Poland / Biography

Kurt Rosenberg


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Kurt Rosenberg, born in Poland and of Jewish religion, was a soldier in the Second Polish Army Corps fighting at Cassino. After the war he decided to stay in Italy, in Rome, and was decorated with the order of Polonia Restituita.

Kurt Rosenberg was born in Wadowice, Poland, on 31 December 1919. Of Jewish religion, he moved to Lviv in August 1939 to avoid Nazi persecution. In the spring of 1940, he was sent, together with his mother and brother Egon, for deportation to Siberia, but escaped from the railway carriage. He began an adventurous escape through Romania and the Balkans, surviving the Bucharest earthquake and the German bombing of Belgrade.

He reached Italy in 1941 and was interned for wartime reasons in Villa Santa Maria in Abruzzo. After 8 September 1943, he escaped again and reached Bari, where he enlisted in the British Eighth Army, under the name Kazimierz Go'rsk. He then joined the Polish Second Corps, fighting at Cassino. After the war he chose to stay in Italy. He became an accredited journalist at the Vatican Press Office during the pontificate of John Paul II, his former neighbour in Wadowice.

Decorated with the 'Polonia Restituta', he participated in the celebrations for the Battle of Monte Cassino until the very end.

He died on 3 December 2009.