Rosette Goldstein
Holocaust Survivor
I remember everything.
Although I was born in France, my family’s story began long before that, in Poland. Both my mother’s and father’s families came from the city of Łódź, and in 1926, they moved to Berlin in search of better opportunities and safety.
As the shadow of anti-Semitism spread across Germany, my father made the difficult decision to leave Berlin. In 1935, he moved to France and joined the French army, hoping to build a better future.
Two years later, in 1937, my mother joined him in Paris, and they were married. I was born there the following year, in 1938, in a modest building where our family was the only Jewish one.
My father, David Adler, served in the French army for a time but was later dismissed solely because he was Jewish. After the German invasion of France, he volunteered to work as a lumberjack in a government-run factory in the countryside, believing that the job would help protect him, my mother, and me.
At that time, my mother and I stayed in Paris, gradually feeling the full weight of the Nazi occupation. We hardly left our home, were forbidden from riding bicycles or owning a radio, and could only travel in the last car of the subway. We were also forced to buy the yellow star badge and wear it everywhere – a bitter humiliation made worse by the fact that we had to pay for it ourselves. We were literally spending our own money to be shamed and humiliated. As the situation for Jews in France worsened, my parents grew increasingly worried.
They decided to find a safe place for me. It was decided that I would go live with the Martin family, in a village not far from the labor camp where my father worked. At the age of four, I boarded a train from Paris with our neighbor, Mr. George Raffa, who escorted me to the Martins. My mother told me I was going to see my father and warned me not to speak to strangers. I traveled without the yellow star badge, and she instructed me to say I was traveling with my father if anyone asked. I was terrified of the German soldiers at the station and only wanted to reach my father as quickly as possible.
After a long and tiring journey, we finally arrived at the Martin family farm under the cover of night. My father was there, waiting for me, we had supper and later on with a heavy heart, he returned to the labor camp
The Martin family was wonderful. The parents, Albert and Juliette, and their three daughters – Simone, Denise, and Odile – welcomed me warmly, cared for me as if I were one of their own, and never hesitated to risk their lives to hide a Jewish girl. Looking back now, I ask myself whether I would have been capable of such courage, and the answer is clear: I would have done it without hesitation, because I know the immense value of saving a life.
I lived with the Martin family for three and a half years, during which I experienced three miracles:
The first miracle came the day a green truck carrying German soldiers arrived at the farm. Juliette quickly hid me under a mattress. Fortunately, the soldiers were only searching for food, and once they had what they wanted, they left. It was a moment of unimaginable fear; I remember holding my breath and not daring to move as long as they were inside.
The second miracle occurred when Odile, one of the daughters, spotted an unfamiliar truck approaching the farm. We immediately knew we had to hide. We climbed into the granary and stayed quietly until the truck drove away, finally able to breathe again.
The third and most difficult miracle involved my father and mother. Out of nowhere, my mother appeared at the farm – I still don’t know how she got there. My father, who had known of her arrival, came to the farm and stayed the night. The next morning, as he went to work in the forest, French and German soldiers suddenly appeared. ‘Where is David Adler?’ they demanded.
Mr. Martin quickly answered, ‘He went to the forest to work.’
‘If he is not back at the camp in one hour, we will return and take all of you,’ the soldiers warned. Mr. Martin ran to the forest to tell my father. Upon hearing this, my father immediately returned to the camp, saving not only my life and my mother’s, but the lives of the Martin family as well. Fortunately, the soldiers never came back, and we were all spared.
Later, my mother disappeared from the farm, and I would not see her again until the end of the war. But there was a punishment for me and my father as a result of this visit – the removal of our French citizenship.
Every night, I waited by the path leading to the farm, listening for the whistle of my father’s bicycle as he came to visit. But one night, the whistle didn’t come. Mr. Martin told me that my father had been taken in a truck to the Drancy camp, where he was held for several weeks before being sent to Auschwitz. Because of his strength and physique, he was chosen for work and later transferred to Buchenwald and then to the Langenstein-Zwieberge labor camp, where prisoners were forced to dig tunnels for a factory producing airplanes and V2 rockets under horrendous conditions. Tragically, my father did not survive the horrors of the camp. Slowly worn down by starvation, exhaustion, and cruelty, he was slowly murdered by the unbearable conditions around him. He died on April 6, 1945 – just five days before the camp was finally liberated by the American army on April 11.
And then – the war was over.
My mother, who had survived in Paris, came to pick me up one day. We hitchhiked back to Paris with American soldiers, and I still remember the taste of the Hershey chocolate bar they gave me – a taste of freedom. Back in Paris, my mother didn’t know what to do with me. She was still trying to recover from the war herself, so she sent me to a Jewish orphanage for six months, then to a convent. When I fell ill, she turned to the Martin family and asked if they would take me back. In a further act of kindness, they opened their home to me again, and I lived with them until 1948.
A year later, my mother sent me to live with my aunt in New York, marking the beginning of the American chapter of my life – a kind of rebirth. She joined us two years afterward.
My father, David Adler, was one of 76,000 humans crammed into railcars by the French National Railways company and sent to concentration camps in Eastern Europe – Jews, Romani, and homosexuals alike. All my life, I have fought for justice for him and for the tens of thousands who were sent to their deaths. I became one of the leading voices in the United States, challenging the French National Railways company, which profited from transporting prisoners by charging per person, per kilometer. I joined protests, met with members of Congress and senators, and appeared in the media, demanding the justice that these victims and their families deserved.
The struggle lasted more than ten years. We never achieved full justice, but the French National Railways company officially expressed regret and paid compensation to some of the survivors and their families. For me, the fight ended on a bittersweet note. Perhaps we did not secure complete justice, and not everyone received the compensation they were owed – but for many survivors, this money mattered. It helped them in their late years, offering support and acknowledgment of their suffering.
I did it not for myself – but for them, for all survivors, and for the justice my father and others could no longer ask for themselves.