ROSENBERG Origin of surname

Anna M. Rosenberg (1902-1983), government executive, born in Budapest, Hungary (then part of Austria-Hungary) into the well-to-do Lederer family. She emigrated with her family to the Unites States in 1912. During WWI she volunteered for public service as a Liberty Bond saleswoman and as a nurse. In the decade and a half that followed she played an increasingly larger role in public affairs becoming active in Manhattan's Seventh Assembly District Democratic Party organization and was brought into the Democratic circle that included the future US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1924, A. Rosenberg opened a public relations, personnel, and labor relations office. She served in consultative and administrative posts for three Democratic presidents, several New York State governors, and several New York City mayors. In 1934, she was named New York State Director of the National Recovery Administration and in 1935 she became Regional Director. She was executive assistant of the National Emergency Council, member of the New York State Minimum Wage Commission and member of the New York City Industrial Relations Board. In 1935 she was appointed regional director of the Social Security Board. In 1938 she was a member of the Commission of Industrial Relations for Great Britain and Sweden.

During WW2 she assumed additional responsibilities, becoming regional director of the Office of Defense Health and Welfare Services, board member of the State Defense Council, and board member of the Policy Committee of the Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. In 1942 she was named by President Franklin D. Roosevelt non-partisan alternate to the National War Labor Board, and later was appointed by him to be secretary of the President's Combined War Labor Board. In that same year she was named New York State Regional Director of the War Man-Power Commission by its director, Paul V. Mc-Nutt. She received the Medal of Freedom in 1945 and the U.S. Medal for Merit in 1947 – the first woman to be so decorated. In 1950 she was appointed U.S. assistant secretary of defense under George C. Marshall, the highest post ever held by a woman in the federal military establishment. She was in charge of coordinating manpower for defense, hitherto scattered throughout a number of other agencies. In 1953, when she left the defense establishment (then the highest ranking women ever to serve in the U,S. military establishment) she served on New York State and City consultative bodies, the nonpartisan Urban Action Center, and many Democratic fund raising efforts.

Anna Rosenberg was active in numerous Jewish causes, including the United Palestine Appeal, serving as director of the Women's Division in New York, the women's division of the Joint Distribution Committee, and the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City.
Her second husband was Paul G. Hoffman, industrialist and U.N. development program administrator.

Eugene (Evžen) Rosenberg (1907-1990), architect, born in Topolcany, Slovakia (then part of Austria-Hungary). He studied in Bratislava, Brno, and Prague. He immigrated to England in 1939. He was an influential figure in post-War architecture in Britain specializing in educational building. He designed primary and secondary schools as well as buildings for universities. His other works including the United States embassy in London, airports, hospitals and department stores. Rosenberg also designed a number of buildings of Jewish interest including the highly-praised synagogue in Belfast, the new home for Jews' College and the London offices of the Jewish Welfare Board.

Vera Atkins (born Maria Vera Rosenberg) (1908-2000), intelligence officer, born in Galati, Romania. Atkins is the anglicized spelling of Etkins, her mother’s maiden name. She studied for a short period of time at the Sorbonne in Paris, then in Lausanne, Switzerland, and in London. Fluent in English, French, Romanian and German, she worked as a translator and representative for an oil company. In Bucharest she became acquainted with a number of foreign diplomats as well as with members of the British Intelligence. Due to the growing anti-Semitism in Romania, she immigrated to England in 1937.

Atkins was recruited before the war by the British Intelligence. She was instrumental in getting out of Poland of the code-breakers of the Enigma machines. In 1941 she joined the French section of Special Operations Executive (SOE) and after a short period of time became an intelligence officer with the task of recruitment and deployment of British agents in German occupied France, despite the fact that she obtained British nationality only in February 1944. At the end of WW2, Atkins went to France and Germany in order to uncover the fate of tens of intelligence officers, including fourteen women, who went missing after having been sent to German occupied territories. She conducted inquiries into the atrocities and war crimes committed by the Germans and provided evidence and testimonies to several trials against German war criminals. Thanks to her inquiries, it turned out that many of the missing agents were murdered in Nazi concentrations camps.  

As of late 1940s, Atkins worked for the Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges of UNESCO until her retirement in 1961. 

The writer and former spy Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond series, knew Atkins well from the time they both worked for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), and was inspired by her personality to create the character Moneypenny, the boss of His Majesty's superagent, the famous 007.

