Josef Rosenstingl

“My dear boy! This is probably the last time I will write to you for the foresee-able future. In 4 days I will have to return by order of the authorities here. Isn’t it strange: Last year on your birthday I was taken, and today on Mama’s birthday I received my notice of expulsion.” These are the opening lines of a moving letter that Josef Rosenstingl wrote to his son Alfred from Genoa on 21 October 1939. They had fled together with other Jews to Italy on 14 June 1939, but Josef was not able to get the neces­ sary visa for a country of refuge. By contrast, Alfred managed to escape to the United Kingdom with the help of the Quakers, where he enlisted, now under his new name Alfred Ratcliffe, with the Highland Light Infantry to “look the enemy in the eye”, as he put it in an interview in 1996. In 1947, he returned to St. Pölten. Josef Rosenstingl was born on 16 February 1881. His mother Katharina Rosen­ stingl (1856 Lackenbach – 1918 St. Pölten) raised him, his sister Johanna, and another daughter called Leopoldine, as an unmarried woman. Josef ran a small general store in Herzogenburger Straße 31. In April 1920, he formally left the Jewish community, presumably due to his marriage with Maria Jany, a non­Jew, yet returned to the community in June 1938 after the Nazi assump­ tion of power. His son Alfred was born on 10 November 1920 – meaning that his father, as he stated in his letter, had been arrested on his birthday during the November Pogrom. Alfred later recalled a materially very modest, but “genuinely quite pleasant childhood”. The store was already liquidated in April 1938 and thus the family lost its means of subsistence. Josef Rosenstingl was released from prison after just two days. He was able to live for a few months free of charge in the depot of the Jewish merchant Julius Körner in Kremser Landstraße 57. After being forced to relocate to Vienna, his first place of residence was in Novaragasse 41 in the second district. After the “Nuremberg race laws” only “Mischlinge” (people of mixed blood) of the first and second degree respectively, Josef and Alfred also engaged in socialist activities, including the illegal printing of fliers and the delivery of banned newspapers. They were thus in danger on two counts. On 14 June 1939, they escaped to Milan together with a group of altogether eight Jews, including Hermann and Rudolf Gelb from Ratzersdorf (today St. Pölten) and Leopold Tichler (or Tüchler) from Wilhelmsburg, which was to save all of their lives except that of Josef Rosenstingl. Following his expulsion mentioned in the above­cited letter, he had to return to Vienna that October and was as­ signed to a collective apartment in Rotensterngasse 31/12 in Vienna’s second district. As he informed his son in numerous letters, he was able to get by with small odd jobs and the support of his wife, who would visit him for days at a time. However, in his letters to his sister Johanna, who probably fled to Croatia, he wrote of his great loneliness and despair, the pain of separation, and the tortuous nights due to his rheumatism. On 22 August 1941, Josef wrote to his son: “My dear boy! The day after tomor­ row it will be two years since we said goodbye. I can still feel your warm cheek as I kissed you goodbye. We obviously did not think that this farewell would last for years. Yet I am grateful to God that he kept you safe thus far and I hope that this will continue to be the case. You are a brave boy and you will overcome this difficult time. Stay good and decent towards your fellow human beings until God grants us the joy of seeing each other again.” On 3 December 1941, Josef Rosenstingl was deported to Riga. Of the 20,000 people interned in this ghetto, only about 800 survived, including 100 from Austria. Josef’s date of death is unknown. Alfred only discovered in 1996 when and where his father had been deported.