Gallery Talk with Monique Rothschild

Monique shares the story of her family’s daring escape from Nazi-held Europe.

Monique’s parents, Ernest and Hilda, fled antisemitism in Germany in 1933. They met and fell in love in Paris.

Following France’s declaration of war against Germany in 1939, Ernest was sent to the first of half a dozen work camps for enemy aliens.

Monique was born in 1940 in Bellac near the labor camp where Ernest was imprisoned. In an attempt to save the life of her infant daughter, Hilda made the perilous trip across the Pyrenees Mountains on foot into Spain alone, hoping to depart on a ship for which she already had tickets.

Thanks to an unexpected delay of several weeks and with assistance from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Ernest was freed from the camp and reunited with Hilda and Monique in Seville just in time to board SS Navemar, one of the last ships bringing refugees to the United States.

The ship’s unimaginable conditions would later be described as a floating concentration camp. The family arrived in America in 1941 shortly before the US entered the war, and rebuilt their lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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Host or Publisher Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center