Paul (Pinchas) Rosner

Biography

(NC) The family initially lived in Frankfurt, where Rosner studied at the Philanthropin Gymnasium. After the Nazi rise to power and the decline of the family business, in June 1934, the family was displaced to Saarbrücken, in the Saar region. There they suffered from severe financial hardship and received assistance from relief insti-tutions. Rosner attended a Jewish school, founded to address the education of Jewish children who had just arrived in the city. Later it also served Jewish children born in Saarbrücken. Due to the small number of students, children from three grades studied together in one class.
In order to prepare him for his eventual move to Palestine, Rosner’s parents sent him to Berlin in 1937. There he studied at the Jugend-Alijah-Schule (youth-aliyah school), on Oranienburgerstraße in the Mitte district, and lived at the Maccabi youth movement’s Beth-Chalutz. Rosner stayed in Berlin from April 1937 to April 1938, returned for a brief period to Saarbrücken,28 before emigrating with other boys and girls from the Beth-Chalutz29 to Palestine in June 1938, and settling in Kwuzat Geva in the Jezreel valley.30
His group belonged to a larger faction of immigrants from the Maccabi movement who arrived around the same time, and moved into settlements in the Jezreel Valley at Geva, Kfar Yehezkel, and Ginegar.31 From his arrival until 1940, Rosner worked in agriculture, and then as a laborer in Kfar Hachoresh. For a brief period, he enlisted in the police in 1942, before joining the British Army, in which he served until 1946. After the completion of his service, he began working as a clerk in a book-store. Shortly thereafter he was recruited into an underground movement that later merged with the Israeli army, where he served as a soldier until 1949.32 Rosner married Shulamit, and the couple lived in Haifa. The couple had no children. Paul died in 1995, followed by Shulamit in 1997.