- Person
- Recha Sternbuch
- Lived
- 1905–1971
- Field
- Holocaust rescue
- From
- Swiss (Polish-born)
The story
Recha Sternbuch was born Recha Rottenberg in 1905 in Wadowice, near Kraków, the daughter of Markus Rottenberg, a prominent rabbi and scholar. In 1912 the family moved to Antwerp, where her father became chief rabbi of the city's Orthodox community, and their home was a meeting place for scholars. In 1928 she married Yitzchak Sternbuch, a businessman, and settled in his home town of St. Gallen, Switzerland, close to the borders with Germany and Austria.
As Nazi persecution grew, that border became her front line. Swiss guards had orders to turn back refugees, yet this Orthodox mother spent nights in the forests by the Austrian frontier, sometimes while pregnant, helping people across. She worked with the St. Gallen police commander Paul Grüninger, who in 1938 helped her smuggle more than 800 refugees into Switzerland. After she was informed on, she was arrested and jailed, and she lost the baby she was carrying. Grüninger was dismissed and lost his pension.
Released from prison, she carried on, arranging the rescue of more than 2,000 Jews. She smuggled forged Swiss visas across the German and Austrian borders and obtained Chinese entry visas that let Jews pass through Switzerland and Italy to ports from which they could reach Palestine. When she learned on the day of her son's bar mitzvah that Jews were in peril in Vichy France, she skipped the synagogue and took a train there on the Sabbath to rescue them, following the Jewish principle of pikuach nefesh, that saving a life overrides almost every other law.
Through the Free Polish diplomatic pouch she and her husband sent coded cables to the Orthodox rescue committee Va'ad Hatzalah in the United States. On 2 September 1942 they alerted its New York branch to the mass murder of Europe's Jews, a message that led to a meeting of 34 Jewish organisations. The papal nuncio in Switzerland let her use Vatican couriers to send money and messages to occupied Europe.
In September 1944 she approached Jean-Marie Musy, a former Swiss president who knew Heinrich Himmler. At her request Musy and his son drove to Berlin to negotiate, and on 7 February 1945 Musy secured the release of 1,210 inmates of the Theresienstadt camp. The Sternbuchs kept negotiating through Musy until the end of the war. Her courage, which joined deep faith to a readiness to break unjust rules, saved thousands of lives.
Why it matters
Sternbuch's daring, often illegal rescue work saved thousands of people, and her life shows how one determined person can change the fate of many.
About Recha Sternbuch
Orthodox Jewish rescuer in Switzerland who smuggled refugees across borders, ran secret aid networks and helped free 1,200 Jews from Theresienstadt in 1945.
Sources
- Recha Sternbuch Wikipedia
- Orthodox Jewish Housewife Behind Secret Deal to End the Holocaust Aish
- Jean-Marie Musy Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.