Rosa’s Child: The True Story of One Woman’s Quest for a Lost Mother and a Vanished Past

Name of traveller

Susi Bechhöfer (b. 1936)

Reason for travel

• German Jewish refugee from Third Reich

Date of travel

1939 onwards

Before long the ancient Hebrew songs the girls had heard so often at the orphanage began to fade from their minds. They were replaced by the hymns and powerful singing of the Welsh chapel, where darkness, death and burning hell were never far from the lips of the fiery preacher who was now their father. (Josephs and Bechhöfer, 26-7)

Content

• people: 
  • taken into the family of a Welsh Baptist minister in Cardiff
  • own identity as a German Jew is obliterated by change of name and Baptist upbringing
• politics: settling into new life in Britain after escaping from Germany in the Kindertransport
• Bechhöfer’s story is the basis for much of  W. G. Sebald's (1944-2001) novel Austerlitz (2001)

Nationality of traveller

German

Language of publication

English

Gender of traveller

Female

Type of publication

autobiography

Citation

Josephs, Jeremy and Susi Bechhöfer. Rosa’s Child: The True Story of One Woman’s Quest for a Lost Mother and a Vanished Past. London: I. B. Tauris, 1996. Print.