World War II – UNC Asheville Archives

Remembering the Holocaust Part 3: John Rosenthal’s Story

In honor of Yom Hashoah, the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day, as well as the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, we are continuing our Remembering the Holocaust project. This project pulls from two different collections at Ramsey Library Special Collections, Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains and The Sharon Fahrer Holocaust Collection, to explore, honor, and celebrate Holocaust survivors. This is the third installment in the series. John Rosenthal was a young boy from Cologne, Germany when the Nazis took over. John had a long journey before he and his family finally came to the United States, where they finally found a home.

A Tumultuous Journey

John Rosenthal’s Story

Rosenthal Family, Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains, D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville.

Individuals experienced the Holocaust differently. For Frederick John Rosenthal, a young boy from Cologne, Germany, it began with being sent off to Holland. John’s parents, recognizing the growing tensions in 1933 with Hitler’s rise to power, thought it would be best to send John and his brother, Max Adolph, somewhere they would be safer. John and Max’s move to Holland was the first of many moves within the span of a couple of years. Because of constantly moving—much of which was to other countries—John’s education was interrupted. At times learning was extremely difficult due to language barriers.

John recalled one place, Landschulheim Herrlingen, in particular as extremely pleasant. Landschulheim Herrlingen was Jewish boarding school in southern Germany near Ulm. Located in the countryside, not far from what would later be the home of German General Erwin Rommel, Herrlingen provided John and his brother with a “beautiful education” that included music and crafts. However, Herrlingen was also short lived for John. One day, while jogging through the woods, John started limping and fell behind the others. It was discovered that John had contracted Polio and had to return home to Cologne. Back in Cologne John was given all sorts of treatments, from hydrotherapy to electroshock, and had to take two aspirins every night before bed just so he would withstand the pain enough to sleep. What helped the most, John remembered, is his father rubbing his thighs with extract of “bee poison” every night, which “had the effect of increasing blood circulation.” By this time things were tough for Jews in Germany. Jews could no longer attend German public school, go to the movies or opera, or even sit on park benches. “Everywhere you went and looked there were signs, ‘Juden unerwuenscht,’ or ‘Jews not wanted here.’” John also recalled kids chasing after him and throwing stones at him, yelling “Jud, Jud.”

Jewish School in Ulm, Germany, Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains, D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville.

As things continued to worsen, the Rosenthals began to consider emigrating. They looked to friends in England and the United States for help. John’s father had to sell his business before they could leave. The buyer ended up being a former employee and friend of the Rosenthals who had joined the Nazi party. She bought the business for only 1/3 it’s actual worth. In the meantime, things were rapidly deteriorating for Jews. Daily life included things such as open trucks “filled with Nazi brown shirts, driving through the streets singing their Nazi songs, ‘When Jewish blood spurts from the knife, things go twice as well.’” Then came Kristallnacht.

On the morning of Kristallnacht, John’s father had left to go to the police headquarters to pick up their passports so they could leave for America. After being warned by friends about what was happening, he quickly returned home, gathered up his family and some provisions, and the Rosenthals hid for three days in the top story of their apartment building, among the washers and dryers. The Rosenthals all survived, although the Jewish high school and their synagogue did not.

Frederick John Rosenthal’s Passport, Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains, D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville.

The Rosenthals were finally able to leave Germany—though not before they paid part of the Judenbusse, the penalty Jews were required to pay for a murder of a German diplomat by a Polish Jew, which was the official reason for Kristallnacht—so they headed to Switzerland before continuing to the United States. The elder Rosenthals had thought ahead and sent much of John’s mother’s jewelry and handmade dresses out of the country. These would provide them with a source of income once they were free from Germany.

The United States was a time of acclimation for John, who had to learn a new way of speaking and dressing. “…the English I learned was the King’s English and of course I was made fun of in school. Also, I wore short pants, which also were made fun of, so the two quickest acclimatizations were dropping the King’s English and dropping the pants to full length.” John’s parents continued moving the family around until John’s mother’s business was finally reestablished in New York City, where it became quite successful and included customers such as Saks Fifth Avenue, B. Altman, and Henri Bendel, and more. John helped out with the business by taking charge of all the incoming and outgoing correspondence. The United States was also where John received his first degree through a business school in New York.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, John was drafted into the United States Army where he was sent to the University of Minnesota as part of an Army Specialized Training Program. It was on his journey to Minnesota that John stopped off in Asheville, where he later returned to live.

John had a long, tumultuous journey before he and his family finally found a home. He is a reminder of the great lengths to which parents would go to keep their children safe, even though “safe” was a hard place to find during these trying times. The elder Rosenthals used every mean with in their capabilities to rescue their family from a terrible fate that many others were not fortunate enough to escape. Despite difficulties John faced, and perhaps even in defiance of the abuses John and his family experienced at the hands of the Nazis, they did finally find a safe place to call home.

