The Jäger family originally stemmed from Solotvina (now in Ukraine). Chaje Jäger seems to have been the first of the family to come to Dortmund. In 1915, he also brought his wife Esther and his four children Chaim (born 1901/02), Lea (born 1903), Rosa and David (born 1908), here.

How long the children lived with their parents is not known for certain. What is certain, however, is that in autumn 1939, Chaim and Esther were forced to go and live in the “Jew house” on Heiligegartenstrasse. In spring 1941, they were moved once more to a “Jew house” in Hörde, before being ultimately deported to Theresienstadt in 1942. The couple died there in May of the following year.

In 1931, Rosa Jäger married Josef Kalt. Two years later, daughter Lilli was born. Since the First World War, Josef had held Polish citizenship, and through the marriage, Rosa also became Polish. In the course of the “Polish Action” in October 1933, Rosa and Josef together with two-month-old Lilli were deported to the Polish border and forced to emigrate.
The circumstances of Josef’s death are unclear: He is reported to have had the opportunity to return to Dortmund in order to wind up the household. On the return journey to his family, it is possible that he was arrested when crossing the border to Poland and sent to a concentration camp. According to another source, he was already arrested in Dortmund, taken to Steinwache police station and then sent from there to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It is reported that he was then transferred from there to Bernburg euthanasia centre in March 1942 and killed there by gassing.

Rosa, meanwhile, had a son Yaakov/Jakob, born in 1940, with whom she went to live with relatives in the present-day Ukraine. It is presumed that she, Lilli and Yaakov were murdered there.

The other children of the family survived the Holocaust:
David already emigrated to Palestine in 1930. Lea, with her husband Elias Königsberg and son Robert, moved in 1933 to Cracow and from there to Palestine.
Chaim remained until 1938 in Dortmund and then emigrated to Belgium, presumably in the wake of the “Pogrom night”. In 1939, he fled from Belgium to England where, however, he was interned as an “enemy alien” and sent to Canada. He returned to England in 1942.

In the home of the Jäger/Kalt family, it is possible to identify a further person by the name of Rosa Kalt but whose precise relationship to the Jägers is unclear.

This Rosa Jäger, who was also born in Solotvina, came to Dortmund in 1915 at the latest. She lived with the Chaim Jäger family in Burgholzstrasse for more than ten years. This fact, coupled with her birth place, gives cause to presume that she was related to Chaim’s family.

Rosa is described in the records as a “trader”. There is also an entry stating she was a widow. Her husband presumably died before she came to Dortmund.

It is no longer possible today to reconstruct the exact fate of Rosa Jäger. As her nationality is first stated as Austrian and then as Polish, she is seen as a victim of the “Polish Action” and of the Holocaust.