Sonja Rotenberg (F / Belgium, 1940), Holocaust survivor
Sonja Rotenberg (F / Belgium, 1940), Holocaust survivor
< Regina Rotenberg Wolbrom (F / Germany, 1925), Holocaust survivor >
Wolfang Rotenberg (M / Germany, 1929), Holocaust survivor
Siegmund Rotenberg (M / Germany, 1934), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Belgium> <Hidden Children> -- <Israel>
Biography
Wolfang Rotenberg was born June 4, 1929 in Berlin, Germany. Regina, Wolfang, Siegmund and Sonja were the children of Max (Moshek) Rotenberg and Tema (Toni) Frankel. In February 1939 Regina, Wolfang, and Siegmund went to Belgium as refugees in a Kindertransport. There they were reunited to their parents and their little sister Sonja was born. In the Fall 1942 their parents were arrested and perished at Auschwitz. In May 1944 Regina also was arrested and deported to Auschwitz and Ravensbruck but survived. Wolfang, Siegmund and Sonja remained in Belgium where they were taken care of by members of the Celis family, until liberation. Eventually all siblings emigrated to Israel.
USHMM
Regina Wolbrom (born Regina Rotenberg) is the daughter of Max (Moshek) Rotenberg (born in Lodz, on October 30, 1896) and Tema (Toni) Frankel (born in Busk, Poland, on February 3, 1900). She was born on October 13, 1925, in Gera, Germany. Her two younger brothers both were born in Berlin where their father owned a store. Wolfang was born on June 4, 1929 and Siegmund was born in Berlin on August 4, 1934. In October 1938, the Germans deported Max, a Polish citizen, back to Poland. Eventually he was released and went to live with his sister in Lodz. Tema and her children had remained in Berlin, and the following year, in February 1939, she sent her children with the Red Cross on a Kindertransport to Brussels. Soon after, she and Max came illegally to Belgium and reunited with their children in Brussels. On September 11, 1940, Tema gave birth to her fourth child, Sonja. Max sold leather illegally to support the family. Tema sent Regina to a dressmaker to learn a trade. When the Germans began rounding up young girls for labor, Tema asked the dressmaker if Regina could stay with her. After a month, the dressmaker, worrying that they would both be caught, sent Regina to live with her cousin in the hamlet of Halmael, Belgium. The rest of the family then joined her, and they were able to pay the woman who took them in. Father Hubert Celis, the parish priest of Halmael, became friendly with the Rotenbergs. In October 1942, Tema had a premonition that something would happen, so she asked Father Hubert to help hide her children. Regina and Sonja were sent to stay with his father, Joseph Celis, and Wolfgang and Siegmund went to live with Father Louis Celis (Father Hubert's brother, who was also a priest). Two weeks later someone denounced the family. While Max was working in Father Hubert's garden, a German gendarme arrested him and Tema. Max and Tema were deported to Auschwitz where they perished in October 1942. Father Hubert worried that the children could be arrested as well, so he arranged for Wolfgang and Siegmund to stay temporarily with another priest in the region. Regina took Sonja by bicycle to stay with other friends of Father Hubert who owned a flourmill. However, this family was unable to take care of a two year old, so Father Hubert, who also worked with the underground, found a place for her with farmers near the Dutch border. Regina brought Sonja by bicycle to a train station and handed her to woman dressed in brown. This woman then gave Sonja to three different people, and eventually to the farmer. Only Father Hubert knew her location. After a few weeks, Regina rejoined Joseph Celis, and her brothers returned to live with Father Louis's friends. Around Christmas, Father Hubert took Regina to see her sister. When they left, Sonja screamed so much that the farmer told Regina not to return until they let her know when it would be all right. Regina later visited her siblings once a month using a false identity card Father Hubert made for her. On May 3, 1944, the same gendarme who arrested Max and Tema came to the house and asked Regina for her identity card. Knowing that she would be arrested if she showed him her false ID card, she told the gendarme that she could not find it. He searched her room, found the card, and arrested her. He took her to a cellar and interrogated her. When he asked where her siblings were, she lied and said she hadn't seen them for two years. In order to protect Father Hubert, she claimed that her father had made the false identification card for her when they were in Brussels. Father Hubert's sister-in-law came to bring Regina some food, and Regina was able to tell her in Flemish (so the German guards would not understand) what she had said. The woman passed this information on to Father Hubert who repeated it during his interrogation and was released. The Germans took Regina to another town and imprisoned her for a few nights, and then sent her to the Malines transit camp.
