Hitler's Will

Memoirs of a Jew born in 1924 in Berlin. In 1939 his parents sent him to England on a "Kindertransport". In 1944 Rothman enlisted in the British Army; he was accepted as a "friendly alien" because his father was born in Przemyśl, and he was therefore considered to be Polish. In November 1944 he was deployed to Belgium where he saw some military action. After the war, he was sent to a school for interpreters and then to Germany. As a member of the Intelligence Corps, he was given the task to translate Hitler's last will and testament into English. Ch. 10 (pp. 161-172), "How My Family Survived", describes the arrest of Rothman's father Erich in 1939, his release from Sachsenhausen nine months later, and the family's escape from Germany. In 1940, Erich went to Bratislava and took passage on the boat "Pencho", bound for Palestine. The boat got stuck on the Danube, and again in the Mediterranean. The Jews were picked up by an Italian ship and taken to Rhodes, and from Rhodes to the camp of Ferramonti, where they were liberated by the British in late 1943. Erich then left for Palestine, via Cairo, arriving in July 1944. Rothman's mother and his brother Saul also left Berlin, went to Vienna, and then took a boat on the Danube, arriving in Haifa in November 1940. They were slated by the British to be deported to Mauritius, and were transferred to the ship "Patria". The "Patria" was deliberately sunk in Haifa harbor by a decision of the Jewish Agency together with the Haganah, in order to prevent the refugees from being deported. the survivors of the explosion, who swam to shore, were then allowed to remain in Palestine. The Polish branch of Rothman's family, in Przemyśl, perished during the German occupation.