Rosa (Růžena; Rejla; Rosl; Rosel) Weil (née Schiff)
born Aussig on the Elbe (Ustí nad Labem), November 14, 1883; died Auschwitz II-Birkenau, 1942
Documents associated with this person:
Younger sister of Jeanette Schenker (née Schiff), hence sister-in-law to Heinrich Schenker from 1919; husband of Arnold Weil.
Life Summary
Rosa was the seventh of the ten children of Wilhelm (Wolf) Schiff and Emilie (née Strasser). Her sisters were Jenny (Jeanette) (1874–1945), Friedrika (Frieda) (1878–1933), Emma (1880–after 1943), Klara (1881–1939), and Helene (Hella) (1887–after 1941), and her brothers were Louis (1875–), Emil (1877–), Victor (1885–), and Paul (1895–).
Rosa was born in Ustí nad Labem, then part of Austria-Hungary under the name Aussig an der Elbe, but belonging to Czechoslovakia from 1918. She married Arnold Weil, and the couple remained in Ustí nad Labem, where they ultimately had a large, comfortable house (described in OJ 14/10, [15]).
The couple had one child: Helena (Lene), born December 5, 1907. In Fall 1938 (after the annexation of Austria) they moved to Kutná Hora, then to Prague by September 1939, where they were sharing an apartment with “the children” (presumably Lene, her first husband Max Gutmann, and first child). Rosa was very home- and family-orientated, energetic, prone to mild depression in later years. Her final surviving words to Jeanette (OJ 14/10, [38], ?November 1939), were “How very differently we had envisioned our twilight years.”
In April 1936, when Jeanette Schenker embarked on her six-month voyage to Santiago, Chile, heading first to Aussig to see her parents’ old house and the town, she stayed with Arnold and Rosa, remarking in her diary of the voyage how “courteous and sweet” her hosts were to her.
Deportation of Jews from Bohemia had already begun in October 1939, and deportations to the death camps via Theresienstadt began in November 1941. Rosa and Arnold both died in Auschwitz II–Birkenau in 1942.
Correspondence
Thirty-eight items of correspondence from Rosa and Arnold to Jeanette survive in OJ 14/10, of which Rosa wrote all or most of thirty-two, between October 1932 and ?November 1939. They constitute a prime source of biographical information about other Schiff siblings, particularly Klara, Hella, and Victor. Rosa’s letters are particularly helpful in understanding the character of Victor Schiff.
Contributor
- Ian Bent