Rebbetzin Sternbuch in Prague
On a Praha-Bubny platform in August 1946, Rebbetzin Recha Sternbuch hands sweets to orphans while Chief Rabbi Yitzchok HaLevi Herzog stands nearby and boys hold Torah scrolls.
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.
Sweets on the platform
From about 0:25, Pathé’s camera finds Rebbetzin Recha Sternbuch on the Praha-Bubny platform with sweets in a shallow box, handing them to orphans while boys hold Torahs rescued from Poland and Chief Rabbi Yitzchok HaLevi Herzog stands with an UNRRA (United Nations postwar relief agency) official. A Vaad Hatzala (Orthodox rescue committee) banner hangs behind the welcome.
It is Sunday, 25 August 1946, a year after the war. A train of Jewish orphans has just rolled into Prague from Poland: about 500 children and roughly 100 escorts on UNRRA “Transport 750,” after a Shabbos stop in Ostrava so the children would not travel on Shabbos.
Pathé’s title says they are on the way to Palestine.
The same afternoon
UNRRA’s transport plan listed Rebbetzin Sternbuch among the Vaad Hatzala leaders on that train. She boarded in Łódź with yeshivah boys and a rescued Torah, and pressed for the Ostrava Shabbos stop. The woman with the sweets box (born Recha Rottenberg, 1905) had spent the war years in Switzerland working with Vaad Hatzala to get Jews out of Nazi Europe. In 1946 she helped move orphans out of Poland on this children’s transport with Rabbi Herzog and UNRRA.
Yad Vashem’s Photo Archive in Jerusalem holds an album of Jewish refugees in Czechoslovakia (Moshe Goodman / Arthur Zegart, archival signatures FA160/34, 37). Those stills and the Pathé frames are the same reception. The stills below are the original Photo Archive scans. Pair each with the matching second in the reel.
Compare her face and headscarf at about 0:25 with the woman standing near Rabbi Herzog and the Torahs in FA160/35 below: same headscarf, same platform welcome.
A few seconds earlier in the same reel, at about 0:16, Rabbi Herzog stands with a pipe-smoking UNRRA man in a light field jacket, the same pair Yad Vashem FA160/34 captions as “Prague, Czechoslovakia, The Chief Rabbi of Israel visiting survivors.”
At about 0:22 the camera is still on that welcome: a boy holds a Torah mantle with a Star of David, and 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 pulls back from those Torahs to the wider station ceremony and the Vaad Hahatzala banner.
Praha-Bubny, letter by letter
Some later accounts say Prague’s main railway station, Wilsonovo nádraží (Wilson Station). The Pathé opening shot settles it: a long two-story facade lettered PRAHA-BUBNY. That building still stands northwest of the main station.
Bubny on the map
Praha-Bubny railway station
50.102448, 14.4381767
Street View of the Praha-Bubny station facade, the gabled building lettered PRAHA-BUBNY. Bubny was also a deportation station to Terezín.
The film and what followed
After the filmed reception the group went to Repatriační tábor Ďáblice (a repatriation transit camp) for about six weeks, then left for France. Rebbetzin Sternbuch supervised Agudah (Agudath Israel) children there. The Agudah contingent continued toward Aix-les-Bains under Rebbetzin Sternbuch and Rabbi Solomon P. Wohlgelernter.
Artscroll later published a biography of her work. She refused publicity in her lifetime and died in 1971.
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 yeshivah 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.