Edmund Rothfeld
| Born: |
05-15-1915 |
| Faculty: |
Medical School | Medical University Vienna |
| Category: |
Expelled student |
Edmund ROTHFELD, born on May 15
th, 1915 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, citizenship 1938: Austria), son of Abraham/Avraham Adolf Rothfeld (1880-1941, accountant) and Chje (Klara) Rothfeld, née Wilf, false Weissmann (1890-1941), lived in Vienna's 9
th district, Dreihackengasse 6, was enrolled finally in the spring term 1938 at the Medical School in the 5
th and last year of his studies. On August 1
st, 1937 he had married Vienna's 2
nd district, Pazmanitentemple, his fellow student
Ella Bier, a student of psychology at Vienna University.
In 1938, after the takeover of power of National-Socialism he was forced to quit his studies for racist reason and to leave the University of Vienna (Leaving Certificate ("Abgangszeugnis") was issued on May 9
th, 1938), as did his wife
Ella Rothfeld, née Bier, who was expelled from the University of Vienna in the 2
nd year of her psychology studies.
He was able to leave the country with her in time and emigrate with a student visa to neighboring Switzerland on May 14
th, 1938, where his parents-in-law Moses and Anna Bier lived in St. Gall. Edmund's older brother Dr. Josef Rothfeld (1912-1939, physician) was also able to flee Austria in time and emigrated to Palestine [Israel], where he perished, however, only 27 years old, already in 1939.
Edmund was able to complete his medical studies in Switzerland at the University of Lausanne in 1939 and obtain a doctorate in medicine. Soon after, he and his wife left Switzerland via Genoa/Italy on the
SS Rex to the USA, where his cousin Pinkas Samuel lived in Hoboken, NY. Edmund and Ella Rothfeld arrived in New York on January 12
th, 1940.
Edmund's parents were unable to escape Vienna in time and were deported from a Jewish collective apartment in Vienna's 1
st district, Werdertorgasse 17/8 to Litzmannstadt [Łódź] in German-occupied Poland on October 23
rd, 1941, where they were murdered.
Edmund Rothfeld completed a one-year internship in the U.S. at
Our Lady of Victory Hospital, Lackawanna, NY, and lived with his wife in Buffalo, NY, where he also mustered into the U.S. Army in October 1940. He then completed another one-year internship at
The Good Samaritan Hospital, Dayton, OH. He then spent three years in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the
Non-Sectarian Hospital and associate at the
Cincinnati General Hospital heart clinic.
On January 22
nd, 1945, he became a U.S. citizen, and in 1945 he was also accepted into the
United States Public Health Service as a senior assistant surgeon, primarily treating Coast Guard and Merchant Marine soldiers in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1946, he went to Boonville, MO, as a general practitioner and eventually to the
Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati, Ohio, in Pleasant Ridge as an internist, while also working for the
Veterans Administration and in private practice until his retirement in 1982.
Edmund and
Ella Rothfeld, née Bier, had two children, Katie R. Rothfeld (Leon Spitz) and Anita J. Rothfeld (m. Bob Schneider, Richmond, VA). But the marriage was divorced in 1965 and Edmund Rothfeld remarried in January 1967 in second marriage Shirley Ann Steck, née Thomas (1924-2010), divorced shortly before, and continued to live and work with her in and around Cincinnati, Hamilton, OH/USA, last in Amberley Village.
Dr. Edmund Rothfeld died on November 17
th, 1997 in Heartwell, Cincinnati, OH/USA and is buried at Montgomery United Jewish Cemetery in Montgomery, OH/USA.
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") MED 1937–1938; NY State Journal of Medicine (1946), 2662; Obituary in The Cincinnati Enquirer, 21. November 1997, B6; Oral History interview 1981 (USHMM | https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn511428); POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 462, information from Dr. Barbara Sauer, Vienna 04/2022; www.geni.com; www.gentean.at www.ancestry.de..
Herbert Posch
