Beatrice Rose

Beatrice Steinberg was born as Beate Rose on April 12, 1927 in Paderborn. As the daughter of the married couple Albert Rose and Erna Rose, née Stein, she grew up in Friedrichstraße 41. At that time, only Albert, Erna and Beate Rose lived on this street, as the older siblings had all moved out and away. The Rose family had already been living in Paderborn for over 250 years. Albert Rose worked as a lawyer and since 1920 also as a notary in Paderborn. He was a well-known lawyer and head of the synagogue community as well as the Jewish orphanage. In her memoirs, which she wrote at the age of 70 in 1997 in Portola Valley in California,  Beate Rose, later Beatrice Steinberg, reported that her two grandmothers also lived with them. Other relatives were also not far away. Even in her old age, Beatrice Steinberg remembered above all the traditional lighting of lights on Hanukkah in her parents' dining room as well as the singing of Channuka songs such as "Maoz tzur y'shu-a-ti" (מעוז צור ישועת). But she also remembered other Jewish holidays, such as Passover or Yom Kippur, fondly, having spent so many hours of her childhood with her devout mother in the Paderborn synagogue. 

From 1933, Beate Rose, the youngest of four siblings, attended the Catholic girls' school, the Oberlyzeum and the Studienanstalt St. Michael der Chorfrauen des heiligen Augustinus in Paderborn. At the age of 70, she still remembered the evening before her first day at school at the "Michaelsschule": "[...] I was invited into Papa's office. [...] My father talked of what was expected of me [...]: to be honorable, decent, kind, mannerly and to work hard in school. And finally he reached down behind his desk and brought up a most beautiful 'Zuckertüte', [...] containing all kinds of good things: a red wooden pen and nibs to fit onto its end, a pencil and eraser in a beautiful box, a ruler and - most important - lots of candy, fruit and nuts. I also received a leather 'Ranzen' [...]." At the same time as her schooling, Beate began piano lessons on her mother's parental Bechstein piano, and even at an advanced age she remembered works by Schubert and many others. 
Swimming and cycling were great fun for Rose, especially her bicycle as well as her roller skates quickly grew on her. In a certificate issued by the principal of the Private Elementary School of the Jewish Orphanage on February 21, 1939, Beate Rose was described as a "physically and mentally healthy child" with a "fresh[ly], natural[ly] nature with a strong inclination toward sports." 

As was the case for all German Jews, Beate Rose and her family were gradually discriminated against and ostracized on the basis of their Jewish origins with the rise of the National Socialists from 1933 onwards. In the course of the legal restrictions for Jews throughout the German Reich, Beate Rose had to attend the elementary school of the Jewish Orphanage in Paderborn from 1938. Her father Dr. Albert Rose, a well-known and respected notary and lawyer in Paderborn at the time, was banned from practicing law. While she had previously enjoyed meeting friends or playing the piano, this was only possible to a limited extent or not at all as early as 1937. The prohibitions on the ownership of instruments for Jews, as well as the prohibition on Christian children playing with their Jewish friends, also severely restricted Rose's life. In the copy of her birth certificate, which was subsequently issued in 1939, the following was recorded as late as January 1939: "Beate Rose, who is named in addition, has assumed the additional first name 'Sara' by declaration of December 27, 1938. Paderborn, January 20, 1939. the registrar. Breitenstein."

At the age of only eleven, Beate Rose experienced the November pogroms of 1938 in her hometown of Paderborn. She described it vividly: "We are headed down the stairs. On the way my mother is trying to negotiate: 'Leave the child, please please please!' [...] 'No please, Mama. I want to go with you. If you have to die, I want to die with you.' We are prodded down the street by the men, past the prison, to the center of town past the cathedral in the freezing night. It must be about 2 a.m. Mama is wearing three layers of outdoor clothes. She is sure we will be deported to Poland where it is even colder than in Paderborn." Beate and her mother Erna spent this night, like so many Jews from Paderborn, in the prison on Königstraße in Paderborn. In the course of the November pogroms in 1938, the police arrested 42 Jewish people from Paderborn, who were then deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, as was Albert Rose, who was later released. Beate Rose then described her childlike perception of the National Socialists in her memoirs thus: "To me, as a child of about 11, they were the men in brown [...] they marched singing almost daily down the Friedrichstrasse. I remember only the first few lines of one of their songs, composed by Horst Wessel..."

