Hadassah Rosensaft; Holocaust Survivor Had Saved Many Inmates

Hadassah Rosensaft, 85, a Polish Holocaust survivor who is credited with helping save hundreds of Jewish inmates at Auschwitz and who later testified against the concentration camp’s commandants. Aware that sick inmates were often ordered to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, Rosensaft, a dentist, sent them out of the infirmary and told camp officials they were healthy. She testified at the 1945 war crimes trial of former commandants and staff members from Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. She identified 15 of the 45 mass murder defendants, including Josef Kramer, known as “the Beast of Belsen.” Rosensaft and her parents, husband and 5 1/2-year-old son were deported to Auschwitz in 1943, eight years after she received her doctorate in dental surgery. Her family soon died in the gas chambers, and she went to work in the infirmary. In 1944, she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where she cared for 150 Jewish orphans. Shortly after the war ended, she married Joseph Rosensaft, who was chairman of the Jewish Committee of Bergen-Belsen, which oversaw the needs of camp survivors. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter named her to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. For two decades, she was honorary president of the Bergen-Belsen Survivors Assn. In New York City on Friday.