Her passport said she was born in Johannesburg on September 30th 1907, which would have made Bertha Weingreen 91 when she died in Dublin last month. However, there is evidence to suggest she was older. A sister, believed to be two years younger, was said to have been born on the same day.
She was a remarkable woman. Strong convictions, ardent Zionist, unconventional character. She is once said to have attended a function wearing a brightly coloured tea cosy on her head.
She was also the other half of that staple, "the devoted couple". Her husband was Jack (Jacob) Weingreen, the late Professor of Hebrew at Trinity College, Dublin, He died in April 1995, aged 87. Born in Manchester, he had studied at Trinity College Dublin, becoming a lecturer there in 1930. No one is clear how they met but it is believed to have been in Dublin. They married in London in 1934 and continued to live in Dublin for the rest of their lives, except for one very interesting gap.
Both played a major part in helping Jews in Germany after the war. In March 1946 Jack became director of education at the displaced persons' camp in Bergen-Belsen, Germany, and Bertha was chief welfare officer for all Jewish displaced persons in Germany's British zone, including Belsen. She was in fact Jack's boss there. "I was OC Belsen," she told The Irish Times in 1985. "I had more anger than horror that such things could be allowed. People all over the world allowed it and the world knew. Now they want to think it never happened."
But it was experiences at Lubeck in Germany, rather than Belsen, that made the most vivid impression on Bertha. Jack recalled how when she visited sick Jewish children there she remembered "their faces resembled the faces of mummified Egyptians. Instead of arms and fingers lying on blankets there were sticks at the end of which were claws. The shock was overwhelming and she had to escape into the corridor where she shed bitter tears at what had been done to these innocent children. They were in the last stages of hunger and abuse."
Some 48 years afterwards, he said: "the scene still comes back to haunt her." Another traumatic experience for her in Lubeck was the disinterring of Jewish remains from local cemeteries in the area and their reinterment with honourable burial in the Jewish cemetery.
In Berlin, Bertha opened a kindergarten for Jewish children and organised that toys and cloth, to be made into clothes, be sent from the Jewish community in Dublin for the children. "There was immense joy and excitement when the children were given brand-new clothes, an experience which many of them had for the first time in their young lives," Jack remembered.
Before that, Bertha had been a volunteer member of the Jewish Relief Unit in London from 1944, going on to the Belgian town of Mol after it had been liberated. This was followed by a lengthy stay in Rotterdam after the liberation of Holland, before she was sent to Germany.
THE War Office in London, in preparation for the occupation of large areas of Germany after the war, would not allow civilian groups operate in British-controlled territory. Civilian groups were therefore validated by the War Office and incorporated into the army, which is how both of the Weingreens became lieutenants, later lieutenant colonels, in the British army.
There were no Jews at Mol but the Jewish Relief Unit assisted the people there before being ordered to Rotterdam. Here Bertha concentrated on helping starving children also. She set up an emergency hospital, organised a staff, and got members of the Dutch resistance to build beds.
A supply of fresh food was needed to nourish the children so she went to an openair market where she got up on a cart and pleaded with the farmers in Dutch, which she had learned growing up in South Africa. They agreed to supply all the food she wanted. At Belsen the displaced Jews were housed, ironically, in the huge complex of military barracks which had once held thousands of German recruits in training. Among the Jews there were some fleeing massacres which had greeted them on their return to Poland after the war, including those escaping one pogrom in which 18 were knifed to death.
Bertha's job was to ensure they had adequate living conditions. She also opened a primary and secondary school for the children and expanded a small trade school there. Jack took charge of the schools and training units. Bertha was also in charge of the hospital there. Later her job was extended to include locating and assisting small, scattered groups of displaced Jews throughout the British zone. She continued this work until June 1947 when, after two years and eight months, she retired and returned to Dublin. She had been deeply involved with the Girl Guides before getting involved in Jewish affairs and took up that interest once again. From 1969 to 1974 she was divisional commander with the guides, with responsibility for its Jewish component.
She also taught speech and drama, in which she had trained at the EurAfrican College for the training of coloured teachers in South Africa. She chose to do so instead of attending the white teachers' training college. Past pupils in Dublin recall her lifelong interest in them. This may have been in part due to the fact that the Weingreens had no children of their own.
In the Orthodox Jewish tradition there is a ceremony called the setting of the tombstone, usually a year after the death of a loved one. It involves the unveiling of a headstone and the placing of small stones on the grave by each of those in attendance, to signify that the dead person will never be forgotten.
During the ceremony at Jack Weingreen's grave in June 1996, Bertha looked at the grave-in-waiting for her beside him and said to an onlooker she would like it if an encircling stone was put around both after she died. So they would be in death as they had been in life. "They were very close," said one of their friends.
