None of Them Were Heroes

Book excerpt: Recounts the fate of descendants of the Oberman family from Leipzig, based on wartime family letters. Focuses on Adolf Rochman (1910-1964), who succeeded in reaching England in 1939, and his intermittent and unsuccessful efforts to obtain a visa for his mother, Lina Oberman Rochman (1885-1942), who was desperately trying to survive in Leipzig. Includes the tragic fate of Adolf's sister Berta Grusman and her daughter, who were killed in Cetata Alba, Romania, when the Nazis burned a group of Jews in a synagogue. Lina was reduced to penury, then taken with other Jews to the ruins of the Brody and Luebecker synagogues. About the time her British visa came through, she was forced onto a transport to Riga which she did not survive. British antisemitism is revealed when the interning of Jewish refugees from Nazism is associated with political pressure from British fascists like Moseley. Adolf, who changed his name to Peter, is criticized for not doing enough to try to save his mother. The letters are interspersed with newspaper reports on events of the time.