Justus Rosenberg (1921–2021)
Justus was one of the last witnesses of the Holocaust. As a member of the French Resistance he was also a hero in the fight against fascism. His death, after a long and productive life is a call to honor his long service—his contributions as a teacher and writer—by resolving to remember, more than ever before, the events of history he was part of and the courage and commitments to freedom, tolerance, justice, learning, and respect for all human life he displayed. All of us at Bard owe him a debt of gratitude for his many years of teaching, his friendship, and the eloquent writings he penned.
Justus Rosenberg was born to a Jewish family in Danzig (present-day Gdańsk, Poland) in 1921. He was a legendary teacher who started teaching at Bard in 1962. Although he retired formally in 1992, he accepted a post-retirement appointment to rejoin the faculty offered to him by Stuart Levine, who was then Dean of the College. In 2020, he published The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir. This book recounts his service to the French Resistance during World War II. Justus not only survived the war, unlike many in his family, but by joining the fight against Nazis he was doubly at risk as a Jew and as a member of the Resistance. For his wartime service, Justus received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart and in 2017 the French ambassador to the United States personally made Rosenberg a Commandeur in the Légion d’Honneur, among France’s highest decorations, for his heroism during World War II.
Justus emigrated to the United States. After finishing his PhD, he chose a career in undergraduate teaching, first at Swarthmore, and then at Bard. He taught literature and many languages, notably French, German, Russian, Yiddish, and, from time to time, even Polish. He was a loyal friend to Peter Sourian, and until not too long ago, an avid player of tennis, particularly with the late Jean French, Professor of Art History. In recent decades, Justus was very active promoting causes dedicated to tolerance and the fight against prejudice and hate.
Students who were fortunate enough to take his classes had the rare opportunity to study with a scholar who was also a witness to history. The Nazi genocide of European Jewry has receded from memory and become a more distant object of history. Bard students, however, had the opportunity to be in the presence of an individual who could testify to what happened.The denial of the truth of the persecution and annihilation of European Jewry has, astonishingly, persisted. Justus Rosenberg survived and witnessed the unimaginable. Yet he tirelessly and eloquently demonstrated reasons for hope. Despite suffering and loss, Justus sustained an unrelenting commitment to literature, the arts, philosophy, the traditions of science, and the making of art; for him they revealed the possibilities of human renewal shared by all and transcended the differences among us. For Justus, learning and study were instruments of redemption, remembrance, and reconciliation. He possessed a magnetic capacity to inspire the love of learning.
It was a miracle that Justus fulfilled the well-known birthday greeting of the nation of his birth that calls for "100 years" of life. Justus reached that milestone, against all odds. In Poland, the country of his birth, just under 3 million Jews, nearly 90 percent of all Polish Jews, were murdered between 1939 and 1945.
Professor Rosenberg's family wishes for all gifts in his honor to be designated to the Justus Rosenberg Memorial Fund at Bard College. Contributions to this fund will support programs and activities which match Justus' interests.
Justus will be missed by the entire Bard College community.
REMEMBRANCES
President Botstein and Robert Kelly have, in their beautiful eulogies, commemorated in our dear Justus Rosenberg a life of the highest moral courage and a human being who lived for a century the humane values that a Bard education aspires to achieve, instill and enact.Not only may his memory be a blessing, but may his example continue to inspire our students and ourselves.
Elizabeth Frank
A few of us took his class together our Junior Year spring, 2008. We didn't quite know what to expect, but had been told it was a decent lit course to balance our otherwise heavy 300-level seminar course loads. As the semester wore on, we heard more and more of his stories. At first it was sneaking across borders -- what he was up to at our age -- and convincing elders and leadership to let him be of use, one day it was an emergency appendectomy. As we realized the depth of his history, we prodded him for more stories, getting him to abandon his lesson plans with greater frequency, telling us about his life instead.
It didn't always work. I have a clear recollection of one day where Professor Rosenberg taught an entire lesson on a Wednesday that he had on the Monday prior, down to the discussion questions. No one corrected him. We just went along with it, gleefully answering similarly, sometimes stealing each other's points from two days earlier.
And then there was the day where another student walked in just at the end of our morning class and handed the professor a note. He read it, looked up and said "It appears I have left my car running in the parking lot," and left.
He was a pleasure to have as a professor; thank you for this opportunity to reflect on him.
