the couple moved later that year to the United States. In 1951, when Markus was naturalized as an American citizen, they formally changed their names to Marcus and Claire Rosen. Marcus died in 1992 and Claire died in 1995.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Joan Ringelheim

Joan Ringelheim donated the Rosenzweig and Ringelheim families papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2000, 2004, and 2006.