“It is famous partly because it is the first announced great memorial to any individual of World War II but more, of course, because of the man to whose memory it will be raised.”
So wrote Damon Runyon, famed Colorado newspaperman, in a 1945 column distributed across Hearst publications. He wrote this after meeting my grandfather, Max Goldberg, in New York where he was drumming up interest and funds for a new hospital in Denver, to be named for General Maurice Rose, the two-star general who had only weeks earlier been felled in Germany by enemy fire.
Samuel Rose’s Haggadah, 1914
Runyon’s words echoed last Sunday as the stunning sculpture of Gen. Rose was formally dedicated, the first “great memorial to any individual of World War II” on Capitol grounds.
My grandfather’s commitment to raising the funds to build Rose Hospital is legendary, and has fostered in me and many of his other descendants a deep connection to the hospital and the Rose name. A fascination with military history bolstered my interest, as Rose was one of the great heroes who liberated Europe from the stranglehold of Nazi Germany.
His military heroism is uncomplicated, exceptional. His Jewish identity, however, was far from simple, and I recommend reading Marshall Fogel’s extensive biography on the general, as well as the long 2010 IJN Literary Supplement by Hillel Goldberg, “Who was General Rose?”
About a year ago I happened upon another connection to the general. How this item came into my possession I do not know. My guess is it had belonged to my grandmother, possibly gifted to her by Rabbi C.E.H. Kauvar, who knew of the family’s connection to Rose.
I opened the wood-covered Hebrew book gingerly, conscious of its disintegrating pages. It was from before the outbreak of WW I, printed in the Austrian-Hungarian empire. The text was in Hebrew, the explanations in Yiddish. It was a Haggadah. On the inside cover, above stamps depicting Franz Joseph’s visage, in delicate cursive was the Hebrew inscription: “Chaim Shlomo bar Avraham.” Below that: “Samuel Rose, April 2, 1914.”
This was the Haggadah Gen. Rose’s father, Samuel, must have used at the family’s 1914 seder, when Gen. Rose was a student at East High. What a privilege to hold it in my hands.
Using it at my seder this year, it provided so many links in the chain, to my grandparents, Rabbi Kauvar, early Denver Jewry, the Allied forces that liberated Europe, even though it was too late for nearly all of my relatives there, and most of all to General Rose, a true American hero.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at [email protected]
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