Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig

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Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig (born April 25, 1925 in Kraków as Helena Sternlicht ; † December 20, 2018 ) was a Holocaust survivor who was forced to work as a maid for SS camp commandant Amon Göth during her internment in Płaszów . Together with 1200 prisoners, she survived the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia and in German-occupied Poland with the help of entrepreneur Oskar Schindler .

Life

Helena Sternlicht was born in Krakow as the daughter of Szymon and Lola Sternlicht. After the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, her entire family was relocated to the Krakow ghetto . In 1942 the Krakow ghetto was dissolved and she was sent to the Plaszow concentration camp with her mother and two of her sisters. Her father died in the Belzec extermination camp .

In the Plaszow camp she became one of Goeth's two housemaids. Oskar Schindler was a frequent guest in Göth's house. As the Red Army approached Krakow in late 1944, the Plaszow concentration camp was disbanded, and the prisoners were there to Auschwitz deported are. Schindler submitted plans to the Schutzstaffel (SS) to build an ammunition factory in Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland from which he came, which had been occupied since 1938 . He declared that he needed the Jews from the former Plaszow labor camp as workers.

Excerpt from Schindler's list with Helena Sternlicht

Two days after she was released from camp, she met her first husband, Joseph Jonas. They emigrated to the United States and lived in the Bronx . They had three children together; a son and two daughters. Joseph Jonas died of suicide in 1980 . Then she married Henry Rosenzweig . After being widowed a second time, she moved to Boca Raton , Florida.

2004 Jonas-Rosenzweig met at the initiative of the director James Moll , a partner of Steven Spielberg , with Monika Hertwig , the daughter of Amon Göth together. The background was the documentary The Murderer Father (Inheritance) for the Public Broadcasting Service

Documentary film about Schindler's company, his rescue activities and your knowledge of the background

Kathrin Sänger , the director of the documentary Schindler's List - A True Story , traveled to Israel for Spiegel-TV in the 2010s to interview the last survivors who had worked in Oskar Schindler's factory. She interviewed Ignaz and Rena Birnhack, Mietek Pemper (film role of Itzhak Stern, stenographer von Göth, author of a book of the same name from 2005) and Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig (role of Helene Hirsch; as a 17-year-old household slave at Göth, known as Susanne) , Bornislawa Horowitz Karakulska , Moshe Bejski .

Among other things, they tell of how Schindler managed to bring back 300 women who had already been deported to Auschwitz about 14 days later. It was the only such large transport of prisoners from Birkenau. When the Red Army advanced on Brünnlitz in 1945, he was able to flee Czechoslovakia a few hours before their arrival with the help of "his" Jews. You and he knew that if the Russians caught him, the Nazi and factory manager, they would hang him before he could say anything. The previous forced laborers protected him with a group that accompanied him to Bavaria. There are also reports of his visits to Israel: twice a year the impoverished Schindler from Germany went to Israel for a few weeks to relax, at the invitation of his "children", as he calls his former "employees". His handling of the money collected for him is discussed.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the name of the father in: Jüdische Allgemeine , August 31, 2008, accessed on January 11, 2019
  2. ^ Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activites, and the Story Behind 'The List' . Western Press 2004. Chapter: The crimes of Amon Göth in Plaszow.
  3. ↑ IMDb
  4. ↑ Schindler's List - A True Story, Report, Documentation, 2002 ZDF Report, accessed on January 11, 2019
  5. ↑ Kathrin Sänger: Schindler's List - A True Story. Television documentary. Germany, 105 min, 2014. ( SPIEGEL TV, The Saturday Documentation ( Memento from January 22, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), film information at dokumentarfilm.info, accessed January 22, 2017)
  6. ^ ZDF page with information and a link to a 45-minute version of the film ( memento from January 22, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), broadcast on January 22, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Jonas-Rosenzweig, Helen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sternlicht, Helena (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish Holocaust survivors
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Krakow
DATE OF DEATH 20th December 2018