The brutal assault on Helene and Fritz Rosenstein
Raid on the apartment243
A hit squad, presumably consisting of SA men, has instructions to attack the Rosenstein family at no. 4 Schillerstrasse. The front door is locked, but the group is able to enter the building, apparently without damaging the door.
The 28-year-old Fritz Rosenstein, who is employed by the Grätzer & Seidl distillery until the pogrom, and his 53-year-old widowed mother, Helene Rosenstein née Schreiber, are in the apartment on the upper ground floor. His younger brother and sisters, Erich, Erna and Jenny, are not there.
Just before half past two in the morning, Helene und Fritz Rosenstein are woken by a loud clamour. Helene Rosenstein asks her son to see what the matter is. Through the broken glass of the upper panel, Fritz can see several men trying to break open the door to the apartment with iron bars and wooden poles. A few seconds later, while he is trying to calm his mother in the dining room, the door flies open and about ten men rush into the apartment. Fritz knows Marschik244, who lives in the vicinity. He is “holding a rubber truncheon and giving orders”.245 Fritz Rosenstein is interrogated and questioned about the whereabouts of his 20-year-old brother, who travelled to Palestine some time ago.
When Fritz Rosenstein tries to shield his mother from the intruders, he is throttled, “knocked down with rubber truncheons, wooden clubs, knuckledusters and iron objects”246 and then assaulted “with kicks”247. The memory fills him with dread, “Every minute I thought they were going to kill me.”248 He lies dazed. When Helene Rosenstein manages to open the window and shout for help, she too is throttled and knocked over. Two others residents of 4 Schillerstrasse, Frau Ghedina and her daughter, try to protect them and speak to the men – to no avail.
When Fritz Rosenstein regains consciousness, he and his mother are forced out of the house with further blows and dragged along Schillerstrasse. Lying in the middle of the road, Fritz and Helene Rosenstein are throttled again and beaten
“like dogs”249. In the meantime other men have joined in. Fritz Rosenstein counts thirty people including “several boys I knew”.250 A veritable crowd
243 Unless otherwise stated the reconstruction of events is based on: Tiroler Landesarchiv (TLA), LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 13.5.1946 u. 25.1.1947. Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein, in: Gad Hugo Sella, Die Juden Tirols. Ihr Leben und Schicksal (Tel-Aviv 1979), 122f. TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 3470/46, Bericht 29.9.1947; Aussagen Anna Neumann, 20.9.1947 u. 14.10.1947
(Hauptverhandlung). See also www.hohenemsgenealogie.at.
244 Rosenstein doesn't mention the first name: TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschriften Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 13.5.1946 u.
25.1.1947.
245 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 25.1.1947.
246 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 25.1.1947.
247 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 25.1.1947.
248 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 25.1.1947.
249 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 13.5.1946.
250 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 25.1.1947.
44 gathers. Neighbours standing at their windows witness the crime.251 After being
kicked in the head and stomach, Fritz Rosenstein can no longer stand up and loses consciousness. His mother lies whimpering a few metres away from him.
Abduction of Helene Rosenstein252
Three or four men253 drag Helene Rosenstein, who is still putting up some resistance, further down the street. Near the head office of the railway company, or perhaps in Goethestrasse already,254 they meet some SA men from the Haller squad, who are just returning from the River Sill in their car, where they have pushed the Popper couple into the water. Helene Rosenstein’s captors wave to the driver Josef Schäffer and indicate that he should stop.
Schäffer turns the car round and parks at the kerb.
A few SA men get out of the car. Helene Rosenstein is handed over and forced into the car. Theodor Haller stands on the running board and tells Schäffer to return to the confluence of the rivers Sill and Inn. In her condition, she is bound to drown. But after they have set off, Schäffer changes the route and heads for the Reichenau district. In the Reichenau fields, about 50 meters behind the old chapel at the ‘Amraser Heimstätten’,255 Schäffer stops the car. Helene Rosenstein cries and begs for her life. But Theodor Haller forces her to get out, pulls her away from the car and gives her a violent push from behind. The SA men now consider their job done and drive back to the city centre. Helene Rosenstein falls in a field and remains lying on the ground dressed only in her nightgown. She has lost a shoe.
