Ernest Michel flanked by Ingeborg Rennert
and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. | OPEN UNIVERSITY OF ISRAEL
Irving Rosenbaum Honored
For Supporting Education Text by TIM BOXER
Photos by RICHARD LOBELL  FTER his discharge from the Israeli army in 1974, Emanuel Rosen wanted to continue his education. He applied to a university, but after a year he dropped out. It didn’t work for him.
He found a job in advertising, and pretty soon worked his way up to senior copywriter at Arieli Advertising in Tel Aviv. His creative abilities earned several prestigious awards in Israel and abroad. But he missed learning. He heard about the Open University of Israel, which had been established the year he got out of service as a distance learning institution. So he decided to give it a chance. “This was a turning point for me, my second chance to grow and learn,” he said at a gala dinner of the American Friends of the Open University at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan. 
Eli Rosenbaum and Henry Muller. | He got his B.A. and came to the U.S. where he was marketing chief for Niles Software. Today he’s the author of The Anatomy of Buzz, a book about word-of-mouth marketing. This was one of countless Open University success stories related at the dinner, chaired by Ingeborg Rennert and Irwin Hochberg. They led a birthday tribute to national chairman Irving Rosenbaum who just turned 80. Rosenbaum’s son, Eli, told how his father, who came from Dresden, Germany, was among the first American troops to enter Dachau. The elder Rosenbaum, who served in the psychological warfare branch of the Allied forces, had orders to report what he found in the concentration camp. 
Eliahu Nissim, Open U. president (from left),
Arthur Sherman, Ruth Hockley, Irving Rosenbaum,
Robert de Rothschild and David Schachne. | “My father’s orders hang in my office in Washington,” said Eli, the director of the Office of Special Investigations for the Justice Department, charged with pursuing Nazi war criminals. One snowy day Eli was driving his father on the New York Thruway. He asked him what did he find in Dachau. His father reflected for a while. He opened his mouth. Only silence came out. “To this day he did not answer,” Eli said. | 