Anna Henschel ‘09
I studied French with Justus Rosenberg during my four years at Bard in the early seventies. He taught a class on European Realism and Marxist Thought, but I might be mistaken about the exact title and perhaps have conflated several of his literature courses into one. I do recall an extensive reading list. One that included Balzac’s Le Père Goriot and La Cousine Bette along with Flaubert’s L’Éducation sentimentale. This was followed by Racine’s play Phédre, Montherlant’s La Reine Morte, Ionesco’s Le Roi se meurt, Anouilh’s Antigone, and Sartre’s Huis Clos. All of it was enlightening if not challenging for a young man from Lynchburg, Virginia. Both Justus and Agnes Domandi, my German professor, introduced me at Bard to the rich traditions of European Literature and thought.
Justus’ lecture on Flaubert’s Sentimental Education had an especially powerful effect on me. I sensed that Justus had an affinity for the novel’s young main character Frédéric Moreau and Frédéric’s youthful innocence and aimlessness in a cynical society rent by revolution, driven by capricious and misguided passion and fraught with dreams and disillusionment. Using György Lukács literary theories as his guide, Justus brought alive for me the powerful political and social forces at work in French society, a society he made me realize was not unlike my own. Justus helped me gain a better understanding of the individual caught at the mercy of chance, history, human fallibility and time. His was a broad perspective, a dialectical approach that stayed with me over the years and has continued to inform me in late life.
So it came as no surprise but rather further confirmation of my appreciation for him when I read Justus’ 2020 memoir The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground. Here was a man who had endured so much and though remaining silent about his early life and heroism while teaching me at Bard, had somehow still managed to convey the remarkable depth of insight, intellectual fortitude and persistence toward critical understanding that his tumultuous youth must have demanded to survive. I doubt I had ever been tested as Justus was at the same age. His humble strength to settle down and devotedly teach the cautionary wisdom and knowledge of a distant culture and tradition that had nurtured him as a young man and to fortify those humanist values and liberal causes for which he had fought, became just another example and extension of that profound resistance he had waged long before I was born. A resistance which he continued to practice against the forces of ignorance, authoritarianism, and blunt and brutal cynicism. He made the art of literature come alive as a tool for free thinking and truth.
Perhaps Lukács was speaking of a young Justus Rosenberg when he wrote:
“From the ethical point of view, no one can escape responsibility with the excuse that he is only an individual, on whom the fate of the world does not depend. Not only can this not be known objectively for certain, because it is always possible that it will depend precisely on the individual, but this kind of thinking is also made impossible by the very essence of ethics, by conscience and the sense of responsibility”
Walter Holland ‘76
I took the Continental Novel class with Professor Rosenberg my junior year and loved it so much that in my senior year myself and two other students asked him to do an independent study class with us on les liaisons dangereuses in the original French, and talk about the cultural implications of the novel. It was by far the most complicated novel I'd read in French and being able to meet with him in his office every week was one of the highlights of my time at Bard. I loved every minute of being with him and to this day I use what he taught me about writing and structure and history. It may be one of the biggest reasons I'm in publishing now and not film, which was my major!
Dara Hyde '96
Justus was a very dear friend. I first met him as a student in a French Literature class that he taught at Bard. Later in life, we met up in Greenwich Village, then continued our friendship when I moved to Kingston, NY in 2003. We used backgammon as an excuse to come together regularly to talk. My father's parents came from Poland, where Justus was born, and we found much in common in our outlook on life. Justus was a humanist. He cared for people and had a strong sense of justice that he pursued courageously. How apt his name. He touched the lives of many for the good and remained devoted to his students - an ultimate teacher. I miss him and will cherish his memory.
Peter Irwin, '67
I took Russian with Justus Rosenberg.
He came to campus about the time that very young-looking Hilton Weiss arrived. Justus looked about the same age -- not more than a few years older than the students he would teach. He also hung out at Adolf's with us, so I made the assumption that served him well in the French Resistance -- he looked like a kid. He explained that his light hair and adolescent face made him seem non-threatening, so he could move where others couldn't.
Thanks to him, I can make my way through Cyrillic characters, which comes in handy when looking at my family's genealogical records from Poland from when it was part of the Russian Empire.
I am pleased to read of his long career at Bard and of his many strengths and interests. One hundred years is a cause for reflection and respect.
