Pinus Rubinstein collection

Pinus Rubinstein (1888-1963) was born on February 4, 1888, in or near Sadagora (present day Sadhora, Ukraine), where he lived as a child. He served in the Austrian army during World War I, during which he married his wife, Pepi, in 1915, and returned to Czernowitz after the war. They had two sons, Edouard, or Edi (later Eli), and Bubi (later Mordechai). Prinus worked as a hair stylist, and was president of the hair stylists' association in Czernowitz during the 1930s.

In 1939, the two sons, Edi and Bubi, were conscripted into the Romanian army. When northern Bukovina was ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940, the sons were allowed to return to Czernowitz, and the family was still living there when the invasion of the Soviet Union started in June 1941, with Romanian and German forces occupying Bukovina. Both sons had again been conscripted in the army—this time the Red Army—and were captured by the Germans, but were allowed to return home, and one of them secured his release by claiming to be a Volksdeutscher (ethnic German). In October 1941, the Rubinstein’s were forced into a ghetto with the approximately 60,000 other Jews living in Czernowitz, but after a few weeks, they were allowed to return to their apartment and were allowed to open their businesses once again. They watched nervously though as several transports of Jews were sent from their neighborhood to Transnistria and elsewhere in the following months, and were fearful that they would be included on an upcoming transport, although they never were. Instead, they were forced to move once again into the ghetto in Czernowitz in November 1942, where they remained until the Red Army liberated the city at the end of March 1944.

Following liberation, the family initially remained in Czernowitz, which once again was part of the Soviet Union. Edi was arrested and sent to a camp in Siberia for the following year, but upon his release, the family decided to leave Czernowitz, with Bubi (Mordechai) and his family having already left for Palestine. Pinus and his wife, along with Edi and his wife, left initially for Romania in 1946, living in Bacau and Satu Mare, but in subsequent years moved to Austria and Italy, living in displaced persons camp in the latter country during 1948 until they were able to leave for Israel in early 1949, and reunite with Mordechai and his family. Rubinstein settled in Beit She'an, where he founded the organization Poale Tsedek ("Workers of Justice"), and wrote and published a book about Sadagora (under his adopted name of Ben-Saar) titled "Der jüdische Vatikan von Sadagora, 1850-1950," memorializing the Jewish community of his hometown. Rubinstein died in Beit She'an on December 19, 1963.