John’s story is part of the Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains collection at D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, located at the University of North Carolina Asheville. This collection is a compilation of oral histories of Holocausts survivors. For more information on John and other survivors’ stories, visit Ramsey Library Special Collection’s online finding aid.

If you are interested in exploring more Holocaust survivor history, please see our newly processed collection, the Sharon Fahrer Holocaust Collection.

-Kristen Byrne

Remembering the Holocaust Part 1: Hilde Hoffman’s Story

We are pleased to feature a series of blog posts in honor of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls on Tuesday, April 21 this year. The posts were written and researched by Kristen Byrnes, an alum of the UNC Asheville History Department who is currently enrolled in UNC Greensboro’s Master of Library and Information Studies program. Kristen did this work as part of her practicum through UNCG’s MLIS program, working with several collections from UNCA’s Jewish Life in Western North Carolina Collections to illustrate the impact of the Holocaust on individuals. This first of four posts tells the story of Hilde Hoffman. Kristen’s posts will come out each week during April.

– Gene Hyde, Head of Special Collections.

This year’s Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, is particularly special as this year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. In honor of this event, we will be celebrating our local Jewish community with a series of posts that highlight Holocaust survivors in Western North Carolina. These posts will pull from two incredible collections at are housed at Special Collections: Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains and the Sharon Fahrer Holocaust Collection, a new addition to our repository. Please enjoy the first installment of our Remembering the Holocaust series as we learn about Hilde Hoffman’s story.

Prejudice: A Learned Behavior:

Hilde Hoffman’s Story

Hilde Hoffman with lion cub, Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains, D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville.

At first, the rise of the Nazis wasn’t particularly alarming, Hilde remembers. “I just heard the marching of big armies of people, marching and demonstrating and singing and the running around with flags and in the beginning, it seemed like just a very patriotic behavior after the war and no personal fear was felt. It wasn’t until… the end of 1934 when new rules were made.” These rules—which would change how Jews related and interacted with the rest of society—were even felt, though not always understood, by children.

From a young age Hilde knew she was Jewish, but that was the only difference she could see between herself and Lottie, her best friend who was not Jewish. Hilde and Lottie’s friendship continued during the rise of the Nazi party. The Nazis began to inject segregation into Germany’s school systems, prohibiting Jewish children from playing with their classmates at recess. They were made to eat lunch separately as well. Hilde remembers this isolation as absolutely devastating. Eventually, non-Jewish people were no longer allowed to interact with Jews. Despite this rule, Lottie’s aunts—at great risk to themselves—insisted Hilde accompany the aunts and Lottie on a vacation under the guise that Hilde was just another one of their nieces. This was the summer of 1934. This, Hilde says, show that “sincere friends are willing to take tremendous chances.” Hilde took a chance herself when she snuck into the church to see Lottie’s confirmation, an act that was absolutely forbidden. Hilde later received a photograph in the mail of Lottie in her white confirmation dress. Lottie’s confirmation in the Spring of 1935 would be the last time Hilde ever saw her.

“Prejudice is something we learn. We either learn it by seeing it from our elders, or it is taught in some schools, maybe, and we have to be careful that we don’t indulge in that because it’s going to poison our outlook in life and it limits our abilities…”

She also remembers witnessing segregation in larger society as Jews were prohibited visiting public places such as the theater, concerts, even the zoo. This was another shattering blow to Hilde, who had long loved the zoo. Since Hilde visited the zoo multiple times a week, she was familiar with all the zookeepers. She recalls the birth of a lion cub who was rejected by its mother. The zookeeper took this cub and placed it with his dachshund who had just given birth to puppies. The dachshund nursed the lion cub for a few weeks until the cub grew too large and the keepers began to bottle feed it. Throughout this time, Hilde visited the zoo often and knew of the lion cub’s progression. On the last day Jews were allowed to visit the zoo, Hilde’s father took her one last time. The zookeeper, seeing Hilde crying said, “if you father has a camera with him, why don’t you have your picture taken with your lion cub because then you’ll always remember.” Hilde sat on a bench with the cub, talked to him, and had her photo take with him.

Hilde with Lottie and Lottie’s aunts, Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains, D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville.

