Papi & Babi

Papi and Babi

Chaim Yitzchak Rosner (1930–2016) and Chaya (Eva) Rosner née Freund (1931–2026)

Papi — Chaim Yitzchak Rosner — was born in Cernăuți (Czernowitz), then in Romania, on 14 March 1930 (the city’s birth register has 1929; every later paper has 1930), the younger son of Yeshayahu Aryeh (Saie Leib) Rosner and Chaya Reizel (Anna) née Pacht. The family left for Palestine in April 1939, and he grew up at 10 Zamenhoff Street in Tel Aviv. In February 1947, a seventeen-year-old student on a student visa issued in Jerusalem, he sailed from Haifa on the SS Al Sudan to New York, where his parents joined him; in 1950 the census found the three of them at 468 Crown Street, Brooklyn, his father the rabbi of a synagogue there.

Babi — Chaya (Eva) Freund — was born in Satu Mare (Szatmárnémeti) on 14 October 1931, the only daughter of Sender and Chana Freund to grow up. Her mother and her three younger brothers, Asher Yaakov, Moshe Aryeh and Yitzchak, perished at Auschwitz on 27 May 1944; her father survived in hiding. After the war she reached Switzerland by way of Prague, and in May 1949, at Bex-les-Bains, she wrote out her own short life story for the refugee organisation: her father a textile manufacturer, a brother, Nathan, in Tel Aviv, an aunt, Sarah Gelb, in New York. She sailed from Bremerhaven on the USNS General M. L. Hersey and landed in New York on 12 September 1950 — Rosh Hashanah 5711, the day the family remembers a cousin coming to meet her.

She was working in a clothing factory when Papi first saw her. They married in Brooklyn in 1951 (Kings County licence 13523), and about 1952 they went with Papi’s parents to São Paulo, where the Rosners built a business — a metals firm in 1953, then Rosner e Filhos Ltda and its successor, Panamer Indústria e Comércio Ltda, makers of lingerie — and where they lived for some twenty years before returning to Boro Park. Papi was a Viznitz chassid; in November 1995 he was the guest of honour at the Viznitz Melave Malka in Williamsburg, where he spoke about his father. Every year, for some fifty years, Babi travelled to her father’s grave in Satu Mare.

Papi died on 5 January 2016 (24 Tevet 5776) and Babi on Friday night, 17 July 2026 (4 Av 5786). They are buried side by side at Beth Moses Cemetery, Section 2, Block 18, Rows A and B, Grave 16. The side of Babi’s stone remembers her mother Chana bat Nachman and her brothers Asher Yaakov, Moshe Aryeh and Yitzchak.

Babi’s family remembered

The framed photograph of Sender and Chana Freund and their children

The family keeps a framed print of Sender and Chana Freund with their children in Satu Mare, taken before 1944, with each name written beneath. In the back row stand Yehoshua (Shea), Shmuel (Pilu) and Nachman; in front sit Asher Yaakov (Anshel), Zaide Sender Freund, Yitzchok, Babi (Chaya), Bobby Chana Freund and Moshe Aryeh. The label also gives the yahrzeits: Zaide Sender on 16 Cheshvan; Bobby Chana and her sons Asher Yaakov, Moshe Aryeh and Yitzchok on 11 Sivan; Uncle Pilu on Rosh Chodesh Shevat.