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George Jacob Rosney, formerly Georg Rosenfeld was the son of Carl Rosenfeld and Elisabeth Rosenfeld (née Willstätter) aka Lise. The family were resident in Karlsruhe when George was sent off to the UK to live with cousins in London and to work as a toolmaker at a firm whose owner was a long time acquaintance of his father. Franz Benjamin, George's brother (born 1924), went to Palestine just before the outbreak of war. Despite considerable efforts to get them out on the part of family members both Carl and Lise were eventually deported to their deaths in Auschwitz in 1944 via Terezin. George enlisted voluntarily with the British Army in 1940. Whilst on leave from his unit, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers with the British Army on the Rhine, immediately after liberation, George visited Terezin to find out what he could regarding the fate of his parents (1915/3). George had an uncle, his father's brother, Julius, who emigrated to Palestine in 1935 was resident in Jerusalem, married and had 3 sons. Julius' sister, Betty Feuchtwanger, wife of Lion Feuchtwanger's son, Max, was also resident in Israel- see correspondence 1915/2. Ludwig Emanuel Mayer (with whose family George resided in London) was George's uncle from his mother's side. He was a bank director in Germany and imprisoned in Dachau. When he was released he and his wife Gertrud (née Willstätter) emigrated relatively early to England. Ludwig and Gertrud had three sons: Hans Carl Mayer who had a senior position in the Association of Jewish Refugees and was a friend of Ludwig Spiro, Steven David Mayer and Colin Peter Mayer. Albert Steiner was a former business associate of Carl's. He was Jewish and married to the non-Jew, Liesel. The two of them survived the war in Terezin, where George met them shortly after liberation- see 1915/3. The couple remained in Germany after the war.
The collection is arranged chronologically into 5 series: 1915/1 Correspondence from Carl and Liese Rosenfeld in Germany to their son, George in England, 1939-1940; 1915/2 Correspondence of George Rosney; 1915/3 Personal account of travels in Germany by George Rosney; 1915/4; Correspondence of Frieda Fromm Reichmann regarding attempts to get her relations, Carl and Liese Rosenfeld, out of Germany; 1915/5 Miscellaneous
This collection contains family correspondence of George Rosney including letters received by him in England from his parents in Karlsruhe and later Stuttgart prior to their deportation to Terezin. Also included is correspondence from various other individuals to George; a separate set including detailed account of George's impressions of Germany in the imediate aftermath of the war. In addition there is a set of correspondence received and copy outgoing of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, a cousin resident in the USA, which documents the efforts made to extricate Carl and Lise Rosenfeld from Germany.
George Rosney papers