Rosa Traub Family Collection

Rosa Traub was born on December 12, 1869 in Grötzingen, Germany. She lived in Karlsruhe until her forced deportation by the Gestapo. On October 21, 1940, Jews living in Baden and the surrounding region were deported to France as part of Operation Bürckel. Included in the Operation Bürckel round-up were Rosa Traub, her sisters Bertha and Ella, and niece Johanna Eva (Hanne) Hirsch. The family was put on a train from Germany to Orleans, France, where she had to wait several days before reaching the Gurs concentration camp in Southern France.

As a prisoner at Camp de Gurs, Rosa Traub recorded her daily experiences in a diary. Her sister Bertha died at Gurs in February 1941. Her niece, Hanne Hirsch began dating Max Liebmann, a young man from Mannheim, while imprisoned. In 1941, the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) removed Hanne to a children’s home in Le Chambon sur Lignon with the permission of her mother. Max was taken to a working farm for young foreigners in Talluyers, also by the OSE, toward the end of June 1942.

On October 23, 1941, Rosa left Gurs, traveling by boat from Marseilles with stops at Casablanca, Morocco, and Bermuda before arriving and seeking refuge in Cuba. Unable to escape from Gurs, Rosa’s sister, Ella Hirsch was deported to Drancy and then murdered at Auschwitz in late 1942. In 1948, Rosa immigrated to the United States, where she reunited with Hanne who had been in hiding in France and Switzerland during the war, before getting married to Max Liebmann in 1945. Rosa Traub died in New York in 1969.