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    My Voice: Hans Rose
    My Voice: Hans Rose
    My Voice: Hans Rose
    Ebook221 pages1 hour

    My Voice: Hans Rose

    By The Fed

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    About this ebook

    Hans Rose was born in 1928 in Münster. His happy childhood with his parents and sister Eva was shattered by the rise of the Nazi regime. After the devastating impact of Kristallnacht and his father’s imprisonment in Buchenwald, the family emigrated to England in August 1939, a month before the outbreak of war. Settling in Glossop posed challenges, notably his father’s internment as an ‘enemy alien’ on the Isle of Man.

    The book depicts Hans’s education, successful career in Manchester’s textile sector, and a content family life with his wife Adele and three daughters. Hans’s passion for sailing and outdoor pursuits, love of travel and optimism shine throughout his post-war narrative. Hans also reflects on his complex relationship with Germany and the tragic fate of Münster’s Jewish community.

    Hans’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherManchester University Press
    Release dateSep 10, 2024
    ISBN9781526186454
    My Voice: Hans Rose

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      Book preview

      My Voice - The Fed

      Chapter 1

      My family

      My mother, Hilde Zaduck, was born in 1908 and her family was from Pyritz, a town in Pomerania which became part of Poland after the Second World War. Her mum Käthe was born in 1882 and died aged 28 when my mother was two, so she never knew her. Her father, Sally Zaduck, was a tailor, who was born in 1872 in Freudenberg.

      He spent periods of time in a sanatorium before he died on 8 June 1918 when my mother was 10 years old. His body was transferred to the cemetery in Berlin so that he could be buried next to his wife Kathë.

      My mother was brought up in Berlin by her great aunt, Helene Abraham, who had two daughters, Trude and Grete. Although they were my mother’s cousins, they were brought up as sisters, and I called Helene ‘Omi’ because my grandparents weren’t alive when I was born. Trude and Grete married two brothers, Fritz and Willi. Omi moved with Trude to Münster where Fritz was the rabbi of the synagogue. Willi was a businessman and emigrated to Buenos Aires in the mid-1920s to escape the recession.

      An aged document with typed German information and handwritten responses, e.g. birthday. It is signed at the bottom.

      1 Burial certificate for my grandmother Käthe Zaduck from 1910 stating she died on 20 September 1910 and was buried on 23 September 1910

      A postcard of a cottage surrounded by fields and a glowing peach sky. Across the top there is red font written in German.

      2 Front of a postcard sent to my mother by her father Sally Zaduck. It was sent three days prior to his death.

      A handwritten postcard in German, with the address on the right and a smudged stamp in the top right corner.

      3 My grandfather wrote on the postcard, ‘My darling Hildy, my health is improving and my little darling’s school holidays are due to start in the next few days. I am looking forward to joining you in Berlin.’

      A document with smudged ink down the right-hand side. There is typed German down the left, and handwritten responses next to them.

      4 A document stating that my grandfather Sally Zaduck was born on 12 May 1872, died on 12 June 1918 and was buried on 17 June 1918

      A yellowed document with the title ‘Leichenfchaufchein’. There is typed German down the right-hand side and handwritten responses next to them.

      5 ‘Corpse receipt’ for my grandfather Sally.

      My father, Walter, was born in 1885, and he was the second youngest of nine siblings. His mother Julie was born in 1847 and she married Joseph Rose. The Rose family lived in Bielefeld, which is 39 miles to the east of Münster. They lived above their family’s butcher shop called Metzgerei, which was opened by my great-grandfather, Salomon, and was passed on to my grandfather. In turn, it passed to Albert, who was my father’s oldest brother. The nearest shochet was Abraham Rosenthal who lived in Hanover and his grandson Hugo clearly remembers how his grandfather used to get regular payments from Albert to provide him with kosher meat. People said Albert was a bit of a philosopher, and I remember he used to sit on the doorstep, chatting with the neighbours. When he retired, his brother Richard took over the business.

      An aged white document with typed German down the left-hand side and handwritten responses on the right. There is a circular stamp at the bottom and a stamp of red German text.

      6 ‘Corpse passport’ for my grandfather Sally. These documents allowed him to be transported to the burial site in Berlin unhindered and without stopping, 17 September 1918.

      An aged document with smudged black ink across the right-hand side. German typed text is across the document with handwritten German responses

      7 Funeral registration for Weissensee cemetery in Berlin requesting the grave of Sally Zaduck to be dug next to Käthe Zaduck

      A piece of card with a shaded image of a woman. She wears a puffy blouse and looks ahead. There is a gold emblem and text across the bottom.

