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Two teenage girls pose together in the snow outside the Selvino children's home. The Italian Alps can be seen in the background.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 49449
Two teenage girls pose together in the snow outside the Selvino children's home. The Italian Alps can be seen in the background.

Two teenage girls pose together in the snow outside the Selvino children's home. The Italian Alps can be seen in the background.

Date
Circa 1945 - 1948
Locale
Selvino, Italy
Variant Locale
Sciesopoli
Photo Designation
DISPLACED PERSONS/RETURN TO LIFE -- Orphans/Children's Homes/Summer Camps -- Italy -- Selvino
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ruth Goldstein

About This Photograph

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]

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Ruth Goldstein
Source Record ID: Collections: 2003.161.1
 
Record last modified: 2008-09-15 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1144133