Early Life
Heniek (Henry) Morgentaler was born in Łódź, Poland, about 120 kilometres southwest of Warsaw. His parents were Golda Nitka and Josef Morgentaler. Morgentaler's father, Josef, was active in the socialist Jewish Labour Bund. Josef Morgentaler was a City Councillor for the Bund.
Anti-Semitic prejudice was common. Henry's future wife, Chava Rosenfarb, recalled that Henry was afraid to go to school:
“Polish kids ran after him and threw stones at him. It was a normal thing. It was a general attitude, a looking-down attitude. It was a very common thing to hate Jews.”
During the German occupation of Poland, a Jewish ghetto in Łódź was created and Jews were not allowed to leave it. Josef Morgentaler was arrested and killed by the Gestapo. During the Holocaust, Morgentaler lived with his mother, Golda, and brother, Abraham, in the Łódź ghetto until August, 1944.
When Germans moved in on the ghetto, the Rosenfarbs, the Morgentalers (Golda and her sons Henry and Abraham), and two other families hid in a room with the door concealed by a wardrobe. After two days in hiding, on August 23 they were found and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. The boys never saw their mother again: Golda Nitka-Morgentaler died at Auschwitz. On August 27, Henry and Abraham were shipped to KL Landsberg, Dachau concentration camp, where Abraham remained until the end of the war. Upon arrival Henry was tattooed with prisoner number 95077. In February, 1943, Henry was sent to KL Kaufering (a satellite camp of Dachau concentration camp). By the end of the war he was in sick bay (Krankenrevier), whence he was finally liberated by U.S. Army on April 29, 1945. After his release at age 22 Henry weighed just 32 kg (70 pounds). He entered a Displaced Persons Hospital in Landsberg am Lech. After a few months there he was moved to a DP Hospital in St. Ottilien, and thence with Abraham to Feldafing, a Displaced Persons Camp, in Bavaria.
In 1946, Abraham Morgentaler emigrated to the United States. In 1947, Henry made his way to Brussels in Belgium, where he rejoined his friends the Rosenfarbs. Because they were not in Belgium legally, he and his fiancée, Chava Rosenfarb, were required to emigrate. Chava's sister, Henia Reinhartz, in her Memoir, "Bits and Pieces," described the harsh economic conditions while the family, and Henry, lived in Brussels. One picture shows Henia, Chava, and their mother wearing coats made from blankets donated by UNRA. In 1949 Henry and Chava were married. They left Europe in February, 1950, on the S.S. Samaria, sailing to Canada.
The couple settled in Montréal, where Chava resumed her vocation as a poet. Several months later their first child, Goldie, was born. Their second child was a son, Abraham. Their marriage ended in divorce in the mid-1970s. Chava Rosenfarb died January 30, 2011.
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