      8 My paternal grandmother Julie

      A crinkled document with typed German on it. There is a signature and a stamp at the bottom.

      9 My paternal grandfather Joseph Rose’s birth certificate

      A crinkled, aged document, titled ‘Geburtsurkunde’. There is typed German down the left-hand side and typed responses on the right. There is a stamp on the bottom left.

      10 My father’s birth certificate

      After leaving school at 16, my father spent three years as an apprentice in the grain trade. He lived in the city of Münster from 1909 and founded the firm ‘Walter Rose’, which became one of the biggest in Münster. He was an import and export grain merchant, dealing in rye, wheat and barley. He bought the landowners’ crops and sold them on as cattle food or to bakeries.

      My father served in the First World War, as a second Lieutenant in the German Navy and received the ‘Honour Cross for Frontline Combatants’ in 1935. He was a very sociable person, who was well respected in the town, with many personal and business friends. In fact, he probably had as many non-Jewish as Jewish friends. He was assimilated and was very much part of the German community. He was ‘one of the boys’, and he used to tell jokes and stories in something called Plattdeutsch, a North German dialect, which was not spoken much by Jews. Some people say that German Jews tended to assimilate too much and that was their downfall, but I don’t know.

      However, my father was also very conscious of his Jewish background and was quite a well-known personality in the Jewish community in Münster. Over the years, he was Finance Director, Chairman and then President of the Münster Synagogue. His best friend was Rabbi Fritz Steinthal who was married to Aunt Trude. They had two children, Heinz and Susi. My father used to go to their house on Friday night for dinner and one week when he rang the doorbell, a beautiful woman opened the door. It was Hilde, my mother, who was visiting Trude. She’d caught chickenpox from their children, so her stay had been extended and she hadn’t yet gone back to Berlin.

      A man stands and looks to the side. His hand holds the peak of his hat and he wears a uniform.

      11 My father in uniform

      Until then, my father had been a confirmed bachelor, but he fell for Hilde immediately and they got engaged very shortly afterwards. Before they met, my mother had been working for a few months as an apprentice for Walter Gropius, a famous German architect, who was the originator of the Bauhaus School of modernist architecture.

      My parents got married on 28 July 1927. My father didn’t marry her for her money as can be seen by her dowry!

      A two page document with typed German writing on it. It is titled ‘Charlottenburg’.

         

      Page two of a two page document with typed German writing on it. It is titled ‘Charlottenburg’.

      12 a and b My mother’s dowry list, signed by Hugo Zaduck (my mother’s uncle)

      They didn’t waste much time, because I was born 11 months later! My father was 42 and my mother was 18. There was a large age gap, but I have no doubt that my mother was mature for her age, having been orphaned at a young age. Although young in her years, after the first few years of my life, my mother had to grow up very quickly because of what happened.

      I was born on 2 June 1928 in Münster and my sister, Eva, who was a year younger than me, was born on 14 June 1929.

      An image of a woman above a small square annoucement with German text in it. The woman holds a baby and looks at the camera.

      13 My birth announcement including a photo of my mother holding me

      A rectangular paper announcement with German text in it.

      14 Eva’s birth announcement

      Chapter 2

      Our home in Münster

      Münster is a very old town that dates back to the early middle ages. The centre of the town is beautiful and is famous historically, because the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War, was signed in the city hall in 1648. It has a beautiful cathedral with a famous astronomical clock. At midday, the Three Kings pop out with their two servants and march around the image of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, departing through the door on the left.

      In the 1930s, Münster was a city of around 130,000 people. There were about 600 Jews who were mostly middle class, but there were some who were poor and were looked after by the community. Jews and non-Jews lived in harmony until Hitler came to power in 1933.

      We lived in a large semi-detached house which my father had bought when it was built. Our address was Hohenzollernring 10, although, because it was a corner house, the entrance was on a different street, Margaretenstrasse. It was in a pleasant residential area.

      A grainy image of a large building with shadows of trees across it.

      15 A side view of our home at Hohenzollernring 10

      There were about eight steps leading to the front porch. Downstairs we had a salon, which was a posh drawing room with very elegant furniture that was only used for special occasions and important visitors. In fact, we still have the chest of drawers from that salon in our current home in Manchester. The salon had sliding doors leading into a dining room which had a recess, which was like a room of its own, with an alcove at the end. We used to enjoy spending time in that alcove because it had the radio. When my parents had guests for dinner, the men would sometimes retire there for brandy and cigars.

      There

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