Rosa Michel
1897 - 1942

Rosa Michel was born on August 25, 1897, in Hettenleidelheim (Palatinate) as the daughter of the merchant Heinrich Michel (born in Hettenleidelheim in 1871) and Anna Michel. Both parents were Jewish. At this time, only 12 Jews were still living in the village, mainly members of the extended Michel family. However, the Jewish community of Hettenleidelheim was dissolved in 1896. By 1912, Heinrich Michel's family was already living in Eisenberg (Palatinate). Around 1933, Rosa Michel's father lived at Hostato street 28 in Höchst on the Main, which had been a district of Frankfurt on the Main since 1928. Later, we find him in the Frankfurt district of Unter-Liederbach at De-Ridder-Weg 5, only a few hundred meters away from his apartment in Höchst.

Rosa Michel married Julius Schwarzschild, a Jew born in 1888 in Massenheim (now Hochheim am Main, Hesse). They had at least one child. Rosa lived with her husband in Eisenberg (Palatinate), where her family had lived before World War I. Julius Schwarzschild ran a butcher's shop there. In 1938, the couple moved to Frankfurt on the Main to escape the persecution of the few Jews in that village.

According to the annual report of the Frankfurt on the Main section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club from 1914, Rosa Michel became a member of this section in 1913. As she is also listed as joining in 1925, she must have been a member of the section during and after the First World War.

It is unlikely that she took part in Frankfurt Section events after moving to Eisenberg (Palatinate). As she became a member of the Frankfurt section before 1914, she was able to remain a section member despite the introduction of the so-called "Arierparagraf" (Aryan paragraph) in February 1934. However, we do not find her among the recipients of the award for 25 years of membership in the Frankfurt on the Main section. She must therefore have left the section or been expelled before 1938.

Rosa Schwarzschild, née Michel, was deported from Frankfurt on the Main to German occupied Raasiku near Reval together with her husband Julius Schwarzschild in September 1942 and murdered there. Julius Schwarzschild had already been arrested in connection with the November 1938 pogroms and imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp from November 12 to December 16, 1938. At present, we do not know whether Rosa and Julius Schwarzschild's child was able to escape the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

Her father Heinrich Michel was deported from Frankfurt on the Main to Theresienstadt on September 1, 1942, and from there deported to the Treblinka extermination camp and murdered already on September 29, 1942. Her uncle Theodor Michel (born 1868 in Hettenleidelheim) was able to emigrate to the USA with his children Heinrich (1895-1944), Auguste Michel (1896-1990), and Gottfried Karl (1901-1993). He passed away in New York City in May 1945 at the age of 77. His wife Johanna Michel, née David, had already died in Heppenheim in January 1934.

Gustav Schwarzschild, her husband's older brother, was deported from Frankfurt on the Main in June 1942. However, it is unclear in which extermination camp he was murdered. According to the Federal Archives' Gedenkbuch (Memorial Book) for the Victims of National Socialist Persecution of Jews, he was deported to either Majdanek or Sobibor. According to his entry on geni.com, however, he was deported to Auschwitz, and murdered there.

His younger sister Martha Schwarzschild, married Baum, was deported from Frankfurt on the Main to the German ghetto Litzmannstadt (Lodz) in October 1941. She most likely died there due to the catastrophic living conditions. Her daughter Amanda (Alma) Baum, married Adler, born in Hasselbach in 1903 was deported from Frankfurt on the Main to Raasiku near Reval in September 1942, like Rosa Schwarzschild, and murdered there. Her son Berthold Baum, born in Höchst on the Main in 1911, was able to emigrate to the USA and married Hilde Eberhardt in Brooklyn, New York City, in August 1941.

Julius Schwarzschild's eldest brother Siegfried Schwarzschild, on the other hand, managed to emigrate to the USA together with his wife Rina, née Emmerich. He died in Paramus (New Jersey) in March 1956, she died there in July 1968.