Gertrud Rosenberg née Brenner

Gertrud Rosenberg was born Gertrud Brenner on 16 October 1879 in Schwetz on the River Vistula, West Prussia (now Świecie, Poland). Her father was called Nathan Brenner; her mother’s name is not known. In around 1908 she married Arthur Rosenberg in her home town. He was a merchant, born in Schwetz on 8 December 1878. They had three children: Alice (born 1 January 1911 in Schwetz) Ludwig Lutz (born 25 January 1913 in Schwetz) and Heinz (born 29 June 1917 in Thorn/Toruǹ). Gertrud Rosenberg and her family moved to Frankfurt an der Oder and from there to Berlin, where they lived in a 4-room apartment with a kitchen and a bathroom at Große Hamburger Straße 29. Her husband died there, aged 58, on 9 March 1937. He was buried three days later in the Jewish cemetery.
A year later, with life growing increasingly difficult under the Nazis’ anti-Semitic measures, Gertrud Rosenberg moved with her son Lutz and daughter Alice into a smaller apartment at Krausnick Straße 17. Her youngest son Heinz had already emigrated to Palestine. Lutz planned to join him there and went to live for a time in a training home run by the Hechaluz Zionist world organization, to prepare for life in Palestine. Before he emigrated, he complied with the requirement laid down by the Nazis’ “decree on the use of Jewish assets” and handed in all the family’s jewellery and precious metal objects to the pawnbrokers on Jäger Straße in 1939. After both her sons’ emigration, Gertrud Rosenberg was required to take in subtenants, so she and her daughter occupied only one of the two rooms in their apartment.
On 9 December 1942, 63-year-old Gertrud Rosenberg was deported with her daughter to Auschwitz. She was probably murdered on arrival in the gas chamber.