The Chinese Saga of a Viennese Doctor: The Story of Jakob Rosenfeld [CLOSED]

The dedication ceremony of the statue of Dr. Rosenfeld in Junan, China 1992

Curator: Rachel Arbel

About Jakob Rosenfeld (1903-1952): physician, general in the Chinese army, born in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv, in the Ukraine), the son of an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army. His family settled in Woellersdorf, in Lower Austria in 1910, where Jakob Rosenfeld attended the school and then continued his education at the gymnasium in Wiener Neustadt. He studied and then practiced medicine in Vienna.

Following the Anschluss, he was arrested by the Nazis who confiscated his house in central Vienna. He was detained in the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps, was released in the autumn of 1939 and given a few days to leave the country. Rosenfeld succeeded in immigrating to Shanghai, China, where he joined the Communist army of Mao Tze Dong serving as a physician. Known in Chinese as Luo Shengte (“Long Nose”), he took part in the battles against the Japanese occupation forces and then against the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek. Rosenfeld’s efforts and contribution were acknowledged and he was eventually granted the rank of general in the Chinese Communist army.

He returned to Vienna in 1950 where he tried to continue his practice, but left a short period with the hope to come back to China. He immigrated to Israel, where he started working in a Tel Aviv hospital and died there in 1952. Jakob Rosenfeld has been acclaimed as a national hero in China.