What we know:
Birth Name: Rosenberg
First Name: Elly
Date/Place of Birth: 16 May 1913/Themar, Thüringen
Date/Place of Death: 01 May 2001 Swathmore, Pennsylvania
Elly Rosenberg was the youngest child of Else and Markus Rosenberg. She grew up and attended elementary school in Themar; the 1940 USA Federal Census records that she completed 2 years of high school. The school may have been in Meiningen and she lived and worked in Meiningen through the 1930s. It’s probable that she met her future husband, Bernhard Eisemann, while working in Meiningen.
Bernhard Eisemann was one of six children of Louis and Rosetta (née Friedmann) Eisemann, b. on 25 April 1899 in the village of Bauerbach/Thuringia. Leaving Germany for the United States was a pattern in the Eisemann family: Bernhard’s eldest sister, Yetta, b. 1893, had been living in the United States since 1909; Hilda Eisemann, b. 1907 in Bauerbach, left in 1923; she initially lived in New York City and married Morris Wilkin in the late 1920s.
In January 1933, when the Nazis formed the government, Bernhard, his parents, and three siblings were living in Germany. Clara Eisemann, born in 1909, the same year as Yetta left for the States, was the first to leave. On 21 October 1933, Clara arrived in the United States and went to live with Yetta, her husband Samuel Ellszweig, and their four children in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Bernhard was next to go: on 15 June 1936, Bernhard obtained a visa to enter the United States; he sailed from Bremen on 15 October 1936. Upon arrival, he too headed to East Stroudsburg.1Source: The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at and Departing from Ogdensburg, New York, 5/27/1948 – 11/28/1972; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715, 1897-1957 Others followed: in October 1938, his parents left (Louis thus escaped being rounded up in Kristallnacht in November 1938); two months later, on 22 December 1938, Max Eisemann, his wife, Erna, and their daughter Helene “Leni” arrived in East Stroudsburg. The only one of Bernhard’s siblings who did not come to the United States was Isidor Eisemann, b. ca 1905; he immigrated into the Netherlands and survived.
In contrast to the Eisemann family, Elly’s family, at least on the maternal Kahn side, did not have a strong tradition of emigration. They started the process of seeking refuge later than Bernhard and his family. Elly, as well as her sister, Irma, and brother, Julius, made plans. Elly received her final papers only on 24 May 1939.2Source: Ship’s manifest of Elly’s arrival in USA. Ancestry.com) On 14 July 1939, she left Bremen on the ship Bremen, arriving in New York City two weeks later. Her sponsor was her father’s younger sister, Ida, as the entry in the ship’s manifest makes clear, the records were corrected to ensure that “Aunt” was recorded for posterity. Ida and her husband, Moritz Dahlerbruch, had immigrated into the States in September 1936 and were living in the Bronx when Elly arrived.
Bernhard and Elly married on 19 November 1939, and Elly moved to East Stroudsburg to live with him and the Eisemann family. The couple applied for American citizenship. They tried to bring the other members of Elly’s family to the United States. The file of documents compiled by Julius Rosenberg in his desperate search to emigrate includes the many letters, affidavits, and documents submitted by Elly and Bernhard to support Julius, Else, and Lotte. In 1942, Bernhard was registered in the “Young Man’s Draft” for the American army but there are no records indicating service.
Elly’s sister, Irma, successfully immigrated into England under the “Domestic Permit” program before the start of World War II. But her parents, Else and Markus Rosenberg, and her brother Julius were trapped in Germany and murdered: Markus in Theresienstadt, Else and Julius in Auschwitz.
After the war, Elly found her sister-in-law, Lotte ROSENBERG (née Pabst), and niece Lotte ROSENBERG, who were living in Canada. They remained in close contact for the rest of her life. She was also in contact with her sister, Irma, who lived in England. Bernhard died in 1978; Elly lived in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania until her death in 2001. Both Elly and Bernhard were buried in the Ohev Shalom Cemetery in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania.
