Eva Rosenfeld
Presentation Topic:"Holocaust Survivor brought to U.S. in Haven program by FDR"

EVA ROSENFELD

To prepare for this videoconference, we encourage students to read the book, HAVEN, by Ruth Gruber and other similar books and to view the docudrama mini-series, HAVEN, which aired on CBS. The book and mini-series tells the story of Ruth Gruber, special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, who played an important role in arranging the immigration of Eva and her fellow refugees.

Additional suggested books for students to read include:

* The Abandonment of the Jews by Wyman (details information available to the British and American governments and which was not acted upon)
*Hitler's Willing Executioners by Goldhagen (tells about the total involvement of the German army and police forces (not only the SS) in the Holocaust.
*The Inextinguishable Symphony by Goldsmith (tells how a Jewish musician formed a symphony as ordered by German authorities, how the author survived and went to the USA in June 1941 (on the same ship ERIC came to the USA on).
*Echoes from the Holocaust by Mira Kimmelman.
*Holocaust and other Genocides by Helmut Wanser Smith

Eva was born in 1927 in Koenigsberg in East Prussia, which was part of Germany prior to

WW II. In 1937 Eva and her parents emigrated to Genova, Italy because of the persecution of the Jews in Germany. Eva's mother died in 1939 because of a heart problem. Her father had been arrested in Genova and was told he had to leave Italy. He went at night on a fishing boat to France where he was eventually caught by the Nazis and died on the train headed to the concentration camp in Auschwitz.

Eva was taken in by a young Jewish couple and all of them were placed in internment camps in southern Italy (by Italian fascists) from 1940-1944. After the liberation of Italy in 1944 and with both her parents now dead, she was one of 982 refugees from many countries, mostly Jews, who were able to come to the USA. These European-Jewish Holocaust refugees from war-torn Europe were approved for immigration to the United States as guests of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the duration of the war. President Roosevelt allowed 1,000 refugees to enter the USA outside the strict immigration quota.

Sailing on the liberty ship, Henry Gibbins, with wounded soldiers and constantly in danger and hunted at sea by Nazi planes and U-boats, Eva landed in New York City and was immediately taken by train to an Army camp outside Oswego, New York. Finally free from bombings and terror, Eva was among the refugees from eighteen countries that Hitler had tried to overrun.

In the United States, the frightened newcomers arrived at the stark army base in Oswego, New York where they were once again interned in a barbed wire camp for the duration of the war. Even though many of the refugees had relatives in the United States who would gladly have taken them into their homes, they were not permitted to leave the camp until the end of the war. It took an act of congress following the war to allow them to enter the USA legally. This was America's only shelter for refugees of the Holocaust, and these were the only refugees of the Holocaust offered haven in America during World War II.

Eric and Eva met after the war in Rochester, New York where Eva lived with her grandmother. Eric had moved to Rochester in order to run a printing plant. They now have four children and seven grandchildren.

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This page is last modified on January 24, 2006