This is me, Rimma Rozenberg. This photo was taken in Odessa in 1931, when I was three years old. I am enjoying my favorite pastime in the living room of our apartment playing with my father's chess set.
I was born in Odessa in 1928. My parents lived in an apartment at 28 Kanatnaya Street. My first childhood memory is as follows: I am throwing toys out of the window. We were quite wealthy and I had many toys while other children, I noticed, didn't have any and I decided to share mine with them in this way.
I didn't go to kindergarten, but I attended a group with Maria Ivanovna, a russified German lady, a Froebel tutor. For some reason we couldn't get together in her apartment, so we gathered in her pupils' apartments; every day with a different family. Maria Ivanovna taught us German and music. We had a noise orchestra where I played the castanets.
I learned to read at the age of four. We had Russian newspapers that were kept on a window sill, so I learned to read from them. I played with my friend Truda Zolotaryova, a Jewish girl, sitting under the staircase making up stories. I was quite a dreamer and plotted new games. When I turned six, I had a German teacher who visited me at home. As a result, I got a good grasp of German.
Rimma Rozenberg
The Centropa Collection at USHMM
The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.
Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC".
Please contact collection [at] centropa.org (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).