Rachel Gross was the youngest of three siblings in a close-knit Orthodox family. Her parents were strict but loving, enriching the lives of their children with music, Hebrew, and religious lessons. Her mother often took the children to concerts, but Rachel’s love was reading. She loved to spend summers with her grandparents in Frankfurt, who were more strictly Orthodox. Once, a man approached her grandfather and asked for Rachel’s hand in marriage. He told her all about the man, who seemed respectable and kind, and owned his own business. However, he expected Rachel to wear a sheitel (a wig) if they were to marry. Upon hearing this, Rachel exclaimed, “Forget it!” “I wasn’t all that Orthodox,” she added.

As an adolescent, Rachel was a part of a Zionist organization, and she attended meetings monthly. She dreamed of moving to Israel, but to her great dismay, her parents would not allow it, and she was not one to disobey.

Rachel’s first memory of Hitler was listening to the radio and hearing his antisemitic propaganda. Then the Nazi marches began, and supporters began spewing antisemitic rhetoric on street corners. Her brother and others spoke out with speeches of their own. Rachel was scared; the entire Jewish community of Karlsruhe was on edge. Their peaceful world was quickly fading, and many Jews started to leave Germany. In the fall of 1938, the Gestapo began deporting German Jewish Poles back to Poland. Included in these roundups was Rachel’s father, who was Polish. Rachel never saw her father again.

In 1937, while attending a local dance, Rachel met Arthur Herschthal, a Czech Jew in town on business. They got engaged in June 1938 with plans to marry on November 10 and leave Germany as soon as possible. As a German citizen, the US quota was relatively open for Rachel, but for Arthur, the Czech quota was much tighter. So they waited.

The day before their wedding, violence broke out across Germany in what became known as Kristallnacht. On what should have been their wedding day, Rachel and Arthur watched in shock from their apartment as their synagogue burned. The SS stormed their home and took Arthur away to Dachau.  Devastated, Rachel took matters into her own hands and walked to the Gestapo office to request that her fiancé be released. She lied and said that they had visas for the US, and that they were planning to leave after marrying. Only a few weeks later, Arthur was released on the condition that he leave Germany immediately. He and Rachel were finally married on November 24, 1938.

Rachel’s siblings had immigrated to the US earlier in the year, but visas for the Herschthals were still not available.  In early 1939, the UK’s Council for German Jewry established the Kitchener Camp in Sandwich, England as a place to rescue Jewish men who came directly from imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps. These refugees were admitted under the conditions that they would not work, get citizenship, or stay in the UK long-term. Arthur entered the UK through this program in June 1939, and Rachel followed him in July, receiving a domestic visa to work in a nearby hotel. Rachel and Arthur were able to see each other on the weekends.

Once the war started, being located near the coast was perilous, so Rachel moved to London and worked for a family who owned a fish and chips restaurant. For those in the Kitchener Camp like Arthur, if they had not joined the war effort they were either imprisoned in internment camps or deported. Arthur was sent to the Isle of Man which housed the large Mooragh Internment Camp. In January 1941, he was released and came to live with Rachel in Peterborough, a small town near Cambridge where she lived and worked for the Baker family. Eventually, Rachel started taking beauty classes and got a job as a hairdresser. The young couple remained in Peterborough for another six years as stateless refugees, “counting the days” until they could leave.

Once the war was over, Rachel’s brother and sister-in-law in New York were able to provide affidavits to sponsor the Herschthals, and they finally received their US visas. Boat tickets were another issue, which was solved when one of Rachel’s clients told her that her boss had first-class tickets that he no longer needed. Rachel and Arthur traveled to the US in style. After eight lonely years in the UK, the Herschthals sailed to New York City in July 1947. When they arrived, they were reunited with Rachel’s brother and Arthur’s sister. 

Rachel had trouble adjusting to life in New York. She got a job as a beautician and enjoyed her work, but the people were unfriendly, everyone was always in a rush, and she absolutely despised the cockroaches. Things got easier once they were able to move to Forest Hills and live more comfortably. But Rachel did not feel at home.

Rachel’s sister lived in Birmingham, and Rachel found it peaceful, and the people were kind. In 1970, Rachel and Arthur decided to move to Birmingham. While life was good, Rachel was shocked by the way black people were treated in the South. She recalled seeing black men and women being moved to the back of the bus, and she knew it was wrong. The racism was reminiscent of the way Jews were treated in Nazi Germany, and it made her uncomfortable.

While Rachel and Arthur never had children, their memory lives on through their family and those that read their story.