This photo of me wearing a new dress was taken in Odessa in 1950. I must have looked lovely since my father's acquaintance, who came by, asked me to sit at the piano and took a picture of me with a bouquet of peonies in the background.
I graduated from the music school with honors, though, frankly speaking, I was a weak pianist. I couldn't play note literature confidently. I couldn't rely on my memory and for this reason I preferred to improvise on stage. In 1950 I entered the second year of two faculties of the Conservatory: the piano and theory of music.
At the university, the head of the Department of Russian language, Professor Butkevich, convinced me to write a diploma on the ancient Russian language under his guidance and promised to support me with my post graduate studies. This was the period of struggle against cosmopolitanism and it was a chance for me to pursue my scientific career, but I didn't take to it. A language career was boring to me. Besides, this was the beginning of a romance with my husband to be and I couldn't continue studying in three faculties, so I left the Piano Faculty.
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).