We are the Rosenbergs. Or rather, we were the Rosenbergs. As of Thursday, the 4th day of Chanukah, we are now the Kohns.
How and why did that happen? First, some background.
I was privileged to grow up knowing my paternal grandparents, Yishai and Gitel Rosenberg, and often spent many Shabbats with them, visiting them in Montreal, where I also lived. After my grandparents moved to Israel, they would then visit twice a year and spend holidays with our family.
My grandfather was my link to the mysterious world of the “Old Country,” and I loved to listen to his beautiful Shabbat songs, Torah teachings, and “Jewish jokes.”
He spent his retirement years learning Torah diligently near the resting place of Rabbi Meir in his adopted hometown of Tiberias until his passing in 2000.
It was always mentioned that our original family name before WWII was not Rosenberg, but Kohn. We are Kohanim, so it made sense. Over the years I’d made a few attempts to research and confirm that fact, but it was not so simple. I did not have much information to work with, and it was pre-Internet, so research options were limited.
So I let it be and moved on.
As my children grew up, and I had a Yishai Rosenberg of my own, it started to bother me: My Zaidy was the only male survivor of his family, so there were no other Kohns in his line of the family. How could I allow our family name, which identified us as Kohanim for generations, to become another casualty of the Holocaust?
Then I realized—I actually have an opportunity. My grandparents only had two sons. My uncle currently has no male Rosenberg grandchildren, so it’s just me and my brother who can potentially resume and carry on the Kohn legacy.
If only I would be able to confirm with 100% certainty that his name was Kohn, perhaps we could change our family name back to what it was.
I resumed my online search and came to many frustrating dead ends. Since the name change happened in the DP camps after the Holocaust, I had to search an earlier and more murky period. I had my grandfather’s Auschwitz prisoner number from his Canadian immigration papers, but unfortunately, there were no records of this ID from the Auschwitz archives (90% of which had been burned as the Nazis abandoned the camp).
After digging some more, I finally found what I was looking for—a list of Jewish residents in the Nyiregyhaza ghetto that listed my Zaidy, his parents, and siblings all living at the same address. There it was: the Kohn family.
One final piece was getting his birth certificate. This was no easy feat since I did not have his real birthdate. With a few possible guesses of what it might be based on his Hebrew birthday, I was able to obtain a copy of his lost birth certificate from the Hungarian consulate.
The mystery was solved and the name confirmed.
My grandfather Yishai (Jenő) Kohn was born in Debrecen, Hungary, in 1926, to a poor Chassidic family. He grew up in nearby Nyíregyháza, with his parents, three sisters, and an only brother (two other brothers passed away as infants).
Yishai was a diligent student and was sent away from home to learn in various yeshivas in the region. He was also creative and adventurous. When the Nazis came to his hometown a little after Pesach in 1944, they sent all the Jews on trains to Auschwitz. My grandfather’s parents and younger brother were sent to the gas chambers, but he and his sisters survived through a series of miracles, acts of kindness, and ingenuity (for another time).
After the war, during many transits through DP camps, it seems he “collected” or purchased a few identity cards presumably to obtain extra food rations, as well as to place his name on the lists of several transports leaving Europe (he was apparently an opportunist and pretty savvy).
On the advice and blessing of the Klausenberger rebbe who was then in the Föhrenwald DP camp, my Zaidy applied and was accepted for a Canadian visa under the assumed name Jenő Rosenberg with a birthday that was several years younger than he actually was, presumably so he could join a children’s transport leaving to Canada. He eventually made his way to Montreal, where he married my grandmother, started a family using the new family name “Rosenberg,” and became well known in the community under that name.
We had many family discussions about changing our family name. It was not going to be simple to just assume a new last name. What about pending high school and college applications? Passports and driver’s licenses? Friends and coworkers? The list goes on. Over the course of many months, we came to a consensus that we were ready to undo the “fake” identity assumed in the aftermath of Hitler’s evil design.
The opportunity for this change was now. We filed the paperwork.
I’m not naive to think that we’ll be able to just drop the Rosenberg name cold-turkey. It’s everywhere. My tefillin bag, my sefarim, email address, wall art, every online profile under the sun. But we’re playing the long game. It’s a generational process. I’m looking forward, b’ezrat Hashem, to my children’s children being full-fledged Kohns from birth and resuming the legacy that was lost under such tragic circumstances.
On the morning of the 4th day of Chanukah, 2022, our family gathered in a virtual courtroom on Zoom. Sensing our emotions on this momentous occasion and appreciating the historical significance of our motivation, the judge choked up crying and had to leave the room for a moment to regain her composure.
We completed the formal name change process in the NJ courts, and we are now the Kohns! We are deeply grateful to G‑d for giving us the opportunity to take this enormous step forward, reconnect to our past, and reassume the family name our ancestors have held for generations.
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