Siegfried Rothschild who managed the Antwerp Joods Weeshuis (Jewish Orphanage of Antwerp) since 1938 was, together with his wife Rosi, involved with the Kindertransports to Belgium.
The first child of Dr. Leopold and Zippora Rothschild, Siegfried Rothschild was born in 1907. When he was six years old, the family moved to Dinslaken, where his father took over the position of the director of the Dinslaken Jewish Orphanage.
Siegfried attended the Jewish elementary school and the Reform Realgymnasium in Dinslaken. After completing an apprenticeship as a locksmith, he graduated from high school in Dinslaken in 1928. He studied psychology and remedial education in Würzburg and, later, biology and physics in Frankfurt/Main.
In 1933, he married the educator Rosi Kugelmann from Fulda. Their daughters Miriam and Eva were born in 1934 and 1936 respectively.
Since 1933, Siegfried Rothschild had been working in the Jewish children’s home AHAWAH in Berlin. In 1935 and 1936 he stood in for his father in the Dinslaken orphanage. In July 1937 he took over the management of the AHAWAH.
Shortly afterwards, Siegfried Rothschild was offered the position of head of the Antwerp Jewish Orphanage and moved with his family to Antwerp in 1938. From November 1938, Rosi Rothschild worked as a member of the committee Voor Het Joodsche Kind van Duitschland (For the Jewish Child from Germany).
With the invasion of Belgium by German troops, Siegfried Rothschild, like thousands of other “undesirable aliens”, was taken by the Belgian authorities to the unoccupied south of France.
Rosi Rothschild stayed with their daughters in the orphanage. She actively managed the institution during the occupation. In January 1944, the Antwerp site was closed by the Germans and the institution was moved to Lasne. During the last days of the war, Rosi Rothschild found various places to accommodate the children and thus saved their lives. After the Germans had fled, she took the children out of their hiding places and put them in the Linkebeek and Wezembeek homes.
Siegfried Rothschild was imprisoned in the camps at St. Cyprien, Gurs and Rivesaltes from 1940. In 1943, he managed to escape to Switzerland. After a brief internment, he worked for the Basler Hilfe für Emigrantenkinder (Aid for Migrant Children in Basel, BHEK). At the end of May 1945, he returned to Belgium.
In Auderghem, Dr. Rothschild took over the management of an orphanage. After a temporary stay in the USA, the family emigrated to Israel in 1951, where Siegfried – now Pinchas – Rothschild became director of an orphanage in Afula.
In 1980 Rosi Rothschild died in Jerusalem and her husband Siegfried in 2001. AP
