Ina Rothschild

Ina Rothschild , née Wilhelmine Herzfeld (born May 13, 1902 in Höchst im Odenwald , † 1991 in Philadelphia ) was the last housemother of the Israelite orphanage in Eßlingen am Neckar and survived imprisonment in the Theresienstadt ghetto .

Life

Ina Rothschild was born as Wilhelmine Herzfeld. She was the youngest of the four daughters of the merchant Maier Herzfeld from Höchst in the Odenwald and his wife Berta. After she had learned the job of a kindergarten teacher , she also completed training as a nurse . From 1923 she worked as an educator and from 1929 as a housekeeper in the Israelite orphanage Wilhelmspflege in Eßlingen am Neckar.

The former Israelite orphanage moved into in 1913

The work during this time was shaped by the economic difficulties and upheavals, which had also left their mark on the children who came to the facility. Ina Rothschild later wrote about her pupils: “The earlier ties, based on religion and family, were often dissolved; Unrestrainedness and abandonment had also left wounds in Jewish marriages and families; Here, too, economic hardship had produced moral degeneration, and in many cases the children had become the innocent victims of this development. [...] So children [...] moved into our house [...] who had lagged behind in the development of the spirit or the spirit, children who were under pressure on the unfinished soul and who faced life helplessly.

Accordingly, the attitude towards the pupils had to be fundamentally different. [...] It is not necessary to pay attention to the difficulties that the child causes, but to those it has. "

On January 4, 1938, Ina Herzfeld married the much older director of the home, Theodor Rothschild . It was his third marriage. A few months later, on November 10, 1938, an anti-Jewish rally took place on Esslingen's market square as part of the Reichspogromnacht . At lunchtime, agitated citizens raided the orphanage, drove women and children out of the building, abused the home manager Rothschild and the two teachers Samuel and Jonas, stole or destroyed part of the furniture and burned Torah scrolls and books. In the late afternoon the order was made to vacate the house, but in the spring of 1939 the Wilhelmspflege was reopened. On August 26, 1939, the house was confiscated on the basis of the mobilization order; it was to be converted into an epidemic hospital. The children who were still living in the home were distributed to different families, mainly in Stuttgart . Ina and Theodor Rothschild initially lived with acquaintances in Eßlingen, in October 1939 they moved to Julie Guggenheim at Schelztorstrasse 17. Theodor Rothschild now headed the Jewish school in Stuttgart and was involved in community life, Ina Rothschild also worked in the school. Since the house in which the couple lived had been sold in July 1939, Ina and Theodor Rothschild had to move in March 1941. From March to October 1941 they lived in Stuttgart's Bismarckstrasse 92 II, after which they had to move to a so-called “Judenhaus” at Blumenstrasse 2/1, where they only had one room and shared kitchen and bathroom with four other parties had to.

Stumbling blocks at the former Israelite orphanage

Theodor Rothschild had refused to emigrate to the USA in 1938 when the possibility would probably still have existed. His application to the American Consulate General, which was submitted too late, was likely to have had a number over 30,000 and would not have allowed him to emigrate until 1941 at the earliest. After Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared war on Germany on July 12, 1941, direct entry into the USA was no longer possible, despite the affidavit that was now in place . Rothschild tried to get an entry possibility through Cuba , but was unsuccessful. At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, the " final solution " was decided. Theodor Rothschild and the Heilbronn senior teacher Karl Kahn were appointed as the Jewish transport leaders of a deportation train to Theresienstadt that departed on June 22, 1942. None of the Jewish schoolchildren who were on this transport survived.

Ina Rothschild worked as a nurse in Theresienstadt. She lived in a room with 27 other women, including Rosi Weglein , who later described her camp experiences in the book As a Nurse in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp , and in which she also spoke about Ina Rothschild. In November 1944 49 Dutch orphans arrived in the ghetto who suffered from severe typhus and had to move into quarantine. Ina Rothschild had to go to the quarantine station to take care of these children, but received doubled food rations. The children she looked after were able to travel to Switzerland in January 1945 and were all saved. Soon after these Dutch children left, another liberation transport to Switzerland was put together. According to an agreement between Heinrich Himmler and Jean-Marie Musy, 1200 people were to leave the country following international interventions and requests from relatives of prisoners abroad. An important selection criterion was that the people to be rescued were not allowed to be in too bad a physical condition in order not to encourage propaganda against Germany. Actually, Himmler and Musy had planned to have such transports of the same size take place every two weeks. After the arrival of the first express train in Switzerland, however, there was a clash between Hitler and Himmler, and all other planned transports were prohibited. The train that left Theresienstadt on February 5, 1945 remained the only one of its kind.

Stumbling block for Theodor Rothschild

Ina Rothschild, whose husband was already dead at the time, was able to travel with this transport and get to Switzerland. There she worked for a while as a nurse in a hospital before she emigrated to Philadelphia in 1946 , where she found work as a private nurse . She died childless and without having married again.

In 1996 the Ina-Rothschild-Weg in Esslingen am Neckar was named after her. There is a memorial plaque on the Theodor Rothschild house at Mülbergerstrasse 146 in Esslingen.

literature

• Andrea Gumpert-Zumpf: Wilhelmine (Ina) Rothschild - housemother in the Israelite orphanage , in: FemaleES. Women's stories sought and discovered , City of Esslingen am Neckar (ed.), Esslingen 1999, pp. 161–170.

Web links

• Portrait of Ina Rothschild in the State Gazette

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jugendhilfe-aktiv.de ( Memento of the original from January 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ report on Himmler and Musy agreement of the rescue transports
3. ↑ Esslingen.de