August 3, 2016

Bert Romberg

Bert Romberg was born in 1930 in a small farming town in Germany, in the Frankfurt district near where the Rhine and Main rivers meet. His maternal grandfather had built a prosperous general store, grain, and cattle business there, which Bert's mother inherited. His father, an unusual Jewish officer in the Kaiser's army during World War One, was severely wounded and died when Bert was four. As one of only two Jewish families in town, the Rombergs faced intense harassment after 1933, and the family business collapsed when local farmers were pressured not to honor their debts to Jews. His mother moved the family to a larger community in central Germany in hopes of safety, but conditions worsened after Kristallnacht.

In 1939, Bert and his older sister escaped on the Kindertransport, with their mother traveling on the same boat under a British domestic-service visa arranged by a cousin. Fostered separately by English families, Bert lived first in Coventry, where he survived the major Blitz, and later in Hertford, where the Pettit family cared for him with great kindness. He earned a scholarship to a demanding grammar school and completed his bar mitzvah through a Jewish orphanage program. In April 1945 the reunited family sailed to New York with two cardboard suitcases and thirteen dollars. His mother worked as a sewing machine operator while Bert finished high school and worked multiple jobs.

Drafted during the Korean War, Bert served in the 45th Infantry Division and rose to first sergeant, becoming a U.S. citizen along the way. Afterward he studied engineering at City College and joined Commercial Metals Company in 1945 (New York office), later transferring to Philadelphia and then to Dallas in 1960. Working under Jake Feldman and Walter Florin, he became the company's nonferrous marketing manager and vice president, opening global markets across Asia and Europe over a career of nearly forty-five years. In Dallas he and his wife Terry raised three daughters, joined Shearith Israel, and became active in the congregation and Jewish Federation. In later years they supported Holocaust education at UTD and a Jewish summer day camp in Wyoming.

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