| MAY 2007 |
An Inspiration - Robert Hans Rosner, 22 Sept 1930 - 27 April 2007, RIP. |
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Rob's final visit to Beth Shalom - the House of Peace. "It's a place of absolute and complete goodness" said Bob as we drew near the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire. Months earlier we had arranged to come with him on his visit to give a talk to school sixth-formers. I had never been before and asked him if Sylvia, a friend of mine who'd also never been, could come too. Bob agreed that I'd drive us there, keeping his energy for the lecture and freeing him to reminisce and chatter delightfully in the car. He told us about his life as a town-planner and architect with a stream of amusing stories about council housing and school projects that (when Bob told them) were fascinating. Each disaster turned out to be for the best after all - he found a truly cheerful angle to every anecdote. Principles popped up; he told us how he avoided Hull City Council projects lest it be thought that he got them because of personal connections. Instead they worked for councils all over the north of England, giving the poorest estates the finest architecture. We were driving deep into remote green countryside, with rolling fields hills and tiny quiet villages untouched by the 20th century - no electric pylons or other cars, just green and yellow fields, pink and white blossom, a hazy misty pale blue sky. Then we saw an old mellowed brick house. 'And was Jerusalem builded here, in England's green and pleasant land?' First he took us round the rose garden. Arriving at 11am, we had time for a quick tour. "Is it a memorial or remembrance garden, or maybe it's both" said Bob as he showed us plants dedicated to lost individuals, landscaped vistas with sculpture, a pond, and round each corner, little spots sheltered by tall trees shaped for you to gaze, sit and think in privacy. He kept praising the design, overall and in detail. We had lunch in the café, then Sylvia and I left Bob to prepare, and we got to the hall for the start of his lecture at 12 noon. He spoke for about an hour, then answered questions, and throughout, he held the audience of perhaps 150-200 teenagers spellbound. We sat at the back and saw that they did not move or, hardly, breathe; they hung on his every word. Talking to them directly without notes or microphone and only the occasional photo on a screen behind him, Bob took them gently back to prewar Vienna where he was born in 1930. He started by describing a happy and ordinary childhood with parents and sister and friends from the Catholic school he attended. "We saw ourselves as Austrians who happened to be Jews; not as Jews who happened to live in Austria." Then after 1938's Anschluss he took them step by step through the fast descent: the Jewish children at school suddenly labelled, segregated in their seats, banned from things previously done; the family thrown out of its flat, his father, a hospital doctor, sacked; Jews banned from universities and employment, and from parks, benches, swimming baths; posters of Jews as 'vermin' suddenly appearing round the city, stormtroopers at every corner, tabloid press screaming abuse; previous colleagues, neighbours and family friends turning away (importantly, not all did: one friend knew of an empty flat where they found temporary refuge). Within 3 or 4 weeks life was dangerous for Jews who were being arrested off the streets and then within months were being put in ghetto areas with walls built round them and without food getting in, meaning death and disease on the streets (vivid, painful photos on the screen behind Bob). He analyzed some posters, gross caricatures of Jews with beards and big noses, 'unhealthy' compared to fit blond Aryans. He showed photos of Jews on their knees being made to scrub the streets of Vienna with disinfectant, as public entertainment for crowds; and of Jews being 'released' from ghettoes to trains taking them to camps. Then he described the 1938-9 beginnings of concentration camps with trades unionists, political dissenters and disabled people as inmates, and quoted camp tortures reported at that time by released prisoners. For example an inmate was put in a crate, about 400 half-metre long nails were hammered in, and the crate rolled over and over till the screaming stopped. He also described the beginning of gassing the inmates: hospital gas used then, 1938-9, proved costly (later, industrial gas was cheaper). "The holocaust wasn't caused by the war, that's a myth" said Bob. "It began before, and built up. These beginnings were known. Many people and governments turned away." England almost uniquely didn't, and he described the Kindertransport scheme, which had started as a way of rescuing children from the Spanish Civil War that began in 1936. Bob told how his parents sought a sponsor in England for him, once his sister had been taken, by advertising in the Greengrocer's Chronicle - and a greengrocer in Hull responded. Then he told of his feelings as an 8 year old leaving his parents who gave him a bag with a knife, fork and spoon (what do you give a child going off into the unknown?), landing at the Hook of Harwich, being greeted with a smile and hug - he didn't speak English but immediately recognised caring kindness - and being driven in a car to Mars, ie Hull, with strange boxes called houses, not blocks of flats as in Vienna. He told the teenage audience of his gratitude to this country for giving him asylum. There was much more, about street games (with marbles, blitz debris, and Bob as a 'German' during 'the war against the Germans'), school - he soon learned English, passed the 11+ and went to grammar school (where he made friends and became a Prefect) - and English life: Bob loved his foster family, Aunty Kitty, Uncle Leo, and foster-brother Lionel as he called them in his talk. In 1946 aged 16 he had to sign in weekly at a police-station as an enemy alien. Citizens of Hull wrote to the government to get him naturalized as an English citizen (before age 21), and Bob ever grateful in return joined the forces when the time came, serving proudly in the British Army. He showed a photo of himself in army uniform going back to bury his father in Vienna in 1954. "It was ironic that my first return to Vienna was as a member of an occupying force." For a sad occasion. There were alot of different emotions in Bob's talk. At the end of this very personal talk, Bob generalized, "I want to ask you all to have the nerve to do something. If anyone says something racist, don't turn away, wishing not to be involved. Have the nerve to say: please don't say that in front of me." He urged: "remember there is only one race: the human race. We may differ: it's good to be different, let's be inclusive, not segregate or exclude those who differ. There is still anti-semitism but above all now there is Islamophobia and prejudice against immigrants and asylum-seekers. Don't turn away. One person can make a difference." He pointed to the message on the wall: "He who saves a single life…saves the world entire." At the end of the eager audience questions, Bob again argued from the particular, his own life, to the universal: "don't turn away, wishing not to be involved. Don't let them demonize the Muslims!" This last was almost a shout, Bob gathering all his strength to say it loudly. It was a tour de force. As we made our way to the café I asked Bob if he was both elated and exhausted after such an effort? "I am very exhausted, and not elated but tearful. I am more tearful each time." He wanted a quiet cup of tea and a pause before returning to Hull. We promised to be back within 15 minutes, and left him sitting at the table. Within 10 minutes, two ladies fetched us from the exhibition saying "Bob has passed out, air ambulance has been called." They said they'd been chatting to him in the café as they cleaned things "when silently without word or warning, he slumped forward onto the table." They said "he was fine, cheery, then suddenly fainted". Luckily Dr James Smith was near, and it seemed only minutes before the paramedics came and had Bob on a stretcher for their helicopter. We waited transfixed. Dr Smith came over to us and said: "it was a heart attack. Bob's heart stopped, which meant he died then, but a paramedic thumped the heart and kick-started it. Even so there is a lot of heart damage. It is severe. Olive must be reached urgently." Bob went in a blaze of glory. It was a noble end. Bob was giving himself totally to others, to the last. How would he see this event, with his wonderful capacity (always seeing the glass half-full) to find a positive side to an apparent disaster, and make the best of it? Robert Hans Rosner, 22 Sept 1930 - 27 April 2007 by Jackie Lukes |
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