(1922-1994)

RICHARD ZACHARIAS ROTHSCHILD – ELLEN’S FATHER

Richard Rothschild began life far from the Taunus spa town that later defined him. Born on 10 May 1888 in Alsfeld to Fanny Lorsch and Liebmann Löw Rothschild, he lost his mother when he was five; Liebmann’s second marriage soon brought ten half-siblings and a bustling, religious household centered on the family’s sewing-machine business in nearby Angenrod.

Growing up – a visit to his elder brother Julius in Wiesbaden changed everything. There Richard met Bella Strauss, the spirited younger daughter of Bad Homburg shoe-merchant Jakob Strauss. The couple married on 24 May 1912, and they moved into the Strauss shop and flat at Louisenstraße 35. Jakob eventually grew ill and Richard and Bella took over. this thriving footwear business while raising three children—Edith (1913), Fritz (1921) and Ellen (1925)—above a showroom famous for its red-felt window displays and the “Mercedes monkey” trademark.

Bad Homburg society embraced them. Masked balls at the Kurhaus, synagogue fêtes and even a visit by an English governess shopping for a maharaja’s daughters fill Ellen’s memoirs, painting a picture of middle-class ease and civic pride

Richard had fought for the Kaiser in World War 1. Jews in many lands were barred from serving in the army for fear that they would feel they had an equal stake there. Maybe Richard was a hero, but probably not. He never told his children anything they deemed passing on.

Richard was a member of the Bad Homburg volunteer fire department. The bells started to toll one festival evening when he was in a bar and he told collogues: “I am not going tonight – I am having too much fun”. When he returned home he discovered that the emergency had been that his daughter Claudia has set alight to the curtains in his own apartment throwing fireworks into the street. The other team members handled the minor blaze, at least.

The Nazi rise shattered all the home town complacency and comfort. From the 1 April 1933 boycott onwards SA pickets scared customers away; by February 1936 Richard, reeling from Bella’s nervous collapse, aryanised the shop to local merchant Emil Humpert for a fraction of its value and moved the family into rental rooms at Freiherr-vom-Stein-Straße 53 in Frankfurt Westend, from which he became travelling salesman.

The blow that followed was worse. During the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 Richard, his son Fritz and brother-in-law Julius were dragged to Buchenwald as “Action Jews”. Richard in what Ellen described as his most courageous act, surrendered to his own arrest order in order to try to find Fritz and Julius in concentration came and give them support. By coincidence all three, arrested in areas far apart did meet up. Conditions were appalling and even worse for Jehovah’s Witnesses who were being starved to death with zero rations. They themselves were barely fed enough to live but smuggled scraps to them in shuttling coal carts. Julius died there on 18 December in Fritz’s arms; Fritz was released when visas arrived and Bella risked all in Bella’s fearless petitions, insulting a German official – thankfully which achieved its purpose. Then – Richard, also emaciated, head shaven, prisoner no. 24959—was released just before Christmas, thanks in part to .

Freedom came with a condition: leave Germany soon – interpreted as ‘immediately’. Helped by half-siblings already on the Copperbelt, Richard secured a visa for Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia); early 1939 he slipped out through the Netherlands while Fritz followed via England. Bella, awaiting visas and a way out of the country behind with young Ellen while her sister Flora moved in. Things were getting worse fast – Ellen, still a naive teen was finally sent to England via Kindertransport.

By the time Ellen’s train finally rattled into Nkana in late 1940, Richard and Fritz were waiting in a dust-caked “Vanette” to drive her the last miles to Chingola, the copper-mining boom-town that became their refuge. Ellen recalls anthills taller than houses and Muslim tailors treadling sewing machines on tin-roofed verandas—scenes her father now called home.

War intensified and communications ceased. In August 1943, from that distant bush staging, Richard signed a Red Cross message to Bella—“We are well. May God keep you safe”—unaware she had already been deported to the Łódź ghetto in October 1941. No reply ever came and still no one knows how or when she perished.

Richard rebuilt from scratch in Zambia’s Copperbelt. He opened the ABC Shoe Shop in nearby Mufulira, a modest storefront-cum-workshop where the hiss of sewing machines and the smell of tanned leather once more defined his days; family accounts recall “No 1 room was the workshop of the shoemakers my father employed” . During these years he remarried – his second wife was Minna. They eventually exchanged subtropics on the Congo border for gentle retirement in Cape Town, South Africa.

Ellen writes that Richard was a relatively crude match for her mother sophistication. She describes an uncomfortable if not unhappy marriage and says how in a later age a woman like Bella would have had the freedom and mobility to find a matching intellect rather than give in to her parent’s suggestions. Richard for his part in his old age would fall asleep while his grandchildren were playing at his feel – snoring and waking up frequently to mutter in English: “your grandmother was a wonderful wonderful woman” and then go straight back to snoring.

Recently two parties who remembered him, both described Richard as ‘a kind man’ Richard clearly suffered survivor’s guilt. He never forgot his first wife who perished in the hands of the Nazis while he had a chance for another life..