Two weeks later, they deported her to Auschwitz. While she was on a cattle car on her way to Birkenau, Regina managed to throw down five notes through the floor of the train. A farmer found two of them and mailed them to Joseph Celis and his daughter Franciska Celis. While in Birkenau, Regina contracted rabies, and during a selection she hid in the toilets to avoid detection of her illness. Regina later was hospitalized with jaundice. After she recovered, she remained in the hospital working with the removal of dead bodies. In January 1944, Regina was evacuated and sent on a death march to Ravensbruck, then to Malchov and Leipzig. While marching near Leipzig, Regina escaped with her friend Frieda Madzinksy. They went into town and found shelter in a home. The Red Army liberated them two days later. After two days, the girls decided to go to the American zone. They then walked 150 kilometers over five days. The Americans placed the girls in a temporary camp and repatriated them to Belgium. Since Regina's truck to Brussels passed through the town where Joseph Celis lived, she got off and returned to his house. The family was surprised and delighted to see her. The following day, Wolfgang, Siegmund, and Sonja came to visit with her for the day. Regina began searching for other surviving family members and found two aunts in Brussels. Wolfgang and Siegmund were sent to live with them, but that did not work out, so Regina placed them on the last children's transport to Palestine. Unfortunately, Regina was too old and Sonja too young to go as well, but Regina promised to join them there one day. Sonja continued to live with her rescuer family until the day of Regina's wedding to Izak Wolbrom (a fellow survivor). Regina and Izak became Sonja's legal guardians, and cared for her until her marriage in 1961. In keeping with Regina's promise, in 1949 the three of them joined Wolfgang and Siegmund in Israel. In 1980 Yad Vashem recognized Joseph, Louis and Hubert Celis as Righteous Among the Nations.
Yad Vashem
This is the story of the rescue of four children of one family whose parents were deported to Auschwitz. Ten people were recognized as Righteous for their rescue. They came from different backgrounds – priests, nobility, farmers and a simple house-keeper – but they had a common goal: to protect the children despite the danger of denounciation and arrest.
Father Louis Celis served as a priest in Gotem (Belgium), a village in the Liège/Luik region. His brother, Hubert, was priest of the nearby community of Halmaal. In September 1942, Monsignor Louis-Joseph Kerkhofs, Bishop of Liege, invited some of the clerics in his diocese and encouraged them to rescue Jews. Father Hubert Celis, who was among the priests that were convened by Kerkhofs, reported to Yad Vashem that “in view of the danger one was exposed to, the bishop did not want to oblige anyone, but he wanted his priests to know how proud he would be of them, if they risked their lives to save others.” Monseignor Kerkhofs also put the priests in contact with the lawyer and Resistance member Albert Van den Berg who undertook to keep the priests informed about every new German decree regarding Jews.
Father Hubert was present at this meeting. As it turned out, his response to the Bishop’s appeal was soon to be tested. Once he had returned home, Tena Rotenberg, accompanied by one of his parishioners, came knocking on his door. With tears in her eyes Tena Rotenberg told him that her family had left Brussels because of the danger to the Jews, but that she was about to be arrested. She pleaded with him to take care of her four children. Father Hubert acted immediately. He placed the two girls, sixteen-year-old Regine and two-year-old Sonia with his eighty-year-old father, Joseph, who lived with his daughters Bona and Lucy in Saint Trond; the two boys, thirteen-year-old Wolfgang and nine-year-old Sigmund, were put in the care of his brother, Father Louis and his housekeeper Marie-Louise Tabruyn.