David Jacobowitz '65
I write first of all to thank Leon Botstein for his eloquent, tender and richly informative eulogy of Justus Rosenberg, whose passing last week left many of us caught in a grief not diminished by our admiration of his life and works. I had hoped to sit shiva with his mourners tonight at Blithewood, but things came up and I could not attend. Had I been allowed to say some words, I would have stressed what I think of as the three heroisms of Justus.
He and I worked together, closely at first, less so later along, always in sympathy, for six decades. Over that time I came to respect the man’s profound integrity, his indifference to ignorant criticism, his immense commitment to the values of a civilization he had spent much of his young manhood bravely, in mortal danger, defending against the Nazis—in the first of the heroisms.
Then the life itself of the man, the sheer heroism of living an active, useful life for a hundred years! We take note of that, but few of us can reckon how hard it must be, day after day, never to lose hope, to go on loving and living.
And teaching! There’s the third heroism, the humble heroics of making sure that today’s students do not lose sight of, or lose faith in, the great humanistic structure of European civilization. And he did that at every level—he came to Bard to teach German, basic grammar, German literature—and gradually took on French and now and again some work in Slavic—he had after all grown up in Gdansk where educated Jews spoke German and Yiddish and Polish… In later years he spent less time teaching languages and more time in teaching what languages can do— here, in seminars and lecture courses, and countless senior projects, he displayed the monuments of German, Russian, French literature, making sure that students, whether they could read in the original or not, got the rich nutrient of those novels and dramas and treatises that grew from and illuminated the humane tradition he had spent his whole life, in one way or another, defending.
He was a wonder. His name for a blessing!
Robert Kelly
When I was a sophomore at Swarthmore in 1959 I took a German Reading course with Dr. Rosenberg. I didn't do well with the German but was riveted by his telling stories about the War and his life with the Underground. When my daughter, Jennifer was a student at Bard I managed to snag a little time with him and we went on for a long time with memories of that time.
Ed Klein
I wasn't mature enough for Justus when I took his African literature course. I didn't know that I wasn't there for a very select syllabus. He offered the sort of teaching that goes beyond preconceived human construct. He was a life teacher.
I wrote a bad review of him.
I take it back.
Colin Lissandrello
I studied with Justus during all the four years I attended Bard, and have rarely met a teacher as knowledgeable, kind, and generous with his time and attention as he was. Justus was not only a fascinating person to talk to, but a wonderful listener—he treated students as equals, and brought out the best in every person he encountered. I feel very lucky to have traveled twice to Paris with Justus during January intercessions with groups of other French students, to have been introduced to the City of Light through his eyes, and to have learned about its history through him and his time there. I feel even luckier to have been his advisee; under Justus’ tutelage, my love of French literature deepened, and my commitment to a life of letters became stronger. My life as a translator and as a human being was made infinitely richer from knowing the great Justus Rosenberg.
Charlotte Mandell '90
A pre-Bard memory: I met Justus in the Summer of 1958, when I was a medical student working my way across the Atlantic, running the entertainment program on a Dutch student ship, on which he was a passenger(I think the round trip passage Hoboken to Amsterdam was $320, so impecunious academics of all ages were on board). He looked as if he were one of the college “kids” . I was witness to an extraordinary reunion: another (non-student) passenger was a young Polish woman who had survived one of the concentration camps and was sailing back to Europe for the first time since her rescue in 1945. One day while we were walking on deck, we came face to face with her “rescuer”, Justus Rosenberg, whom she hadn’t seen since he’d arranged her passage to America, 13 years before. I’m still deeply moved by the memory of that moment, his sweetness and their intense emotion.
David Mirsky, M.D. ‘56
One day in class his hearing aides malfunctioned with a sound of high pitched feedback. He pulled them out of his ears with a cheeky smile and laughed.
José Carlos Muci ‘11
I was a student at Bard in 1974
And Justus gave a talk about
Yiddish literature-
All of our friends were intrigued
Which led me to ultimately study
Yiddish at Columbia University
And eventually became an assistant
And translator to I.B. Singer - who taught
Creative Writing at Bard for a brief time.
Justus Rosenberg was our inspiration
And had a marvelous self effacing manner
That gave everyone around him the feeling
of self worth & self value - that is at the essence
of the Yiddish language. The great value that
is placed on the individual.
May his generous soul Rest In Peace
Surrounded by the archangels & by God.
Dvorah Telushkin ‘74
Post Date: 01-23-2021