Nazi-confiscated pen helps ToI track down survivor’s son, rewrite family history
International Tracing Service and Times of Israel journalist jointly find descendants of Istvan Rokza, to restitute his stripped possessions and unearth buried heritage
When Hungarian-Jewish teenager Istvan Rokza arrived at the Neuengamme concentration camp in northern Germany in late 1944, he had very little on him — only 20 pengo (then the Hungarian currency) and a “Tintenkuli,” a black stylograph-type pen. The Nazis confiscated these from Rokza, placing them in an envelope and listing the contents on the outside.
Rokza survived the war, but died in 1996 without ever seeing the money or pen again. Infinitely worse, he was never reunited with his mother Hedwig (Miriam), father Anton (Shlomo) and older brother Gyorgy.
He also never learned their fates. He had heard a rumor that perhaps his brother had returned to Budapest after the war, but for all intents and purposes, Rokza believed he was alone in the world.
Rokza moved on with his life, immigrating to Israel in mid-1949 and rarely speaking of his wartime experiences. However, unbeknownst to the Holocaust survivor, his pen had remained intact in Germany. It was one of thousands of confiscated personal belongings recovered by Allied forces at the Gestapo headquarters in Hamburg, or at the Neuengamme, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps as they liberated Europe. These items were deposited with various archives and restitution organizations in Germany.

Yaron Roksa (left) receives pen that was confiscated from his father by the Nazis from ITS director Floriane Hohenberg, Jaffa, July 3, 2018. (Laura Ben-David/Courtesy of ITS)
This month, 22 years after Rokza’s death, his pen was returned to his family in Israel thanks to the joint efforts of the International Tracing Service (ITS) and this Times of Israel reporter.
In 1963, the German government transferred some 4,500 envelopes containing confiscated items to the ITS, a massive archive containing a staggering amount of material, most of it collected by Allied forces as they liberated Europe, beginning in 1943. Located in Bad Arolsen, Germany, it is a complex of six buildings filled from floor to ceiling with 30 million original documents relating to the fates of 17.5 million victims of Nazi persecution. Since the war — and especially in its immediate aftermath — the institution’s primary purpose has been to trace the fates of these people.

Envelope in which Istvan Rokza’s pen and money were placed at the Neuengamme concentration camp. (Courtesy of ITS)
Between 1963 and 2015, roughly 1,500 items were either successfully returned by ITS directly to owners, or were given to Red Cross societies operating behind the Iron Curtain in hopes that they could help in the effort.
An article I wrote for The Times of Israel last February about ITS’s new #StolenMemory campaign to restitute the remaining 3,000 items led me to play a role in returning Rokza’s pen to his eldest son Yaron and the rest of the large family that Rokza established here in Israel.
“I can’t express what it means to me to have this pen,” Yaron Roksa said as ITS director Floriane Hohenberg handed it to him in an intimate ceremony in the lounge of a hotel in Jaffa on July 3.
According to Hohenberg, 164 of the remaining 3,000 items have been returned since November 2016. Six ITS staff members assigned exclusively to this project continue to work on giving back the remaining objects.
“We have names associated with all the objects, but for 950 of them, we still don’t know the country of origin of the original owner,” Hohenberg said.
Of the thousands of personal effects, only a handful are known to have belonged to Jews. And among those, only Rokza was believed to have ended up in Israel.

International Refugee Organization document stating that Istvan Rokza was at Beth Bialik DP camp in Salzburg, Austria in June 1949 awaiting immigration to Israel. (Courtesy of ITS)
This is where I got involved: Hohenberg recently contacted me and asked me to see if I could find Rokza or his family. There was no confirmation that Rokza had actually immigrated to Israel or remained here. The only thing I had to go on was an International Refugee Organization document from Austria dated June 1949 stating that assistance to Istvan Rokza was being discontinued. The stated reason was “ISR,” which presumably meant that he was poised to immigrate to Israel.
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