Hospital, ‘protective custody’, flight256
In the morning Helene Rosenstein is found in the field in Reichenau. On the orders of Dr. Wilhelm Ludwig she is taken to the hospital one day later, on 11
251 So for example Johanna Oxanitsch: AdR, BMI, Dokumentenmappe Judenpogrom 1938 in Innsbruck, GZl. 121.266-2/46, Fol. 145-148', Bericht 8.1.1946.
252 Unless otherwise stated the reconstruction of events is based on: TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschriften Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 13.5.1946 u. 25.1.1947. Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein, in: Gad Hugo Sella, Die Juden Tirols. Ihr Leben und Schicksal (Tel-Aviv 1979) 122f. TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 3470/46, Berichte 17.9.1946 u. 29.9.1947; Aussagen Theodor Haller 21.8.1946, 14.10.1947
(Hauptverhandlung) u. 15.9.1947 (Hauptverhandlung), Josef Schäffer 20.8.1946, 27.8.1946, 4.10.1946, 15.9.1947 (Hauptverhandlung) u.
14.10.1947 (Hauptverhandlung), Anna Neumann 14.10.1947 (Hauptverhandlung); Anklage Theodor Haller u. Josef Schäffer 14.7.1947;
Urteil Haller u. Schäffer 14.10.1947. See also www.hohenemsgenealogie.at.
253 Their identities aren't clear. It could be members of the group, who attacked the Rosensteins, but it could also be members of the SA group Haller.
254 So Josef Schäffer.
255 Probably the area at the end of Gumppstraße.
256 Unless otherwise stated the reconstruction of events is based on: Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein an Ilse Zadek geb. Pasch, 9.1.1939, in: Ernst Oppenheim, To remember me by. First crusade through Holocaust. Facts, fragments, lore and legends (Cambridge 2000), 217. Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein, in: Gad Hugo Sella, Die Juden Tirols. Ihr Leben und Schicksal (Tel-Aviv 1979), 122 f. TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschriften Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 13.5.1946 und 25.1.1947; Aussagen Albert Lutz 9.1.1947 u. 19.5.1949. TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 3470/46, Aussagen Josef Schäffer 20.8.1946, 27.8.1946, 4.10.1946, 15.9.1947 (Hauptverhandlung) u. 14.10.1947 (Hauptverhandlung);
Berichte 17.9.1946 u. 29.9.1947; Anklage Theodor Haller u. Josef Schäffer 14.7.1947; Aussagen Anna Neumann 20.9.1947 u. 14.10.1947 (Hauptverhandlung); Urteil Haller u. Schäffer 14.10.1947. See also www.hohenemsgenealogie.at.
45 November 1938,257. The diagnosis: “Diffuse haematomas of the face and neck,
particularly pronounced above the left eye and near the left corner of the mouth.”258
Immediately after the raid, Fritz Rosenstein is carried to another car amid threats and more physical abuse and taken to Gestapo headquarters in the nearby railway company office building at no. 8 Bienerstrasse. There he has to stand against the wall with other arrested Jews. When Gestapo officer Albert Lutz, who has known him since childhood from playing football, sees Fritz Rosenstein, he accuses him of anti-National Socialist propaganda.259 Although Rosenstein can no longer stand straight and falls several times, he is forced to stand up with his face to the wall and has his head banged against the wall until he collapses again and remains lying on the floor covered in blood.
Then Fritz Rosenstein is transferred to the police jail. He is placed in a cell which already contains several Jews in ‘protective custody’. Some of them are more seriously injured. Shortly after Rosenstein, Julius Popper arrives in soaking wet clothes.
