In 1933 Rabbi Arthur Rosenthal wrote a poem for his wife, Ilma, to mark her birthday on 16 May. But this poem was very different from the ones he had written in the past. The first few lines reflect the dramatically changed situation of Jews in Germany: "It is hard to endure / In this life full of thorns / When enemy forces / Rise up against us." The verses that follow testify to the author‘s self-confidence as a Jew: "They might likely think / In their cowardly intrigues / To bend our backs. / Never will they succeed, / In stealing our souls. / If we always maintain / Our profound faith in ourselves, / Then we will ride happily". Finally, the poem describes the deep love Arthur Rosenthal feels for his wife.
Arthur Rosenthal (1885–1951) and Ilma Flanter (1891–1975) were married in Berlin in January 1914. Judith, their daughter, was born one year later. Arthur, a rabbi candidate with a Ph.D., was ordained in August 1915. He first served in Rybnik, the Gesundbrunnen neighborhood of Berlin and Beuthen before he was appointed rabbi in 1925 at the Israelite Association of Lichtenberg (Berlin). During the November Pogrom of 1938, members of the SA dragged him from his home and forced him to watch as they destroyed the Torah scrolls and the furnishings from his synagogue in Frankfurter Allee.
It was not until July 1939 that the Rosenthals fled to London, taking their son and daughter with them. In Great Britain Arthur Rosenthal was subject to work restrictions and, among others jobs, gave correspondence courses for children evacuated from London. He died at the age of sixty-six in November 1951, ten months after the family moved from London to New York. "My father was unable to accept the demise of German Jewry," his daughter Judith Helfer wrote several years later. His beloved wife, Ilma, survived him by twenty-four years.
Aubrey Pomerance
On May 16, 1933
To the sweetest little woman!
It is hard to endure
In this life full of thorns
When enemy forces
Rise up against us.
They might likely think
In their cowardly intrigues
To bend our backs.
Never will they succeed,
In stealing our souls.
If we always maintain
Our profound faith in ourselves,
Then we will ride happily
Aboard our ship of life,
Beyond the rugged cliffs:
Like a miracle awaiting us
Is a feast of plenty.
May you be met
With kindly fortune.
To forge a life
For us still filled with luck.
The love that has united us
Every hour of the day
And which has often allowed
Us things of such beauty.
May it continue
In the resplendence of May
To wrap garlands around
The heavenly ladder.
Reporting to you eternally
with kisses and embraces,
your Lp
