Rosa Eisner

Rosa Eisner accompanied her husband to the ship to Hamburg but then she returned to Guttentag. Apparently she thought that she would be still save because she was a woman and her family was in Germany for more than seven generations. A fatal misjudgment as turned out shortly after.

One night she heard somebody knocking on her door which terrified her because she thought it were the Gestapo. But it was just the catholic priest Gladysz. The priest wanted to warn her that the Gestapo was about to arrest her on the next day. Without switching the light on, Rosa Eisner griped some things and left Guttentag the same night. She walked along the rail tracks.

Most probably she struggled to get to Breslau. Where she lived in Breslau and how she survived I couldn't find out.

Of August 10, 1940 Rosa Eisner was notified, that she should come to Vienna immediately. Now she became a refugee of the famous Storfer-transport (see details on the right hand side). In order to pay for the passage she got herself 110 $ and assigned a claim against the Amtsrat (Councellor) Heppner in Bziunken that amounted to 3,500 RM to the Palestine Office.

She took the train on August 12 and arrived in Vienna on August 13. Here she was accommodated with other refugees in 10 hotels. On August 26 they made it to the Slowakian border, where the refugees and their luggage for pure harassment were soughed through. Then they travelled on to Preßburg. There she got on the pleasure boat Uranus which sailed on September 3, 1940 to the danube delta.

There Rosa Eisner was transshipped to the MS Pacific which sailed on October 11, 1940 in the direction of Haifa. This freighter was construed for freight and 50 passengers. On this journey the ship had 1,200 passengers! Bunk-beds in 3 stories were everywhere even in the cargo-areas and on deck, where it was very cold. People had to sleep in shifts and could only go on deck rotationally in fixed turns. There was only one paraffin-oven on the whole ship and food and drinking-water were tight. Sanitariness was utterly devastating. One had to wait for at least one hour to have access to a toilet. And it became even worse when several people got diarrhea.

On November 14 the MS Pacific and the MS Milos were picked up before Haifa by the British Navy and were escorted to Haifa. The passengers were transshipped to the S.S. Patria, a troop transporter – officially for quarantine reasons. But coal was loaded and other preparations were made for sailing. Therefore very soon rumors about a deportation came up. On November 16 the passengers chanted in unison, demanding their release and crying for help to their relatives on the quay. Petitions were sent to the British Colonial Office, but to no avail.

Dr. Lothar Eisner knew that Rosa Eisner was on her way to Haifa and when he learned that she had been on the SS Patria he sent a letter to the British Army with a request to be allowed to visit his mother and to bring her cloth and food. The answer was heartless:His mother would be cared for appropriately and a visit not possible.

Read here the answer for the request of Dr. Eisners

On November 24 the MS Atlantik, the last ship of the convoy, finally reached Haifa and the authorities started immediately to reload the passengers to the S.S. Patria. The sailing was imminent. In this situation the Jewish Zionist underground movement “Haganah” fixed explosives to the ship in order to sabotage the deportation. In the morning of November 25 the passengers were warned, but the ship exploded long before all passengers could leave. And because the necessary amount of the explosives was miscalculated the explosion was too big and the ship sank within 15 min.  267 people died.

The people who survived, where brought to a detention camp in Atlit (12 miles south of Haifa). The 1,584 passengers from the MS Atlantik who were not yet on the S.S. Patria were brought to another ship and transported to Mauritius where they lived in a detention camp in a former prison under terrible circumstances until August 1945. The passengers from the S.S. Patria were also to be deported, but were allowed to stay due to heavy protest in the US and a protest by Dr. Weizmann to Winston Churchill.

On June 15, 1941 Rosa Eisner was released.

This transport was the last transport from Germany. In 1941 the Nazis changed their policy from displacement to extermination. Jews were not allowed to leave Germany any longer. And the passengers of the S.S. Patria were the last ones who got permission to stay in Israel legally.

Here you can find the passenger list of MS Pacific and SS Patria.

Read here cables about the successful flight.

In Jerusalem she was provided by a Jewish organization with a room that she had to share with another lady of the same age. To pay for the room she cleaned up offices. In this room she cooked daily for her son.

 

Bertold Storfer and his dramatic refugee transport

Bertold Storfer was a Jew himself. Even the most adverse cercumstances he tried to bring Jews illegally to Palestine.

He was supported by Adolf Eichann, who wanted to make Germany and the German protectorates free of Jews by expelling them. But he had the problem that after the conference of Evian any country wanted to take in Jews.

Adolf Eichmann endowed Storfer therefore with far reaching competences, but at the same time also controlled him severly.

1939/40 he accomplished the transport, on which Rosa Eisner was, one of the biggest and most spectacular refugee transports. He saved more than 3,500 souls.

Up to the present day the Jewish community has been taking a critical stance on Storfer, considering him a collaborator.

Storfern himself didn’t make it out of Germany. He was killed in Ausschwitz in 1944. Before his death Adolf Eichmann payed a visit to him in Auschwitz in order to deride him.

Read here the whole story of the dramatic refugee transport here.