Josef Rosensaft

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Josef Rosensaft (1911 - 1975 was a Holocaust survivor who led the community of Jewish displaced persons (Sh'erit ha-Pletah through the establishment of a Central Committee of Liberated Jews that first served the interests of the refugees in Bergen-Belsen DP camp and then DP camps throughout the entire British sector.

Rosensaft was born in Bedzin in Poland and was in his youth active in the Zionist Labor Movement. He was deported to Auschwitz in 1943 but escaped the transport by jumping into the Vistula River. He was injured from the fall but walked back to Bedzin, where he was captured again and sent to Auschwitz and several other concentration camps until he was in Bergen-Belsen when it was liberated in 1945.

He was elected by the refugees in the DP camp to the Central Committee of Liberated Jews and served as the chairman of the British sector committee until it was disbanded in 1950. In addition to promoting the rights and interests of the refugees, he was an active opponent of the British policy of restrictive Jewish immigration to the British Mandate of Palestine.

After his time in the DP camp, Rosensaft lived in the United States and Switzerland and served as president of the World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Survivors.