| Born: | 07-21-1918 |
| Faculty: | Medical School | Medical University Vienna |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Herbert Wolfgang ROSENBAUM, born on July 21st, 1918 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, citizenship 1938: Austria), son of Ludwig Rosenbaum (1888-1964, bank official) and Margarethe Rosenbaum, née Rothbaum (1890-1941, bank employee), lived in Vienna’s 2nd district, Boecklinstraße 34, was enrolled finally in the spring term 1938 at the Medical School in the 2nd year of his studies.
After the "Anschluss", he was forced to discontinue his studies for racist reasons and to leave the University of Vienna, and the spring term was not credited to him "for lack of frequency confirmation" - Jews were forbidden to enter the university (Leaving Certificate ("Abgangszeugnis") was issued on June 14th, 1938).
Herbert Wolfgang Rosenbaum and his parents had to flee Vienna. In May 1938 he stated in the questionnaire of the emigration department of the Jewish Community Vienna that he wanted to emigrate to a country "where it is possible to continue his medical studies". He wanted to earn his studies by working as an educator, language teacher or laborer in order to be able to work as a doctor later. He also stated as educational work experience that he had worked for over four years during spring and fall vacations as a supervisor at winter ski courses and summer camps at Elly Rothwein's children's holiday home. After his parents, both bank employees (his father was with Oesterreichische Creditanstalt Bankverein from 1910 to 1938), were laid off in 1938 and his mother worked as a beautician, the family had few financial resources and applied for assistance to cover the costs of emigration. Herbert Wolfgang Rosenbaum had also taken (re)training courses in "motor vehicle driving, auto mechanics, and gas and water installation" while still in Vienna to improve his emigration and work opportunities. Despite a maternal aunt in Prague, a paternal cousin in New York and a family friend in France, it was not possible to emigrate quickly to one of these countries.
But finally it became possible (in time before the November pogrom) to leave the country with his parents and to emigrate in October 1938 via Trieste/Italy with the SS Conte Rosso to Shanghai/China, where his mother died in 1941.
On May 31st, 1942, he married his childhood friend Liselotte Reichfeld (1920-2003) in Shanghai, who had also been expelled from Vienna and arrived in Shaghai only a month later. They and their families lived in the so-called "war zone", which a few years later was occupied by Japan and became a ghetto. He no longer had the opportunity to continue his studies in Shanghai.
Herbert Wolfgang Rosenbaum died of meningitis in Shanghai, China on May 12th, 1944, at the age of only 26, and was buried at the Jewish Cemetery on Columbia Road in Shanghai.
His widow - in second marriage: Liselotte Albin - returned with her parents and husband to Vienna after the end of World War II, where she died only in 2003.
His father emigrated after the end of World War II in 1950/51 from Shanghai via Germany to the USA, where he died in New York in 1964.
Lit: Archive of the University of Vienna/National MED 1937-1938; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 459; www.genteam.at, www.ancestry.de; www.ushmm.org; interview with Liselotte Albin | https://www.centropa.org/de/biography/liselotte-albin.
Regina Mayer, Herbert Posch
