Rozental

In April 2018, the late Ronia (Rone) Rozental was awarded the Jewish Rescuer Citation. The B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jews who Rescued Fellow Jews During the Holocaust (JRJ). created the Jewish Rescuer Citation in 2011 to honour Jews who rescued other Jews, and to highlight Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. To date, almost 200 rescuers have been recognised. They were active in France, Hungary, Greece, Germany, Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Latvia, Austria and Holland, and all put their own lives in jeopardy to help other Jews under Nazi rule. Ronia Rozental was the rst Jewish rescuer from Lithuania to be awarded the Jewish Rescuer Citation. She had been previously awarded the Saviour Cross by the Lithuanian Government in 1993 – the only Jew to have received that honour.

Ronia and Shmuel Rozental lived in Kovno (now Kaunas) with their son Leo before the Nazi occupation. Shmuel was the principal of the Shalom Aleichem School and Ronia was the director of the kindergarten teachers’ training college. Some of her students were nuns.

The Rozentals, together with all the Jews of Kovno, were forced to move to the Kovno Ghetto in June 1941. Ronia and Shmuel’s daughter Rona (now Rona Zinger) was born in the ghetto in 1943. As the Nazis had issued an order making pregnancy illegal for Jewish women, Ronia had to conceal her pregnancy, and after Rona was born, Shmuel created a special hiding place in which to hide her and her cousin Lusi, who was also born in the ghetto.

Although education for Jewish children was banned in 1942, Shmuel taught in the Yiddish underground school established in the ghetto, and he also forged identity documents. Ronia’s role in the underground organisation was to rescue Jewish children. She used her pre-war contacts with student nuns to arrange hiding places for children in a monastery, an orphanage, and with Christian families. With her green eyes and dyed blonde hair, she looked Aryan and came in and out of the ghetto without wearing the yellow Star of David that was mandatory for all Jews.

In 1943, Shmuel smuggled Leo out of the ghetto in a sack of potatoes and he was hidden in a tiny space under a stove by a poor farming family. Rona was also smuggled out of the ghetto and hidden by a gentile couple. Baptised and named Lily, she lived with her foster parents until she was six. Shmuel, Leo and Rona survived the war, but Ronia was murdered in Stutthof Concentration Camp. Shmuel was liberated from Dachau Concentration Camp and was nally reunited with his daughter in 1949, when he renamed her Rona, after her mother.

Ronia Rozental’s award in recognition of her actions in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust was presented during a moving Yom Hashoah ceremony at the Gvillei Esh (Scrolls of Fire) Square in the Forest of Kdoshim (Martyrs Forest), Israel. The medal was accepted by her granddaughter, Maya Rozental.