She was awarded the Croix de Guerre, a French military decoration, in 1948, and the Légion d'honneur in 1995.

Dora Spiegel (nee Rosenberg) (1879-1948), communal worker, third President of the US National Women’s League of the Conservative Movement, born in Uzhhorod, Ukraine (then Ungvar, part of Austria-Hungary), daughter of Rabbi Daniel Rosenberg. She was brought to the United States in her infancy and educated in New York, receiving the MA degree from Teachers College of Columbia University in 1920. From 1897 to 1900, when she married Samuel Spiegel, she was employed in the Educational Alliance  in New York. Later she was both a teacher and volunteer principal at Sunday schools, taught English to foreigners, did a great deal of club leadership work at various settlement houses, and lectured on psychology at the People’s Hospital Training School for Nurses (1915-1919). In 1917 Spiegel was one of the founders of the Women’s League of the United Synagogue of America. She was recording secretary of the organization (1918-1929), president of the New York City branch (1921-1928), and was elected national president in 1928 serving in that position until 1944 during the difficulties of the Depression and the war years. Spiegel helped found the Women’s Institute of Jewish Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America 

Paul Rosenberg (1881-1959), art dealer, born in Paris, France, the son of Alexandre Rosenberg, a Jewish immigrant to France from Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia). Along with his elder bother Leonce, he joined his father business who by the end of the 19th century was known as a leading dealer of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. After his father’s retirement, each of the two brothers opened their own art galleries. Rosenberg’s gallery at 21 rue La Boetie in Paris soon became a major dealer of modern art. Rosenberg and his partner Georges Wildenstein obtained exclusive contracts with leading artists, among them Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Leger, Marie Laurencin, and Henri Matisse. He extended his interest into practically all classical and modern European and American artists, Rosenberg’s gallery turning into one of the most successful and influential in the world. He opened a branch on Bond street in London that from the late 1930s served as a point of transit for moving his collections out of continental Europe to United States, Australia, and South America.

However, when Nazi Germany occupied France in 1940, Rosenberg still owned about 2,000 pieces of art in France. Along with his family, Rosenberg managed to leave France with the help of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese Consul-General in Bordeaux who issued them exit visas, while his collection was looted by the Nazis. Rosenberg reached New York, and based on the works of art he transferred to United States before the outbreak of WW II, he opened a new gallery on at 79, 57th Street. At the end of WW II, he lost about half of its collection. He returned to France and started tracing back his property. He succeeded in finding some of his works of art after they were confiscated by the US Army from the Germans. The recovery of the family’s art collection has continued for decades after Rosenberg’s death in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. In late 2010s and estimated 70 pieces of the collection were still missing.

Rosenberg had to go to Cape Town in South Africa in 1913 due to ill health, but he continued to be artistically active. When the First World War broke out, he returned to England in 1915, but he lacked professional prospects. To remedy this, he volunteered for military service and was sent to France with his regiment. He continued to write poetry while serving in the trenches. His last poem, Through These Pale Cold Days, was sent in a letter a few days before he was killed at the Battle of Arras on April 1, 1918. His body was buried in Bailleul Road East Cemetery near Saint-Laurent-Blangy. Some of his paintings are part pf the collection of Tate Britain and National Portrait Gallery, both in London, England.

Chortkov

Чортків; in Polish: Czortkow; in Russian: Chortkov

A town in Ukraine. Uuntil World War II in eastern Galicia, Poland.

Jewish settlement in Chortkov dates from the town's establishment in the 16th century. The community numbering some 50 families were almost all massacred during the Chmielnicki uprisings of 1648-49. Until 1705 Jewish leadership opposed the resettlement of Jews there. A charter granted in 1722 by the Lord of Chortkov mentioned the synagogue of the fortress-synagogue type and the cemetery; Jews were permitted to reside around the marketplace and its adjoining streets in return for paying an increased impost. The census of 1765 records 746 Jews in Chortkov. After 1772 Chortkov was administered by Austria. The community numbered 3,146 in 1900 and 3,314 in 1921 (out of a total population of 5,191). The beautifully engraved tombstones in the cemetery attest to the presence of a family of Jewish masons in Chortkov at the beginning of the 18th century. The many scholars who resided at Chortkov include Rabbi Shraga, who lived there between 1717 and 1720, and the Talmudist Tzevi Hirsch Ha-Levi Horowitz, active there in 1726-54. Chortkov became a chasidic center when in 1860 David Moses Friedmann, son of Israel of Ruzhyn, settled there and founded a dynasty. The author Karl Emil Franzos who came from Chortkov described Jewish characters there in his novel Juden von Barnow.

