ROSITTA OPPENHEIMER – A STRONG WOMAN

Scenic reading (German) Anton and Ursula Ottmann

Montpellier House, Kettengasse 19, 69117 Heidelberg, free admission

In 1940, Rositta Oppenheimer, her husband Leopold and son Hans were deported to the Gurs camp in the south of France, like all Jews from Baden. The son was sent to work as a forced laborer for a farmer in the foothills of the Alps. The family wrote more than 200 letters to each other describing their respective living situations. In 1942, the two men were recaptured by the Germans, transferred to concentration camps and killed there. Rositta overcame all the adversities of her stay in France with iron energy and returned to Heidelberg after the war, where she campaigned for victims of the Holocaust and founded a retirement home. According to her, out of “love for Germany”. She was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for her services.

Writer and journalist Anton Ottmann has been researching the fate of the deported Oppenheimer family for several years. The reading will be accompanied by a picture show put together by Friedrich E. Brecht.

As part of the International Weeks against Racism from March 17 to 30, 2025.