Chava Rosenfarb

Who was Chava Rosenfarb?

Chava Rosenfarb was a Holocaust survivor and Jewish-Canadian author of Yiddish poetry and novels, a major contributor to post-World War II Yiddish Literature. Rosenfarb began writing poetry at the age of eight. After surviving the Łódź Ghetto, Rosenfarb was deported to Auschwitz, and then sent to a work camp at Sasel, where she built houses for the bombed out Germans of Hamburg. At the end of the war she was sent to Bergen-Belsen, where she fell ill with nearly-fatal Typhus Fever in April 1945. After the end of the war, Rosenfarb married the future nationally-famous Canadian abortion activist Henry Morgentaler. In 1950, she and Morgentaler emigrated to Canada. Morgentaler and Rosenfarb, pregnant with Goldie, their daughter, emigrated from Europe to Canada, landing in Montréal in the winter of 1950, to a reception of Yiddish writers at Windsor Station.

Rosenfarb continued to write in Yiddish. She published three volumes of poetry between 1947 and 1965. In 1972 she published what is considered to be her masterpiece, a three-volume novel detailing her experiences in the Łódź Ghetto, Der boim fun lebn, or The Tree of Life. Her other novels are Bociany, Of Lodz and Love and Letters to Abrasha.