Ukrainian
Holocaust survivor Zeni Rosenstein is writing her memoirs. She asks Jerusalem
Online readers to help her financially so that she can make her dream of
publishing her memoirs a reality, so that future generations will know about
the Holocaust.
Jun 10, 2014, 09:00PM | Ra
Zeni Rosenstein is
almost eighty years and she is a Holocaust survivor. At her age,
she has but one dream in life and that is to publish her memoir about her life
experience during the Holocaust, so that future generations can learn the truth
that she experienced. The problem is that like many elderly
Holocaust survivors in Israel, she does not have the financial means to make
this dream a reality.
When I met her at a
Holocaust Memorial Day event in Tel Aviv on Holocaust Memorial Day this year, I
suggested to her that she try to raise funds from the Jewish community in order
for her to publish her memoirs. Since then, she has taken my advice, created a
website, and is in the process of raising the necessary funds to tell her story
to the entire world.
On her website, Zeni
wrote: “My story is a milestone on which the history of the Jewish people and
the state of Israel is built on. I wrote my biography since my childhood so
that the next generation will understand where we came from and what price we
paid with our lives as children and babies .We did not have even one good day
without punishments and endless tortures. Therefore my dream is to publish a
book of my biography dedicated to my family and especially to my little sister
who was brutally murdered in front of me when she was 4, and perpetuate their
memory through the book. Since I am not a person of means, I can do this only
with your generous help.”
As JerusalemOnline readers who read my first interview with Zeni Rosenstain
know, she has an incredible story to tell that is well worth the financial
investment. “When I was six year old (this was in 1941), I had a birthday. All
of my family was together. My grandmother made candies and cakes. We had
clowns,” Rosenstain described. She was living in Czernowitz, Ukraine; a place
that she claimed was like a “little Paris.” Then, “a disaster happened. They
took the Jews and put us in the ghetto.” Rosenstain clarified that the ghetto
for them was essentially just the synagogue, where all of the local Jews in the
area were confined, given yellow stars and special passports. “Our homes were
given to the anti-semitic Ukrainians,” she stressed.
Soon afterwards, all
of the Jews were transferred to a concentration camp. Rosenstain stressed that
she lived in a Ukrainian run and not a German run concentration camp. “They put
us in a horrible place. They put children to work taking gold from dead people.
They broke my finger for refusing to do this work,” Rosenstain stressed. “It
was very bad. There was no food. We couldn’t wash ourselves. They gave us
horrible punishments. All of the time they called us bloody Jews. People were
crying.” At one point, Rosenstein sneaked inside a German bathroom and drew a
picture of what the Germans did in the camp. Her mother was scared of
punishment and hid the picture, fearing what would happen if they were caught.
Rosenstain explained
that the hungRosenstain explained that the hunger situation was so atrocious
that she and other children in the camp were forced to look for food in the
trash can. “It was bad food, but we didn’t care,” she explained. Unfortunately,
the Germans caught them and brutally punished the children. They forced them to
stand on cold ice for 24-hours. All of the children that fell were placed in
gasoline and burnt to death. Rosenstain survived because she didn’t fall from
the ice. “All of them were murdered with no charge in 1943. It was sadistic
killing,” she emphasized.
The situation
drastically worsen944, when the Russians and the Americans were approaching.
“They took everyone out. They claimed that I was stolen from a Christian woman.
They said they would kill everyone if they didn’t tell the truth about the
blond child,” she explained. In the mindset of the racist Nazis, a Jewish woman
could not be the birth mother of a blond haired child that looked like Shirley
Temple. Because her family insisted that she was really their daughter,
Rosenstain’s sister would be beheaded in front of her entire family. “He
finished off the rest of the family with the pistol,” she stressed.
In total, her
grandmother, twIn total, her grandmother, two aunts, five cousins, and her
sister were murdered in front of her eyes. “I lost all of my family. They
finished their lives in a horrible situation,” she emphasized. Only Rosenstain
and her mother survived the incident. Her father would also survive the war,
because he was a partisan that was not with them at the time. However, after
the war, when her family looked for other relatives that survived the Holocaust,
the only relatives her family was able to locate were two sisters of her father
in Israel. Her mother wasn’t able to find any relatives that survived. As a
result, her family moved to Israel in 1950. The picture she drew did survive
the war however and is now at Yad Vashem.
Zeni told Jerusalem Online that she finished writing this
incredibly tragic yet important Holocaust story in her memoir and all she needs
is the funds for someone to edit it, to make it appear professional, and then
take care of the publishing costs. She calculated that she needs 16,000 NIS to
get the project done and right now, she has succeeded to raise 6,040 NIS. Zeni
assured that people who donate will be well-rewarded for doing such a mitzvah.
Aside from the spiritual rewards associated with helping out an elderly
Holocaust survivor in need and the benefits such a project has for preserving
Jewish history, the people who donated will receive a free autographed book and
the more who donated will receive a free autographed book and the more people
donate, the more they will receive in return. In order to donate to this
project, please click on her website here!
who donated will
receive a free autographed book and the more people donate, the more they will
receive in return. In order to donate to this project, please click on her website here!
