Rita Oppenheimer Gelman papers

The collection documents the Holocaust-era experiences of Rita Oppenheimer Gelman, originally of Berlin, Germany, including her flight from Germany to Palestine in 1940. Included are postcards, photographs, and a small amount of documents. The postcards are primarily received by Rita’s maternal uncle Arno Lewenberg, who survived the Holocaust in Davos, Switzerland, from family members in Berlin. One postcard received from Jules Malinowski references Jules’s brother Adolf in Buchenwald. There are also two postcards sent by Klara and Moses Oppenheimer from Theresienstadt to Rosette Kahn in Basel, Switzerland in 1943. Photographs consist of depictions of the extended Oppenheimer and Lowenberg families. There are also depictions of Rita as a child and woman in Berlin and Palestine. Documents consist of a handwritten note, a birth announcement for Rita, and a document declaring Rita has been released from the Athlit detention camp in Palestine. “The Odyssey of My Aliyah”, a personal narrative from Rita describing her emigration from Germany to Palestine in 1940, is also available as a supplementary document. Rita Regina Oppenheimer Gelman (1921-2006) was born Rita Regina Oppenheimer on 19 April 1921 in Berlin, Germany to Sally Wilhelm Oppenheimer (1886-1943) and Lotte Salome Oppenheimer (née Lewenberg, 1894-1943). She had two siblings: Norbert Nathan (Johnny, b. 1923) and Ernst David Leopold (b. 1925). Her father worked as a manager at the Dipaka department store. Rita worked as an administrative assistant and bookkeeper for the Rosenblatt family, who owned several rental properties in Berlin. After the Rosenblatt family fled Berlin, Rita’s parents sent her to Hachshara so she could learn agriculture and farming in preparation for immigration to Palestine to work on a kibbutz. On 16 August 1940 Rita left her parents in Berlin to travel to Romania to board one of three ships chartered by the Central Office for Jewish Emigration to take Jewish refugees to Palestine. After the ships were intercepted by the British Royal Navy and escorted to Haifa, passengers, including Rita, were transferred to the SS Patria. The SS Patria was going to take the refugees to Mauritius, but on 25 November 1940 the ship was bombed by the Haganah Zionist organization in an attempt to abort the deportation. Rita survived the bombing and was taken to the Atlit detainee camp. She remained in the camp for 11 months and then was released to Bet Havra’ah, a convalescent facility where she could recover from typhus, dysentery, and pleurisy. She remained there for three months and then took a bus from Haifa to Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi. In 1942 she married Yerachmiel Gelman (b. circa 1914-1989), who was driving the bus that took her to the kibbutz. Rita and Yerachmiel had four children. Both of Rita’s parents were deported to Auschwitz on 3 February 1943 where they perished. Her brother Norbert fled to Sweden by 1940 and her younger brother Ernst survived in Palestine. Her husband Yerachmiel’s parents, Mordechai and Chana Gelman, both perished in the Holocaust.