Finding Rose

By Andrew Dahl, Author

Join us for a meaningful talk on Monday, Nov. 10, 1 p.m. at the Nina Iser Jewish Cultural Center. The program is co-sponsored by Jewish Federation of Greater Naples, Men’s Cultural Alliance, Holocaust Museum & Cohen Education Center, and Women’s Cultural Alliance. There is no charge to attend, but please register at www.jewishnaples.org/andrewdahl so we can plan accordingly.

I never met my grandmother Rose Liepmann Oppenheim, but a telegram she sent from Nazi Germany reveals she knew of my birth in Shanghai. Finding Rose traces the relentless efforts of my mother and her two brothers —one in China, one in Palestine, and one in the United States—to rescue their mother during the Holocaust.

I explore Rose’s and her husband’s roots in long-standing German Jewish families and the inexorable destruction of her life under Nazi rule: The forced bankruptcy of her family business; the seizure of her home; the confiscation of her belongings; and her deportation alongside her sister, her lifelong companion, to the Izbica transit camp in Poland.

The narrative follows my uncle’s desperate quest to find Rose. Sent to the U.S. as a teenager in 1937, he became a “Ritchie Boy” in the U.S. Army, interrogating German prisoners and serving as General Patton’s jeep driver. Immediately after the war, he drove through the Russian-occupied zone, clinging to hope of finding his mother alive.

My mother and her brothers never were able to “find” my grandmother. However, thanks to hundreds of letters from Rose to her children and other family documents carefully stored in old leather “suitcases of sadness” for 80 years, I was able to piece together the fragments of a life marked by love, resilience, and unspeakable loss, and have come to know her.

Andrew A. Dahl, M.D., was born in Shanghai, China, the only child of German-Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. He attended the École Française prior to emigrating to the United States of America with his mother in 1949. His father was not able to join them until a year later, following the Communist takeover of China.

Dr. Dahl graduated from Wesleyan University with a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honors in General Studies and with Distinction in his interdepartmental major, American Studies. He received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha, the medical honor society. While in medical school, he did research at Guy's Hospital in London, England.

Dr. Dahl is Board-Certified in Ophthalmology. He practiced medical and surgical ophthalmology and instructed medical students and residents form any years. He currently is chief medical editor for ophthalmology for WebMD.

With a lifelong interest in history, including his family's history and genealogy, Dr. Dahl wrote the book Finding Rose: The Search for My Grandmother both to provide a personal account of his grandmother and as a tribute to her and the many other family members who did not survive the Holocaust to narrate their own stories.