Early Years
Rosenthal was born on May 2, 1922, in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario to a family of Jewish descent. His father was a farmer named Harry Shipiatsky who emigrated to Canada in the 1890s and changed his name to Rosenthal. His father worked as a fur trapper and trader around Hudson Bay, where he met and married Sarah Dickstein.
Rosenthal was the youngest of six children. When he was still a child, his family moved to the Bronx, New York, where Rosenthal's father found work as a house painter. During the 1930s, though, tragedy would hit the family, with Rosenthal's father dying in a job accident and four of his siblings dying from various causes. Rosenthal developed the bone-marrow disease osteomyelitis, causing him extreme pain. After several operations Rosenthal recovered enough to attend public schools in New York and attend City College. In 1943, while at City College, he became the campus correspondent for The New York Times. In 1944, he became a staff reporter.
According to his son, Andrew Rosenthal, Rosenthal was a member of the Communist Party youth league briefly as a teenager in the late 1930s.
Read more about this topic: A. M. Rosenthal
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