Thanks to her father's involvement with the "Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland," Beate Rose, then 12 years old, left for England on July 20, 1939, on a so-called "Kindertransport" and stayed with various families there. In her memoirs at the age of 70, she described saying goodbye to her mother:
. "On July 20, 1939 my mother took me to the train to catch what turned out to be the last children's transport to England. [...] I was so excited that I rushed up the steps of the railway carriage without even kissing my mother good-bye. She called me back, we hugged and kissed, I entered the train, went to the window, and we waved to each other. That was the last time I saw her. I was 12, she was 50 years old. Her husband and four children had all escaped, and she was left alone in Nazi Germany." Beate Rose's mother, Erna, née Stein wanted to follow her husband and children to England when it was already too late. She was evicted from her home, Friedrichstraße 41, and was forcibly transferred to a house at Grunigerstraße 3 in Paderborn, where many Jewish people were already crowded together. She was deported to Warsaw on March 30, 1942, and was subsequently declared dead in 1948, with the date of death set at May 9, 1945, for lack of information about the actual date of death.

The first family Beate Rose stayed with was that of Percival and Miriam Wenzel. She began her schooling at St. Barnabas Secondary Girls' School in Woodford Green, but the war also began in England and the students were evacuated to the countryside. At the age of 14, compulsory education and free tuition in England ended. But Beate Rose was dependent on the financial help of others. At the same time, a hope always accompanied her: "Deep in my heart i always hoped that eventually we would all be reunited with my mother in our old home."  Meanwhile, her mother's cousin, Richard Schlesinger, covered the cost of tuition at Pitman's College. Working on the side, Rose said, "I was tremendously fortunate to be able to work for R.A. Peddie, an internationally known bibliographer who was part owner of and worked in an antiquarian bookshop on Great Russell Street at Museum Street, directly across from the British Museum."
Her old friend from Paderborn, Ellen Stern, helped her get various jobs in the import and export firm where she herself worked, which was in Knightsbridge off Sloane Street on Pont St. They became friends with many young people who were at the International Youth Center nearby. On May 12, a month after her 18th birthday, Beate left Woodford Green and moved to Hampstead, London, N.W.3.

Already three years after the end of the war, Beate Rose emigrated, now self-chosen, on July 29, 1948 from Southhampton with in the USA.  In this time of departure and great changes, as well as the reassurance about the death of her beloved mother, much changed for Beate Rose also in private terms: On July 23, 1949, Beate, now Beatrice Steinberg, married Gunther Steinberg in Los Angeles. An advertisement by the bride's father Albert Rose and the groom's mother Hetty Steinberg, who also married on May 31, 1960, announced this happy occasion. 

On June 23, 1956, the Steinbergs moved to Northern California. Here in Walnut Creek, they started a family. Their son Paul Gunther was born at Kaiser Hospital in Walnut Creek. On April 8, 1964, they adopted their daughter, Julia Claire. On July 20, 1997, their first grandson, Cole Anderson Steinberg, Paul's son, was born. However, the contact with their hometown Paderborn never seemed to be broken at such a great distance. On November 19, 1964, Beatrice Steinberg received a letter from the then mayor of Paderborn, Christoph Tölle, sent to 165 Los Altos Ave, Wallmut Creek, California, USA, along with a copy of the book "Bauen wir doch aufs neuen das alte Haus - Jüdisches Schicksal in Paderborn", published by the city of Paderborn. Her past was always omnipresent for Beatrice Steinberg, even at such a great distance in space and time.  So in 1997 she wrote down her memoirs and dedicated them to the grandchildren of her parents Albert and Erna Rose and also to her mother "I dedicate this story to my mother, who never had the opportunity to know or love any of you." Beatrice Steinberg spent the last years of her life in Portola Valley, California. She passed away here at the age of 84 on March 25, 2012.