Hilde’s message for us is a call to educate ourselves. “You live in a free country, this is probably the best country in the whole world […] At one time Germany was a beautiful country, Russia was a more or less beautiful country, look what happened to all these countries because people didn’t care enough to maintain their society at a certain level of broadmindedness […] Try to get to know as many people as you can of as many different religions, of as many different nationalities or if you can travel you see them in their own country, which is even more educational. And after a while you will understand that doing this, you’re not losing a thing of your own identity, but you’re enriched by the things that you can learn from other people and that they can learn from you. And most of all, prejudice isn’t born in nobody. No baby ever that I’ve met and I’ve met a lot of babies, has shown any kind of prejudice. So prejudice is something we learn. We either learn it by seeing it from our elders, or it is taught in some schools, maybe, and we have to be careful that we don’t indulge in that because it’s going to poison our outlook in life and it limits our abilities and I think it takes away some of our happiness.”

Hilde’s story is part of the Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains collection at D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, located at the University of North Carolina Asheville. This collection is a compilation of oral histories of Holocausts survivors. For more information on Hilde and other survivors’ stories, visit Ramsey Library Special Collection’s online finding aid.

For Hilde’s full interview, please see the video below.

– Kristen Byrnes

Women at the Forefront: The American Association of University Women

“We are living through one of those rare moments in history when profound changes are being made in our social and economic order… University women should be the leaders in reviewing old laws and testing them… We should be familiar with proposed laws and assist our community in understanding their full significance.”
Legislative Chairman, Miss Harriet Elliott, September 25, 1935

Delegates at the International Fellowship of University Women in Toronto Canada, August 13, 1947; American Association of University Women, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville, 28804.

On November 28, 1881, with light snow falling in the chill air, 17 college graduates from eight colleges met in Boston to discuss the need for an organization related to higher education. At this point in history a plethora of college groups and societies related to higher education existed- the honor society Phi Theta Kappa was founded more than a century prior to when this meeting occurred. So why the need for another college organization? What was so interesting about this particular group of people who were meeting to discuss it?

They were all women.

The group was led by Marion Talbot and Ellen Richards, and their goal was to increase higher education opportunities for women through the formation of an organization devoted to women scholars. They would name their organization The Association of Collegiate Alumnae. By January 14, 1882, the organization was formally established and they would release their first research report establishing that women’s health was not adversely affected by attending college- a rather novel idea at the time.

*Pamphlet from the Toronto Delegation, American Association of University Women, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville, 28804.*

The Association of Collegiate Alumnae would go on to release several additional reports- a gender-based salary study in 1907, followed by a report presenting evidence that women during this time period were paid 78 percent of what men similarly employed were earning. By 1921 the Association moved into its new headquarters in Washington D.C., a mere two blocks from the White House, and continued to remain active in current events affecting women.

Later that same year, the Southern Association of College Women formally merged with the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, creating the American Association of University Women, or the AAUW. Today the AAUW is a non-partisan, non-profit organization whose members promote equity for women and girls through education, research, and advocacy. The AAUW comprises over 170,000 members, with over 1,000 local branches and 800 participating college and university members.

Closer to home, the Asheville Branch of the American Association of University Women has a similar and equally storied history. Founded in 1915 by sixteen female college graduates, this branch of the AAUW is the fourth oldest branch in North Carolina. These women organized the Western North Carolina Branch of the Southern Association of College Women, which merged with the AAUW in 1921.

*North Carolina Bulletin, American Association of University Women, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville, 28804.*

The North Carolina Branch of the AAUW tackled community projects from the outset, including assisting with the Salvation Army and visiting patients in local sanitariums. Women’s education remained at the forefront though, and members established night schools and helped set up the public library. The membership rolls of this local branch of the AAUW contains an abundance of Asheville women who were instrumental in making significant inroads for women and girls in Western North Carolina.

*Achievement List,* *American Association of University Women, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville, 28804.*

Indeed, the Asheville AAUW’s History in the area showcases various projects through the decades, from helping set up a juvenile court system to aiding refugees of World War II with their Refugee Shop. The Shop netted over $20,000 in its first year and was so successful that it continued to operate for thirty more years. The Refugee Shop did not go unnoticed on a national level either- the Asheville Branch of the AAUW received the US Treasury Award for the Shop in 1943.

The AAUW Chapter of North Carolina boasts many impressive achievements throughout it’s history, including their Women in History project, which provided local elementary schools’ fifth grade classes with a viewpoint of History from a woman’s perspective. In 2002, the branch inaugurated their GEM Fund- Gaining Educational Momentum, a 501 (c)3 non-profit endowment for local scholarships for women whose education was interrupted or postponed. They have awarded over $160,000 in scholarships to date, in order to help women achieve their educational, employment, and research goals.

