Karl Rosenthal

In 2016 two books from the library of Karl Rosenthal could be returned.

Dr. Karl Rosenthal, born on 16 July 1889 in Lage/Lippe, studied in Berlin, Münster and Cologne and initially worked as a rabbi in Dortmund, where he met his future wife Gertrude (Trudie) Schuster, who was born on 14 March 1891 in Dortmund. They had two sons, Klaus Alfred and Siegfried Georg. Starting in 1924, Rosenthal was rabbi of the Jewish Reform Community ("Reformgemeinde") in Berlin. Rosenthal was also chairman of several B'nai B'rith lodges as well as of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith ("Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens") and a member of the Imperial League of Jewish Front Soldiers ("Reichsbund Jüdischer Frontsoldaten").

In the course of the November pogroms of 1938, Karl Rosenthal was arrested and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. After about three months he was released on the condition that he left Germany immediately - he sought refuge in Oxford. Klaus Rosenthal had already emigrated to the United States, Gertrude Rosenthal escaped with Siegfried Georg to the Netherlands in 1939. In 1941 Siegfried Georg Rosenthal was arrested in Amsterdam, deported to Mauthausen Concentration Camp and murdered there. Gertrude Rosenthal was also arrested in 1942 and deported to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp via Westerbork in 1944. She survived the Holocaust with the help of a South American passport which Karl and other friends abroad had organized and which enabled her to enter a UNRAA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) camp in Switzerland in January of 1945.

The surviving Rosenthal family was living in the United States after the end of World War II. Karl Rosenthal was Rabbi in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Springfield, Illinois and in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he died in 1952. Klaus Rosenthal had already died in 1948 at the age of only 33 years. Gertrude Rosenthal also lived in Wilmington until her death in 1976.

The numbering in the books proves that both volumes were delivered to the Berlin City Library by the Salvaging Office ("Bergungsstelle") after the end of the war in 1945/46. An exact date cannot be determined, as the books were never added to the active stock of the library. Research on the particular Bergungsstelle Nr. 131 is still pending.