Rosa Rosenstein in her apartment in Vienna

Rosa Rosenstein in her apartment in Vienna

This is me in my apartment in Vienna in the 1990s. As you can see, I still treat myself to a cigarette from time to time. I am very old, that's probably in the genes because all my siblings are still alive, too. I am the oldest, but the others are already very old as well. I am the only one of the siblings who lives in Vienna, all the others live in Israel. My son Zwi and his family live in Vienna though, and so does Dorith, the daughter of my daughter Lilly, and her family. Once I went to Berlin with my sister; back then it was still divided into East and West Berlin. We had an acquaintance from our youth, a neighbor, Sali, who was already in the West, and we wanted to go to East Berlin, our home. You had to change 25 marks into East German marks. And he said, 'For God's sake, don't go, who knows what's going to happen to you there, you may get into trouble.' And he talked us out of it. Later I was in East Berlin with my granddaughter. And I didn't go to the house where we used to live; I simply couldn't.
Open this page