In order to avoid suspicion as to their origin, the Rotenberg boys had to attend church services regularly, but in the privacy of his home, Father Louis Celis made sure that the boys would preserve their Jewish identity. He required of Wolfgang to put on his phylacteries (Tefillin) and recite his prayers, and went as far as to inform himself about the Jewish rituals so that he could make sure that the boys kept the tradition. His housekeeper Marie-Louise Tabruyn, helped the priest to take care of the boys. The two of them acted like real parents for Wolfgang and Sigmund.
Father Hubert Celis kept in touch with the children’s parents, Moszek and Tena Rotenberg and frequently went to see them. However, one month after they had handed their children to Father Hubert, they were denounced by an informer, arrested and deported. The Celis family now had full responsibility for the children's fate. Apart from taking care of the Rotenberg children, it is known that Father Hubert hid four or five Jews in his home for shorter periods of time.
On the day the parents of the Rotenberg children were captured, Hubert Celis was arrested for the first time. The officer who interrogated him threatened to shoot him if he didn't reveal the children's whereabouts, but being a Catholic himself, the policeman didn't dare go as far as harming a priest, and Celis was released.
With their names figuring on the Germans’ wanted list, their situation became very dangerous. Louis decided that in order to ensure their safety, it was better to place the boys with another family. He himself went into hiding, but his housekeeper remained in contact with the two brothers to guarantee their well-being. When the boys told her that they were not happy in their new hiding-place, she informed Celis who subsequently placed them with the Baron Raymond and the Baroness Marcelle de Tornaco in Voort. The baron and his wife lodged the two boys in a little house where the garden tools were kept. They stayed in a small room under the roof where food was brought to them every day, and where Marie Louise Tabruyn paid them weekly visits, bringing them clean clothing and sweets. Towards the end of the occupation, the boys returned to Father Celis and Marie-Louise Tabruyn. He also arranged for Regina to be temporarily placed with friends, and found a permanent shelter for Sonia with Alfons and Clementina Maris who had a farm in Zonhoven (Limburg). A few weeks later, after the situation had quieted down and the danger to his family seemed to be over, Regina returned to the home of Joseph Celis and his daughters.
One day, two strangers, a man and a woman appeared at the front door of Father Louis's home. They turned out to be Jews who had jumped from a train that was on its way to Germany. Louis Celis took them in despite the great danger. The Germans, on the lookout for escaped prisoners, had encircled the village and were searched every house. The Jewish couple wanted to leave, but the priest would not let them go. In order to keep up that pretense of normalcy, Wolfgang and Sigmund were strolling in the garden as if nothing unusual was happening. The ruse worked. The Germans came to the front steps of Celis’s house but did not enter. After a week the Jewish couple left for another location. Again, Father Celis begged them not to go, but they insisted. A year later, it was learned that they were caught and killed
On May 3, 1944, Regina Rotenberg was denounced and arrested in the home of Joseph Celis. It was the same policeman who had arrested her parents eighteen months earlier, who came for her. She was deported to Auschwitz, where her parents Moszek and Tena had perished. She survived the camp and returned after the war. The same day Regina was taken, Father Hubert was arrested for the second time, but again managed to talk himself out of trouble.
After the war the Rotenberg children immigrated to the USA, but maintained close contact with the Celis family. It was Father Hubert Celis who led Regina to the canopy when she got married. With their parents gone, Father Celis, the last person who had seen the Rotenbergs before their arrest and the person who assumed responsibility for the chindren's survival, became the closest family of the four siblings.
Regina Rotenberg-Wolbrom who was saved by the Celis family filled out Pages of Testimony for her parents, Moszek & Tena Rotenberg, who perished in the Holocaust.
On March 25, 1980, Yad Vashem awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations to the members of the Celis family and to the others who were involved in the rescue of the four Rotenberg children: Joseph Celis, his daughters Bona and Lucy Celis, his two sons, the priests Hubert and Louis Celis, as well as Marie Louise Tabruyn, Father Louis Celis’ housekeeper, Alfons & Clementina Maris and Baron Raymond & Baroness Marcelle de Tornaco.