Next morning Fritz Rosenstein is interrogated in the presence of the Gestapo and, like all the prisoners, examined by a doctor. Although “neck, head, upper body and legs are (...) bruised and lacerated”,260 and in the course of the assaults he has suffered “injuries from strangulation, blows, punches and kicks and has broken teeth and bleeding wounds all over the body, arms, legs, feet and hands”261, he receives no medical attention. The result of the medical screening: “No-one injured”.262 Fritz Rosenstein has to spend eight days without a straw mattress, sleeping on hard wood. “It was only thanks to my physical fitness from doing sport that I was fortunate enough not to suffer more serious harm.”263 He is not interrogated, but they threaten to send him to Dachau. Secretly the prisoners in ‘protective custody’ receive letters that have been smuggled into the jail. That is how they learn of the death of Ing. Richard Berger and Ing. Richard Graubart. There is no news of Helene Rosenstein, and Fritz Rosenstein thinks she must be dead.
Only after two weeks, when his injuries are no longer so obvious, is Fritz Rosenstein released from jail. On his release, on 24 November 1938, he has to pay a daily charge for “protective custody against Communist attack” and sign a declaration that he will not engage in counterpropaganda. He must leave Innsbruck within three days and never tell anyone what has happened to him.
On his return to the ground floor apartment at no. 4 Schillerstrasse, Fritz Rosenstein discovers that the “dining room furnishings, sideboard, tables and
257 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 3470/46, Bericht 29.9.1947.
258 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 3470/46, Bericht 29.9.1947.
259 So Rosenstein. Lutz confirms the meeting, but only wants to have greeted him.
260 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 13.5.1946.
261 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 25.1.1947.
262 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 25.1.1947.
263 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 13.5.1946.
46 chairs have been smashed and the packed crates broken open” and various
“objects stolen”.264
Helene Rosenstein is apparently discharged from hospital on 14 November, although she continues to receive treatment for some time after that.265 Soon after her son’s release,266 they travel to Vienna to stay with her daughter Jenny.
On 20 December 1938 Fritz, Jenny and her husband succeed in fleeing to Belgium via Aachen with the help of illegal German border guides – today they would be called ‘human traffickers’ – to whom they have to pay “large sums of money”.267
Fritz Rosenstein works as a painter and in 1940 flees to northern France, where he is arrested and interned. He escapes with the help of an Austrian Wehrmacht soldier but is repeatedly forced to go into hiding. Following the liberation of Belgium, he works for some time as an interpreter and interrogates National Socialists and war criminals. He settles in Belgium and finally finds employment in a large textile company. He gives a detailed description of the events in the night of the pogrom in two letters he writes.268 Helene Rosenstein manages to reach England, where she works as a cook. In 1940 she travels on a visa to Bolivia to be with her daughter Jenny. Helene Rosenstein later moves to Arizona in the United States, where she dies in 1968.269
264 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 25.1.1947.
265 According to Fritz Rosenstein, his mother has been in hospital longer: TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 13.5.1946. According to Anna Schulhof, Helene Rosenstein - as Anna learned from hearsay - had a broken foot. The medical findings speak against this: TLA, LG Innsbruck 10 Vr 4171/46, Aussage Anna Schulhof 2.11.1945.
266 According to the ‘Meldezettel’ Fritz Rosenblatt from December 5–10, 1938, is still registered with Adolf Neumann at Andreas-Hofer-Straße 29.
267 Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein, in: Gad Hugo Sella, Die Juden Tirols. Ihr Leben und Schicksal (Tel-Aviv 1979), 123.
268 TLA, LG Innsbruck, 10 Vr 852/47, Abschrift Schreiben Fritz Rosenstein 13.5.1946 u. 25.1.1947.
269 See also Schreiben Jenny Rosenstein, verh. Handel, in: Gad Hugo Sella, Die Juden Tirols. Ihr Leben und Schicksal (Tel-Aviv 1979), 124 f.
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