Two teenage girls pose together on the grounds of the Selvino children's home.
Overview
- Caption
- Two teenage girls pose together on the grounds of the Selvino children's home.
Ruth Rotenburg is on the left. On the right is Chana Scheiner. - Date
-
Circa 1945 - 1948
- Locale
- Selvino, Italy
- Variant Locale
- Sciesopoli
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ruth Goldstein
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Ruth GoldsteinSource Record ID: Collections: 2003.161.1
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Ruth Goldstein (born Ruth Rotenburg) was born in Berlin in 1932. At the end of 1938 her family was expelled to Poland. In 1939, on the heels of the German invasion of Poland, her family fled to the Soviet sector only to be deported later to Archangelsk, a Siberian labor camp. Though still a child, Ruth was given work chopping wood. Eventually, she, her brother and mother went to a collective farm in Uzbekistan. Tragically her mother died, and Ruth and her brother were sent to an orphanage in Sobkhiz where her brother died. Ruth spent the rest of the war in an agricultural school. She was the only Jewish child and faced antisemitism and abuse from the other children. Her father found her after the war and brought her with him to Kuybyshev, and in 1946 they returned to Poland. Ruth joined the Gordonia youth movement and stayed at their hachshara in Niemce. In the summer of 1946, some 250 children left Niemce, and three months later they arrived in the Selvino children's home. Ruth remained in Selvino until her eventual immigration to Palestine.
[Source: Megged, Aharon: The Story of the Selvino Children: Journey to the Promised Land; London, Valentine Mitchell, 2002; pp. 143-148]
Nusia Klinghoffer (born Chana Scheiner) is the daughter of Tuvia Scheiner and Sima Wieselberg Scheiner. She was born in Bukaczowce. Poland in 1931. Her younger sister Danusia was born in 1938. After the German invasion of Poland all the Jews were rounded up from the surrounding area and sent to a ghetto in Bukaczowce. Soon that ghetto was liquidated, and Nusia and her family were sent to larger ghettos first in Rohatyn and then in Przemyslany. There, her world disintegrated. When Chana was only eleven, her parents and younger sister were killed, and she was sent to Mauthausen. After liberation Chana went to Niemce in Lower Silesia where she joined a Gordonia training camp. Hemda Auerbach headed the group of 250 orphans and became their surrogate mother. Chana, then 15 years-old, led the group of youngest children. In the summer of 1946 the 250 children left Niemce and traveled through Bremer, Czechoslovakia to Stzobl, Austria. They then made their way to Italy and arrived in the Selvino children's home in December 1946. There a surviving cousin of father tracked her down. He connected her with Tuvia’s two sisters and brother who had left Poland before the war and were living in the United Sates. Chana left Selvino in 1947 along with seven other teenagers who had found relatives in the United States or Canada. They were tansferred to a displaced persons camp in Cremona and Trani. Chana immigrated to the United States on May 15, 1950.
- Record last modified:
- 2008-09-15 00:00:00
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1144132
