Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum: Holocaust Hero

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A group of Hungarian police sat drinking and laughing, their uniforms reeking of alcohol. One man spit out the name of a Jewish family that he was going to arrest the next day. After a few hours, all of the officers were passed out on the floor, all but one. He slipped into the night and ran down the city street towards a small house, a shadow amongst the darkness. The next morning the Hungarian police barged into an empty home. The family was nowhere to be seen (Michelson 1). The liberator of this family was Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum whose individual heroic actions during the Holocaust resulted in the legacy of the lives of approximately a thousand Jews and a pattern of humanity for generations to come.

Just prior to World War II, persecution of the Jews began with changes in civil law, which increasingly restricted their opportunities and participation in society. According to Marion A. Kaplan, author of Between Dignity and Despair, Nazi-controlled governments confiscated Jews’ “personal property and limited food and clothing purchases” (145). In 1938, the first anti-Semitic law was passed, restricting a Jew’s choice of profession and involvement in the economy. That same year hatred culminated in an event forever known as “Kristallnacht,” “The Night of the Broken Glass” (Ellis and Silinsky). The Germans used this term to “describe the tons of shattered glass spread over public areas, streets, and squares from the ruined homes and shops of Jews” (Kaplan 125). This uproar started when a seventeen-year-old Polish Jew named Henry Grynszpan walked up and shot an embassy official, Ernest Von Rath, after he was not able to free his family from Germany.

This act gave Hitler the excuse to turn Gentile against Jew and inflame a h...

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...enachem. “Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum.” The European Jewish Times Sept.

2004:1.

“How many people died at Auschwitz?” The Nizkor Project.

http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/auschwitz/auschwitz-faq-09.html

“Prayers and Blessings.” Judaism 101. 2001. 19 Feb. 2009.

http://www.jewfaq.org/prayer.htm.

Seltzer, Stefanie. Chairperson of World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the

Holocaust. Interview with author. 18 March 2009.

The Holocaust History Project. 25 Jan. 2009. 13 Dec. 2008

http://www.holocaust-history.org/hungarian-photos/.

“The Holocaust.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 7 Oct. 2008.

“How many people died at Auschwitz?” The Nizkor Project. 2009. 22 March, 2009.

http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/auschwitz/auschwitz-faq-09.html

Unlikely Heroes. Documentary. Dir. Richard Trank. Narrated by Sir Ben Kingsley.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, 2005.

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