Steven N. Montrose papers

Steven N. Montrose was born Stefan Joachim Natan “Natek” Rozenberg in Łódź, Poland, in 1938 to Marcel Rozenberg and Stefania Fajner Rozenberg. Stefania died before his first birthday from lung disease. Bernard Fayner, Stefania’s brother, his wife Yetta, and daughter Helenka, moved in with the Rozenbergs to help raise Natek. The families were forced into the Łódź ghetto in March 1940. Natek was later sent with his aunt Yetta to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and then to the Königs Wusterhausen sub-camp of Sachsenhausen, where they were reunited with Marcel and Bernard. Natek was transferred without his family to Sachsenhausen, where he went into hiding under the barracks and scavenged for food at night. Natek’s uncles found him starving at Sachsenhausen shortly after its liberation in April 1945. The family returned to Łódź to find their home occupied by a Polish family, so they stayed in a family textile factory. His father, who had been sent on a death march and was presumed dead, also returned to Łódź. Marcel and Natek were relocated to a Displaced Persons Camp in Berlin and then to an apartment in Hanover. Marcel changed their last name to Montrose and Natek’s name to Steven, and he sent his son to live with the family of his brother Joseph Mountrose in London. Marcel met and married a German concentration camp survivor and immigrated with her to the United States in 1950; Natek joined them a couple of years later.