Rosa Rosenstein with her sisters and friends in Bad Buckow

Here you can see me with my sister and friends. The picture was taken during a trip to Bad Buckow in August 1926. All my siblings were in Jewish organizations with Zionist tendencies. There were German Jews who said, 'For God's sake, this is no place for us, our home is Germany.' But for us, it was different, after all we were Poles. I was in the Jewish sports club Bar Kochba. It was a Jewish association, half sports, half entertainment. In the summer we trained in Grunewald, doing track and field athletics, in the winter we were in the gymnasium. I was afraid of climbing the pole or balancing on the parallel bars, but I enjoyed other games such as dodge ball and medicine ball. As you know, Berlin has wonderful lakes. On Wednesday we always went out in paddleboats, and we also went canoeing. I couldn't swim, but we went rowing. I started learning swimming three times, but gave up after the third time. When I tried for the first time, the swimming instructor held me on a fishing-rod and I had to do the movements. The second time, I got a board and I had to push that board ahead of me. In the end, the instructor said, 'And now without the board.' That I didn't do. I was a coward. I was afraid, I do admit, but such is life.