At the outbreak of World War II there were approximately 8,000 Jews in Chortkov. The Soviet period (September 1939 - June 1941) brought far-reaching changes in the structure of the Jewish community, its economy, and educational system. Factories and businesses were nationalized, and many members of the Jewish intelligentsia sought employment in government service. Many refugees from western Poland found assistance and relief through the synagogue, which had become the center for community activity - in part underground. When the Germans attacked the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941), hundreds of young Jews fled, some joining the Soviet army and some escaping into the interior. The town was occupied by the Germans on July 6, 1941 and four days later some 200 Jews were killed in the first pogrom, which was followed in August by the murder of 100 Jews in nearby Czarny Las. In Chortkov itself, 330 Jews were killed that month in the prison courtyard. Shmuel Kruh was appointed head of the Judenrat. His stolid opposition to the Nazi policies resulted in his arrest and execution (October 12, 1941). In October 1941 several hundred Hungarian Jews were brought to the vicinity of Chortkov, and most of them were murdered en route to Jagielnica. At the same time about 200 Jews in the professions were killed. In the winter of 1941-42, hundreds of Jews were kidnapped for slave labor camps in Skalat and Jamionka. A mass aktion took place on August 28, 1942, when 2,000 Jews were rounded up and sent to Belzec death camp. About 500 children, sick, and elderly persons were shot in Chortkov itself. Five hundred Jews were dispatched on October 5, 1942 to Belzec. Toward the end of the year, 1,000 Jews were sent to slave labor camps in the district. Almost all the inmates were murdered in July 1943. A month later the last remaining Jews in Chortkov were killed and the city was declared Judenrein. When the Soviet army occupied the area (March 1944), only about 100 Jews were found alive in Chortkov and a few in a nearby labor camp.

Several resistance groups were active in the ghetto, in the labor camps, and among the partisans who operated in the Chortkov forests. Their leaders were Ryuwen Rosenberg, Meir Waserman, and the two brothers Heneik and Mundek Nusbaum.

After the war no Jews settled in Chortkov. Societies of Chortkov Jews exist in Israel and in New York. A memorial book Sefer Yizkor Le-Hantzachat Kedoshei Kehillat Chortkov was published in 1967.

Slatioara

A village in Maramures, north western Romania.

Marmarosska Slatina is situated near the Rumanian border, 30 kilometers from the town of Siget, where salt mines provided a livelihood for most of the population. The village of Marmarosska Slatina belonged to Hungary until World War I, and its Hungarian name was Izasopatak.

The date of the original Jewish settlement in Slatina is not known, but it appears that the first settlers came from Galicia. They founded several communities in the Maramures district, including Slatina.

In 1830, 57 Jews out of a total population of 496 are recorded at Slatina; by 1920 their numbers had increased to 162 (19.8% of the population), although by 1930 the community was reduced to 120.

All the local Jews were Hassidim. They spoke Yiddish and Hungarian, Rumanian or Ruthenian. There was no synagogue in Slatina, and the Jews prayed in the two synagogues of the nearby town Stulpican.

The Jewish children learned in the heder (Jewish elementary school), where arithmetic was taught in addition to regular Jewish studies.

Among the rabbis of Slatina there were rabbi Eliezer Zeev Stern and anther rabbi who was the son in law of Rabbi Yehuda Evir Rosenberg from Bitchkoff.

There is no detailed information concerning the occupations of the Slatina Jews, they probably earned their living like other Jews in the area. At the beginning of settlement in the Marmaros district, Jewish families leased the estate (arrenda) and received concessions for liquor breweries. By the twentieth century, most of the Jews were tradesmen and craftsmen, and some were carters.

During the period of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, there was some Zionist activity in the area.


The Holocaust Period

During World War II the area was under Hungarian occupation.

On March 19, 1944, the German army marched into Hungary. By April all the Jews had already been moved into ghettos. The Jews of Slatina were probably sent to the ghetto of Dragmirtch and then deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where most of them perished.

The area was liberated by the red army in 1945. 28 survivors returned to Slatina, but left shortly afterwards.