Joe, son of Walter Rosenbaum, was born in New York in 1956. After spending time in captivity in The Netherlands as a Jewish refugee from Germany (Veenhuizen, Hellevoetsluis, Dommelhuis Eindhoven), Walter with his mother Rosalie embarked the Statendam III in October 1939 and arrived in New York harbour on the last day of that month. In the US young Walter was trained as a jockey, then, immediately after 'Pearl Harbour', drafted into the US Navy. Joe has confirmed to the author that the divorce of his grandparents in 1938 was solely for political reasons: to allow Rosalie to use her Netherlands citizenship for emigration to the US together with her son.
Biography