He
was born in Bedzin, Poland, and from his youth was active in
the Labor Zionist movement. He worked as a scrap metal dealer.
In 1943 he escaped from a train going to Auschwitz by leaping
into the Vistula River. Although wounded, he managed to walk
back to the Bedzin ghetto. He was however soon after sent to
Auschwitz and was in several concentration camps before being
liberated in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Rosensaft was chosen by
the other Bergen-Belsen survivors to be chairman of the camp
committee and their representative vis-à-vis the authorities,
the first head of a Jewish DP committee. He became chairman
of the Central Committee for Displaced Persons in the British
zone of Germany until its disbandment in 1950. He worked determinedly
to protect the survivors' rights and to fight against the anti-Zionist
policies of the British. He himself went on to live in the US
and Switzerland and was president of the World Federation of
Bergen-Belsen Survivors, dedicated to the perpetuation of the
memory of the Holocaust.
Bibliography
BLOCH, Sam E.
(ed.). Holocaust and rebirth: Bergen-Belsen, 1945-1965.
Foreword by Jacob Robinson; intro. by Josef Rosensaft. New
York; Tel Aviv: Bergen-Belsen Memorial Press of the World Federation
of Bergen-Belsen Associations, 1965.
Links
Jewish Displaced Persons Project, Leaders - United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum
