Goldfoot Genealogy

Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

Josef Rosin b: January 24, 1922 in Kybartai, Lithuania cousin of my cousin, Joel Alpert

Josef Rosin was an illegal Jewish refugee to Palestine from Lithuania.  He was the relative of my newly found relative, Joel Alpert, also from Lithuania.  They were Litvaks.   My grandfather and grandmother were also from Lithuania, only they had left earlier in the very late 1800s.   Israel was re-born  for Jews on May 14, 1948 who were under dire straights then and needed to have a Jewish Homeland where they could live in peace without worry of being killed.
                                                                                 
 Josef Rosin was denied the very place our Jewish Homeland was created for by people who would become the European Union and the USA; the Allies of WWI. He was a young engineer student who had already finished his 1st year of college, and his world was caving in on him!
                                                                             

Paul Newman, Peter Lawford in Exodus, trying to get the Jews on their ship passage into Palestine.

Only Josef wanted to enter Palestine legally by the end of March, 1945 but  had to sneak in.  It was already a miracle that he was still alive after the Holocaust which killed 6 million Jews.   He knew that there had been Jewish leaders who had met with the Allies since the end of the First World War and all had been decided.  England held the mandate since then and had it for 30 years.  Remember the movie, EXODUS of 1960 with Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint?  It was a similar situation.

The BALFOUR DECLARATION happened on November 2, 1917, saying that the British government showed sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations and pledged support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.  They were issued the Palestine Mandate on July 24, 1922.  After 2,000 years of waiting, they were to have their own homeland!   It was to be up with the Brits leaving their policing of the land on May 14, 1948, but here it was for him, 1945, the end of WWII, and Jews weren't allowed!  .
                                                                             
He had been through so much already.  It was as if to have reached heaven, and be turned back.  To what?  To a hell!  He had already left Lithuania and had gone through frightening days of illegal travel there through Poland, Slovakia, Rumania, Hungary, Austria and Italy.  He had arrived in Eretz Yisrael on October 24, 1945 on the ship of "Ma'apilim", which means Illegal Immigrants.

Life was actually pretty exciting for the  young   man that he was with all this illegal movement through countries.  He married Peninah Cypkewitz from Wloclawek, Poland, whose path had been equally dangerous during a stay in Rumania.
                                                                           
Of course, the Jews of Palestine accepted and protected illegal Jews, knowing the circumstance and hating the English for it.  Josef and Peninah lived on a kibbutz, Beith-Zera in the Jordan Valley for 9 months.  In the autumn of 1946 they moved to Haifa where he wanted to continue his studies at the Civil Engineering Faculty of the Technion.
                                                                             
He was accepted as a 2nd year student, but had a year of delay at attending, because the WAR OF INDEPENDENCE  broke out.  This started on November 29, 1947 when Arabs responded with violence to the new United Nations resolution on Palestine, and it lasted until the signing of the Armistice Agreements in 1949, after the Brits had left the land on May 14, 1948.  They had left and had left the Jews without arms to defend themselves.
                                                                                   

Hitler's Nazi leaders talking to Amin al Husseini, the Sherif of Jerusalem as to how to get rid of the Jews who were coming into Palestine

Here Josef was, having lived through the horrors of Europe, the rounding up of Jews everywhere and killing them in horrendous ways, and now the Arabs had refused to accept the UN partition resolution, so from April 1948, units of Arab irregulars had crossed into the country from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, to reinforce the local Arabs in their attacks on the Jewish villages and towns in an attempt to block the main roads.
                                                                                 
Upon the announcement that Jews had created the land into their state on May 14, 1948, Israel was invaded by the regular professional armies from Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and also a Saudi-Arabian contingent.  The very next day, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azszam Pasha, announced from Cairo, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and Crusades!"  Yes, Jews had lived in places where the Mongolians had attacked with Genghis Khan and his ilk, and before that the Crusaders had even invaded their homes while on their horses and killed their wives and children before their eyes, as what happened to another of my relatives.  Josef had escaped from one extermination attempt that almost succeeded completely only to step into another!
                                                                                   

Out of the Holocaust into the Fire on March 10, 1949 in another war; The War of Independence;  for Israel

At this time, there were only 650,000 Jews and its pathetic army was of course poorly equipped, but they DROVE BACK THE INVADING FORCES.   Now how, you can figure it out.  They had a reason to survive and were determined without an ounce of fear in their bones.  G-d was on their side as he was during the Exodus. RIGHT wins over MIGHT.

Josef was again surrounded by death.  6,000 new Israelis were killed in this War of Independence, more than in all the subsequent wars combined.

Josef recalled his young life.  He was born in Kybartai, Lithuania on January 24, 1922 to Yehudah Leib Rosin from Sudargas, Lithuania and Hayah Leibovitz from Marijampole, Lithuania.  They had owned their own business, a paper and stationary shop in Kibart, Lithuania, which was a town.  He went to school in Kibart, and in the towns of Virbalis and Marijampole.  From 1939 to 1941 he had attended the Civil Engineering Faculty of the Kovno (Kaunas) University.

Josef had left home 2 days before the German invasion in the USSR, and Lithuania was part of USSR.  His parents and sister had stayed in Kibart and hadn't left like he had and were caught and murdered with all the other Jews of the town in July 1941.  Josef had reached the Kovno Ghetto and stayed there for more than 2 1/2 years until the beginning of February 1944.  He escaped and went into the woods of the Rudniki forests and later went into the Naliboki forests in Belarus.  He stayed there until the liberation by the Red Army.  In August 1944, he returned to Kovno.  By the end of March 1945, he joined a group of young Lithuanian Jews who were determined that they all should get out of Europe and get into their Eretz Yisrael.  They intended to become part of the movement later called the Brikha (Flight movement).
                                                                               
He and his cousin, Joel Alpert, wrote a Remembrance Book, "PRESERVING OUR LITVAK HERITAGE-A HISTORY OF 31 JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN LITHUANIA.  Being my grandparents were from 2 of the towns written about in this book, I'm sure they would thank them.  I thank them for writing about my Nathan Abraham Goldfus's town of Telsiai (Telz), Lithuania in the north and Zlata Jermulowske's town of Lazdijai, Suwalki, Lithuania on the eastern border, which was so close to the border of Poland that it was included in Poland in a division of land later.
                                                                             
I know I'm related to Joel Alpert because of the DNA familyfinder test finding so many Alpert matches for me and my living relatives who have also been tested.  This allows us to be part of the Halpern & Branches group on Family Tree DNA.  If Joel were able to test, I'm sure he would be one of them, so I'll check.

I just checked FTDNA and my paternal 1st cousin and I am related to 5 Alperts while my brother is related to 6, and a Joel Alpert is one of them for my brother and myself!  He and we are 5th cousins with me sharing 60.70cMs over 18 segments.  Our largest segment shared is 8.11cMs.  We share 1700 SNPs.  That's enough sharing of genes to tell me that way back, we shared a common ancestor.  Of course!  We have roots from Lithuania.  How amazing to have such a distant relative and realize how lucky I am.  I'll most likely never know who this common ancestor is because Lithuania, though they kept good records for their own reasons, didn't think of women enough to include their surnames in their census listings like they did the men.  Women make it on the records of the USA by the 1850 census.  My 1st cousin matches Rosinger of Hungary,  but not a Rosin of Lithuanian roots.  I didn't.  The luck of the draw at birth as to what genes you inherit.  You never know.

One of the leaders of our DNA group is also an Alpert who matches us and Joel. In fact, the group was created around this connection.    Finding us and being able to communicate knowing our ancestors were related is one of the miracles of living in this scientific century.  We have come together again.

Resource: Preserving Our Litvak Heritage by Josef Rosin, Joel Alpert, Editor-by JewishGen,Inc.
Facts About Israel by division of information, ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem, Israel.
Family Tree DNA, Houston, Texas



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