John M. Rosenberg

John Rosenberg (born 1931), is a Holocaust survivor, longtime civil and human rights activist, former attorney in the Civil Rights Division and founder of the Appalachian Research and Defense fund in Prestonsburg, Kentucky.

Biography

Rosenberg was born in Magdeburg, Germany in 1931. On November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht, seven-year-old Rosenberg and his parents were pulled from their home by Nazis and stood in the court yard of the adjacent synagogue, where they were forced to watch the holy scriptures burned and the building blown up. His father was arrested the next day and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp for eleven days but was released later due to local government intervention. For a year afterward, Rosenberg stayed with his family in an internment camp in Rotterdam, Holland before leaving for America in February 1940. Upon arrival, Rosenberg and his parents moved in with his mother's sister's family in New York. His father had difficulty finding employment in the city, so the family moved to South Carolina where he worked as a janitor in a textile mill.

Rosenberg worked as the Director of AppalReD for twenty-eight years before retiring, but retirement did not end his career as a human rights activist. He continued to speak publicly about the Holocaust and has written about his time working for the Civil Rights Division and AppalReD.

Growing Up in the South

Living in the more rural south provided a different socialization for Rosenberg than for Holocaust survivors who remained in major metropolitan areas: without a large Jewish community with similar experiences, his upbringing was somewhat different from other survivors. However, Rosenberg claimed that his Jewish identity and adherence to Judaism was never a hindrance to his socialization and he was able to adapt with relative ease to his largely Christian community.

Work in the Civil Rights Division and the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund (AppalReD)

Work in the Civil Rights Division focused on legal disputes about voting rights and their constitutional protections. This often resulted in backlash from the Ku Klux Klan, and several suits were brought forward against the use of acts of terror in the voting process. A particular case Rosenberg worked on involved the murder of three voter registration workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County, Mississippi. His team's victory in that court case was monumental, as the presiding judge on the case routinely sympathized with white supremacist viewpoints. In 1965, with passage of the Voting Rights Act, Rosenberg was involved with filing several suits that worked to enforce the law, including the required removal of poll taxes and literacy tests across the south.

Apart from fighting big business, AppalReD represents individuals who cannot afford legal aid otherwise, 70% of whom are women. Cases taken on include family matters, and in the late 1990s there was often difficulty finding lawyers due to Reagan era budget cuts. Therefore, aiding those divorces that involved domestic abuse were prioritized. Budget cuts to legal services has been a continual obstacle faced by AppalReD, but it continues to serve eastern Kentucky.

Awards and Recognitions

Rosenberg has received many awards recognizing his contributions toward bettering the lives of others. In 2004, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Lawyer Magazine. In 2013 he received both the Kentucky Bar Association Distinguished Lawyer Award and the American Bar Association Difference Makers Award. In April 2015, he received the American Bar Association Grassroots Advocacy Award, and in November of that same year the ACLU of Kentucky honored him for his leadership at AppalReD.