Rebbetzin Sternbuch in Prague
Updated
This British Pathé newsreel catches Rebbetzin Recha Sternbuch on a Prague railway platform in August 1946. From about twenty-five seconds in she moves through a crowd of Holocaust orphans, handing out sweets from a shallow box. Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog stands nearby; boys hold Torah scrolls rescued from Poland. Still photographs in the Yad Vashem Photo Archive show the same faces and the same scrolls. The building behind the camera is Praha-Bubny, not the main station.
British Pathé, “Jewish Children On Way To Palestine” (1946; asset 70907). The player starts at 0:25, where Rebbetzin Sternbuch appears among the children. Pathé’s title says Palestine; after Prague the transport went to the Ďáblice transit camp, then France.
The reception on the platform
On Sunday, 25 August 1946, UNRRA “Transport 750” arrived in Prague after a Shabbos stop in Ostrava. About 500 orphans and roughly 100 escorts had left Poland. A Vaad Hatzala banner was held for the ceremony. Pathé filmed the train, the station facade, Rabbi Herzog with an UNRRA official, boys with the rescued Torahs, and Rebbetzin Sternbuch distributing sweets.
She was not a visitor at the edge of the shot. UNRRA’s transport plan listed her among the Vaad Hatzala leaders on the train. She boarded in Łódź with yeshiva boys and a rescued Torah, pressed for the Ostrava Shabbos stop so the children would not travel on Shabbos, and later supervised Agudah children at Ďáblice. Rabbi Herzog’s presence and the Torahs from Poland are part of the same afternoon; the reel’s lasting subject, once the frames are read against the transport record, is Rebbetzin Sternbuch at work with the children she helped move.
Pathé frames and Yad Vashem stills
The Pathé frames and the Yad Vashem album of Jewish refugees in Czechoslovakia (Moshe Goodman / Arthur Zegart, archival signatures FA160/34–37) are the same Prague reception. The stills below are the original Photo Archive scans. Pair each with the matching second in the reel.
From about 0:25, Rebbetzin Sternbuch hands sweets from a shallow box. Compare her face and headscarf with the woman standing near Rabbi Herzog and the Torahs in FA160/35 below.
At about 0:16, Rabbi Herzog stands with a pipe-smoking UNRRA man in a light field jacket. Yad Vashem FA160/34 carries the caption “Prague, Czechoslovakia, The Chief Rabbi of Israel visiting survivors.”
At about 0:22, a boy holds a Torah mantle with a Star of David. Yad Vashem FA160/35 and FA160/36 show Rabbi Herzog with the same scrolls “brought from Poland.” In FA160/35, look also for Rebbetzin Sternbuch near the group.
Yad Vashem FA160/37 shows the wider station ceremony and the Vaad Hahatzala banner.
Why the station is Praha-Bubny
Narrative accounts often say “Prague’s main railway station” (Wilsonovo nádraží). The Pathé opening shot shows a long two-story facade lettered PRAHA-BUBNY. That building still stands northwest of the main station.
Where
Praha-Bubny railway station
50.102448, 14.4381767
Street View of the Praha-Bubny station facade (the gabled building lettered PRAHA-BUBNY). Bubny is also remembered as a deportation station to Terezín. In this reel the platform holds the opposite story: children leaving Poland with their Torahs, and Rebbetzin Sternbuch among them.
Rebbetzin Recha Sternbuch
Rebbetzin Sternbuch (born Recha Rottenberg, 1905) worked with Vaad Hatzala from Switzerland during the war years. In 1946 she helped move orphans out of Poland on the children’s transport arranged with Rabbi Herzog and UNRRA. Artscroll later published a biography of her work; she refused publicity in her lifetime and died in 1971.
Few moving images show her at work with the children she helped move. Pathé came for a news item about children “on the way to Palestine.” What the camera caught at Bubny, once the Yad Vashem stills and the transport plan are set beside the frames, is the rescuer herself on the platform.
The film and what followed
After the filmed reception the group went to Repatriační tábor Ďáblice for about six weeks before leaving for France. The Agudah contingent continued toward Aix-les-Bains under Rebbetzin Sternbuch and Rabbi Solomon P. Wohlgelernter.
The reel is short. It still preserves Rebbetzin Sternbuch in the same afternoon’s light as Rabbi Herzog, the rescued Torahs, and the Bubny facade.
Timeline
- 1905
- Recha Rottenberg (later Rebbetzin Sternbuch) born in Poland.
- 1939–1945
- The Sternbuchs operate Vaad Hatzala work from Switzerland.
- July 1946
- In Prague, Rabbi Herzog meets UNRRA’s Elfan Rees and Rebbetzin Sternbuch to arrange the children’s transport.
- 21–22 Aug 1946
- Train loads in Łódź and Katowice; Rebbetzin Sternbuch boards with yeshiva boys and a rescued Torah.
- 23 Aug 1946
- Shabbos stop in Ostrava, which Rebbetzin Sternbuch had pressed for.
- 25 Aug 1946
- Filmed reception at Praha-Bubny (Pathé; Rebbetzin Sternbuch from 0:25; Yad Vashem FA160 stills).
- Late Aug–Sep 1946
- Children at Ďáblice; Rebbetzin Sternbuch supervises Agudah children; onward travel to France.
- 1971
- Rebbetzin Recha Sternbuch dies.