Rosa Manus

Rosette Susanna "Rosa" Manus ( was born 20 August 1881 and died either at Auschwitz or Ravensbruck in 1942. She was a Jewish Dutch pacifist and female suffragist and was involved in women's movements and anti-war movements. She served as the President of the Society for Female Suffrage, the Vice President of the Dutch Association for Women's Interests and Equal Citizenship, and was one of the founding members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) as well as its secretary. She firmly believed that women could work together across the world to bring peace. Although Manus was fairly well known in feminist circles in the 1920s and 1930s, she remains relatively unknown today. She was involved in feminist work for about thirty years during her lifetime and was known as a "feminist liberal internationalist." Early Years Rosette Susanna Manus was born in 1881 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the second of seven children to affluent Jewish parents. Her father was Henry Philip Manus, a tobacco merchant, and her mother was Soete Vita Israël, a homemaker. While the Manus family was Jewish, they were fairly assimilated. At-home education was the norm for Jewish women during the time, and Manus's upbringing was no different. Her father prevented her from attending university and becoming a nurse. Activism, therefore, became her outlet. As an incredibly wealthy woman, a modern-day millionaire through inheritance, Manus joined the elite ranks of female activist leadership. Women's Suffrage and Pacifism Work Suffrage Manus became involved with the international women's suffrage movement in 1908 at the Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), later renamed the International Alliance of Women (IAW). At the 1908 Congress, she met Dutch suffragist Aletta Jacobs and American suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, who would become lifelong colleagues and friends. Manus was devoutly loyal to the IWSA, and as its vice president, she actively resisted talk of its replacement with the World Women's Party. This opposition was based mainly on the personal issues she had with the leadership of Alice Paul.