Alfred Jacob submitted Yad Vashem testimonies for his parents and grandmother

Alfred Jacob submitted Yad Vashem testimonies for his parents and grandmother

• Nov 24, 2023
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Of the three Jacob children who got out of Berlin to Johannesburg, I have information about only one, the youngest Alfred Jacob. It may be that there are better sources of South African genealogy records than I have found, but neither Ilse or Fritz Jacob turn up in Ancestry.com searches.

There is plenty on Alfred. Born in Berlin in June 1916, he was 17 when he fled the city in the fairly early days of the Nazi regime. We know from the Stopertsteine essay that his two older siblings would later join him there, but that their parents declined to leave Germany. 

Alfred didn't stay in South Africa. He arrived on Pan American Airways in New York City in September 1947. Four months later, he married a local woman, Rosalie Rosnosky. He must have returned to South Africa after that because we see Rosalie flying to Johannesburg with an infant daughter Susan in June 1949. 

Then Alfred made two more visits to South Africa in 1958 and 1960. We learn from the essay that he and Rosalie then moved to England in 1961 and that he became a British citizen in 1967. He also seems to have resided for a time in Maryland, back in the U.S.

Alfred and Rosalie Jacob both lived to a ripe age and died in London. She died at age 89 in 2006; he died a year later at age 90.

Two times, in 1979 and 1996, Alfred submitted testimony to Yad Vashem about the fate of his parents Leo Jacob and Rosa Paechter Jacob, and of his grandmother Freiderike Meyer Paechter. The images of those submissions are shown here.