Rosa Rosenbach was born on 22 August 1874 in Aachen (Germany) as a daughter of the merchant Isaac Rosenbach and Helena te Camp. She was registered in the Peoples Registry of Den Haag on 30 March 1896 and married on 10 April 1896 in Aachen the on 11 June 1863 in Rotterdam born Joseph van Geldere. He was the 4th of the 13 children of Salomon van Geldere and Sophia Polak. The German marriage of April 1896 was registered in the register of marriages of Den Haag on 30 June 1897. From this wedlock, two daughters were born: Sophia in 1897 and Helena in 1899.
Sophia married in 1917 Abraham Frank, who was born on 21 January 1889 in Rotterdam and they had a son Erik John Frank on 11 April 1921. However, Sophia Frank-van Geldere passed away in Rotterdam on 11 June 1928, only 31 years of age. Her widower Abraham Frank then remarried in 1931 the non-Jewish Gerbrig Hielkema from Sneek (Friesland).
Helena married in 1926 in Rotterdam the 27-year old jeweler Joël Schaap, who was born in Utrecht on 21 October 1898 as a son of the jeweler Mozes Schaap and Jetta Frankenhuis. They had two children, namely Max Rudolf in 1928 and Hanny Rosa in 1932. They lived above their own jewelry store at Noordeinde in Den Haag, but after the outbroke of the war, the family had decided on 14 May 1940 to end their own lives under the pressure of circumstances.
Joseph van Geldere was a shopkeeper and he had his business in the Molenstraat 14 in Den Haag. After being married to Rosa Rosenbach, his wife lived in with him in Den Haag, but after her husband had died on 29 March 1925 in Den Haag and was interred in the Jewish Cemetery at Wassenaar, the widowed Rosa moved to Stationsweg 143. She then moved also into houses at the Gevers Deynootweg 68 in Scheveningen and at Prins Mauritslaan 62 in the so-called “Staten quarter” of Den Haag, before she ended up in the Daendelstraat 46 in Den Haag, which was located beside the current Utrechtse Baan and near the railway station Den Haag Central.
On 19 February 1943, the widowed Rosa van Geldere-Rosenbach was carried off from her home address to Westerbork, where she then ended up in the old peoples barrack 84. On 23 Februray she was put on transport to Auschwitz and upon arrival there on 26 February 1943 immediately gassed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sources include the Municipal Archive of Den Haag, family registration card of Joseph van Geldere; website openarchieven.nl/registration wedding on 30 June 1897 in Den Haag; website hetstenenarchief.nl/grave of Joseph van Geldere with note about his wedding in Aachen and the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Rosa van Geldere-Rosenbach.