Rosemarie Doederlein disappeared in NDG in 1954 and hasn't been seen since

Rosemarie at about 12

  Rosemarie Doederlein was aged 13 when she arrived in Montreal with her sister Vera, 12 and parents Hilda and Oskar. The family arrived by ship from a small town in Southern Germany in October 1954. 

   The Doederleins were wide-eyed and unfamiliar with the big city, although Oskar was more cosmopolitan, with the ability to speak several languages. 

  The family moved into a since-replaced home at 5340 Randall in NDG.

   Rosamarie and Vera attended Merton School, although there was some discussion that Rosemarie should attend a different school due to her age.

  Rosemarie was a normal girl with an inclination towards religion and carried a prayer book in her purse.  "She was a gorgeous tall bright blue eyed  girl who didn’t speak any English or French yet. She was kind and innocent and very helpful," said Vera  - who still lives in Montreal - in a recent interview. 

  One fateful day sometime between 10 and 25 December 1954 Rosemarie's mom Hilda asked her to go purchase some goods from a small bakery about a block away from their home. 

  The bakery at Cote St. Luc and Walkley was small and poorly-stocked, indeed it was a sketchy hole-in-the-wall. Hilda favoured it beause the owners could still speak German and Yiddish, the only languages she was conversant in.  

   Rosemarie ventured out for the errand but nighttime came and she never returned. The bakery staff told the family that Rosemarie had not come to the store on that day. 

  The family alerted the police who put in a brief perfunctory effort to find the young woman. They gave up quickly and suggested that she'd likely return on her own. News media did not report on the missing girl.

  For the next several years the Doederlein family spent a good chunk of their income paying private detectives in an attempt to find Rosemarie Doederlein. 

   The detectives came up empty. A Hungarian taxi driver, who could speak some German, had shown some interest in young Rosemarie but whether the investigators made any progress with that lead remains unclear, indeed whatever research they had was not passed on to Vera, who is still keeping the search alive.  

  The family considered the possibility of malfeasance among the owners of the bakery but have not been able to determine the owners of the bakery or even its precise address. The reigning Montreal bakery villain during those years was Jack Seligman, from the Fairmount Bakery family who performed illegal abortions, one leading to the death of a woman he dumped into a laneway in 1954. The next year he invited a group of children onto his boat, leading 12 of them to drown. It appears highly unlikely that Rosemarie would have any business with Seligman, however. 

Rosemarie as a small child

  It is possible that a passerby abducted Rosemarie Doederlein from the street, possibly a taxi driver.  Montreal cabbie Rene Vaillant abducted and sexually assaulted several young women in Montreal in 1950. He and his gang would likely have still been behind bars by December 1954, however. 

  Another high-profile abduction of that era is surely unrelated, as Greta Goede, 46, made off with a child in 1958, in a highly-publicized case.

  Detectives, at the time, made some reference to a child trafficking ring in the Middle East but Vera doesn't lay much faith in that possibility. She hopes that Rosemarie is still alive and might perhaps be led to her family through some sort of DNA test technology that is reuniting families nowadays. 

  Vera Doederlein has repeatedly appealed to Montreal police to share whatever information they have but they have thus far not responded.