“Justus was one of the last witnesses of the Holocaust. As a member of the French Resistance he was also a hero in the fight against fascism,” Bard college President Leon Botstein wrote in a letter
in tribute to his former colleague following his death.
Justus Rosenberg had ended his teaching career as a professor emeritus of languages and literature at Bard College, a liberal arts institution in the state of New York. He died on October 30, as reported by the New York Times on Thursday.
Rosenberg was born in 1921 in present-day Gdansk, Poland, which was at the time the Free City of Danzig, a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939.
Racial laws at the time meant that Rosenberg was kicked out of school because he had Jewish parents. He was sent to study in Paris for school and enrolled later at the Sorbonne.
Refugee in Marseille
When the Nazis took over Paris in 1940, Rosenberg fled the city with thousands of others and finally landed in Marseille.
“At the time, the American Rescue Committee, which was founded in the United States, sent a gentleman by the name of Varian Fry to Marseille with $3,000 in his pockets,” Rosenberg said in an archival video published by the International Rescue Committee.
Fry had a list of names of people who were thought to be particularly under threat from the Nazi regime. The plan was to secretly smuggle them out of Nazi territory.
“I was a courier boy,” Rosenberg said in the video. “I was running errands, except, those were not ordinary errands. These were errands to run with false papers, money, various documents, to try to get to the refugees who were trying to get out of occupied Germany,” he added.
Helping thousands escape
At the time, Rosenberg looked much younger than his age. He was blonde and Germanic-looking and was not often stopped by soldiers to check his papers. In his own words, “I looked so innocent and angelic at that particular time.” The professor confessed in the video that he was not really aware of the danger the task entailed. To him, it was mostly about adventure and romance.
The many people Rosenberg helped escape included the philosopher Hannah Arendt, artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst, authors Heinrich Mann, Golo Mann and Franz Werfel. Werfel’s wife, Alma, was the widow of the composer Gustav Mahler.
Altogether, US journalist Varian Fry’s operation helped 1,500 people escape the Nazis.
Known and unknown heroes: People who resisted Hitler
The assassination attempt of July 20, 1944
Seventy-five years ago, a bomb exploded in the Führer’s Wolf’s Lair headquarters, which was supposed to kill Adolf Hitler. The assassination attempt failed; Hitler survived. The resistance fighters involved were executed in the days following the attempted coup.
Known and unknown heroes: People who resisted Hitler
Man behind the July 20 plot
Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg was instrumentally involved in the bomb plot of July 20, 1944. As early as 1942, the officer realized that the Second World War could no longer be won. In order to save Germany from imminent destruction, Stauffenberg and other Wehrmacht officers decided to overthrow the Hitler regime.
Known and unknown heroes: People who resisted Hitler
Kreisau Circle
Fundamental political reform in Germany was the goal of the Kreisau Circle. Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg (pictured) were the driving forces behind the movement. Some members of the Circle joined the July 20 plot in 1944 and were tried and sentenced to death after the assassination attempt failed.
Known and unknown heroes: People who resisted Hitler
Hans and Sophie Scholl
Starting from 1942 a group of Munich students, led by siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, tried to resist the National Socialists. The group, which called itself the White Rose, distributed thousands of leaflets denouncing the crimes of the Nazi regime. In February 1943 the Gestapo found the siblings and sentenced them to death.
Known and unknown heroes: People who resisted Hitler
Attempted Hitler assassination by Georg Elser
In 1939, carpenter Georg Elser fastened explosive devices behind Hitler’s lectern in the Munich Bürgerbräu brewery. The bomb detonated as planned. However, since Hitler’s speech was shorter than expected, he had already left the hall before the explosion. Seven people died and 60 more were injured. Elser was arrested on the same day and taken to Dachau concentration camp, where he died in 1945.
Known and unknown heroes: People who resisted Hitler
Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind
During the Second World War, Berlin manufacturer Otto Weidt employed mainly blind and deaf Jews. His broom and brush bindery was considered an “important defense business” and could therefore not be closed down by the Nazis. Weidt managed to provide for his Jewish employees throughout the war and protect them from deportation.
Known and unknown heroes: People who resisted Hitler
Resistance by artists and intellectuals
Numerous artists and intellectuals already turned against the regime when Hitler came to power in 1933. Many who did not want to adapt or openly oppose the system fled into exile. Others, such as the Berlin cabaret group Katakombe, openly criticized the regime. In 1935 the theater was closed by the Gestapo and its founder Werner Finck was imprisoned in the Esterwegen concentration camp.
Known and unknown heroes: People who resisted Hitler
Die Swing Youth
The Swing Jugend or Swing Youth, regarded the American-English way of life, represented by swing music and dance, as a clear opposition to the Nazi regime and the Hitler Youth. In August 1941 there was a wave of arrests, especially in Hamburg, of Swing Youths, many of whom were taken into custody or deported to special youth concentration camps.
Known and unknown heroes: People who resisted Hitler
Red Orchestra resistance group
The Gestapo used direction finders to track down illegal transmitters used by resistance groups. In the summer of 1942, more than 120 members of the Rote Kapelle were arrested. This group, centered around Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack, wanted to help Jews document the crimes of the Nazi regime and distribute leaflets. More than 50 members were sentenced to death and executed.
Known and unknown heroes: People who resisted Hitler
German Resistance Memorial Center
On July 19, 1953, the ceremonial unveiling of the Memorial to the German Resistance took place in Berlin in the inner courtyard of the Bendlerblock building, the place where Count Stauffenberg was executed after the failed Hitler assassination. In addition, however, the memorial also commemorates all the other courageous men and women who stood up against the Hitler regime.
However, the operation came to a halt in 1941 after being exposed and expelled by the antisemitic and authoritarian Vichy French government, led by Marshal Philippe Petain.
Rosenberg was left to his own devices and managed to escape being sent to a labor camp in Poland. He joined the French Resistance and fought alongside the Americans after the Normandy invasion.
Following the end of World War II and Germany’s capitulation, Rosenberg served as an officer at a displaced persons’ camp run by the United Nations.
Journalist Varian Fry
A reluctant hero
He later enrolled at Sorbonne again and left for the US in 1946, where he completed his doctorate and taught literature and languages at Swarthmore and then at the Bard College.
In 2020, Rosenberg published a memoir called “The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground.”
Speaking to the New York Times, Rosenberg’s wife Karin, who met her husband in the 1980s, said she knew nothing of his heroism for many years. “Oh, I just didn’t want to brag about it,” Karin Rosenberg remembered him as saying. “I believe he was a hero… But he did not think of himself as a hero. To him, he was just doing what needed to be done,” she said.
“It was a miracle that Justus fulfilled the well-known birthday greeting of the nation of his birth that calls for ‘100 years’ of life,'” Bard College President Botstein said in his memorial letter, referring to the Polish birthday song, “Sto Lat,” meaning “May you live a hundred years.”
Botstein added, “Justus reached that milestone, against all odds. In Poland, the country of his birth, just under 3 million Jews — nearly 90% of all Polish Jews — were murdered between 1939 and 1945.”
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