*GEM Brochure, American Association of University Women, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville, 28804.*

The Asheville Chapter of the AAUW continues to grow and maintain their ongoing commitment to AAUW’s mission. Here at UNC Asheville’s Ramsey Library Special Collections, we are honored to hold their archives and consider their collection an instrumental addition to part of our mission of documenting and preserving the significant achievements women have made in Buncombe County and Western North Carolina.

*Certificate of Achievement, American Association of University Women, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville, 28804.*

Today marks UNC Asheville’s Fall 2019 Commencement for its winter graduates, and it is collections like the American Association of University Women which remind us that education is, and should remain, a pathway to a brighter future for all that wish to seek it.

On that note, we would like to wish our graduates “Good Luck!” today and always, as well as a very Happy Holiday to all of you from Special Collections! We will see you all in the New Year!

Bibliography

American Association of University Women, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina Asheville, 28804.

https://www.aauwnc.org/

asheville-nc.aauw.net

www.newspapers.com, The Boston Globe

Bluets – A Literary Magazine

A directive by Virginia Bryan for students in her literature class at Buncombe County Junior College to write their own philosophies in verse, prose, play, or editorial, resulted in two creations that are still evident at UNC Asheville today. The first was a Creative Writing course being added to the curriculum, the second was a literary magazine to publish the students’ work.

Bluets, was first published, we believe, in the spring of 1929, and initially contained mostly poetry. Indeed, its name, which had been chosen in a contest, came from a poem by John Charles McNeill, that was included on the flyleaf of early editions. Writing in 1977, Virginia Bryan recalled how the first edition was produced with “much encouragement and no money,” and that students “secured a few ads to pay for early publications.” In the first edition, these ads were for a life insurance company, three cafes, a Chinese restaurant, and a shirt shop.

The content soon expanded beyond poetry to include editorial comment, stories, book reviews, biographical sketches, articles about local places (e.g. Biltmore Estate, and Grove Park Inn), and interviews by the students with people such as Thomas Wolfe’s sister, and the wife of O. Henry.

Although initially described as a “Literary Magazine”, in 1935, Bluets began to be described as, “A Literary Magazine Dedicated to the Expression of Progressive Undergraduate Opinion,” probably to reflect the expanded content.

Until 1944, the cover art of each edition was different, with designs often being developed from ideas in the Creative Writing class.

Editions published during World War II included tributes to students killed in action, and, not surprisingly, wartime articles generally took on a more somber tone.

Bluets May 1942 — Editorial. Bluets, May 1942

In Memoriam, 1944 — Former Students and an Instructor are Remembered, Bluets, January 1944

Any student at the college could submit work for inclusion, and the editorial board would decide which to accept or reject.

Many of the students who had work published, would go on to make a name for themselves after leaving college, and not always in the field of literature. For example, the first edition of Bluets included work by Gordon Greenwood who, among many other civic contributions, served in the NC House and on the board of UNC Asheville. Another contributor was Dorothy Post, who provided works to the magazine and served as Associate Editor in the mid-1930s. She subsequently trained as a pilot and was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during WWII. Post later wrote several books, and other Bluets literary alums include Gertrude Ramsey, who became society editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times, and writer John Ehle Jr., whose poetry and prose was published in Bluets in 1944.

Ehle was awarded an honorary degree by UNC Asheville in 1987. Appropriately, that same year, Virginia Bryan Schreiber also received an honorary degree. Ten years later, in 1997, an honorary degree was awarded to, arguably, the locally best known Bluets author, Wilma Dykeman Stokely.

Wilma Dykeman, 1937 — From Bluets, January 1937

During 1937 and 1938, Wilma Dykeman wrote poetry and prose for Bluets, and served as co-editor. After graduating from Asheville-Biltmore College, she went on to write radio scripts, short stories, magazine articles, and books, including The French Broad and The Tall Woman. In 1985, she received the North Carolina Award for Literature, an award that, in 1972, had also been bestowed on John Ehle.

With such talented contributors, it is no wonder that Bluets won many awards, including numerous first place certificates from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.

The last copy of Bluets in the archives is dated fall 1962. In The University of North Carolina at Asheville: The First Sixty Years, William Highsmith wrote that “the faculty had decided to discontinue [Bluets] because of its junior college overtones” and, “in May 1967, the first copy of Images was published.” The latter comment seems incorrect however, as there are materials in the archives that indicate Images was first published in the spring of 1964.

Images was described as “The Fine Arts Magazine of Asheville-Biltmore College,” and combined artwork with poetry and short stories. It was published until the late 1970s, (The archives has copies up to 1977), before being followed by several short-lived publications, such as Fury, The Seventh Veil, and Alchemy of the Muse.

Since the late 1990s, Headwaters has been the creative arts magazine of UNC Asheville, and it is published annually.

Colin Reeve, Special Collections