- Biography
- Rita Rubinstein (born Rifka Lifschitz) is the daughter of Tabel (later Tina Neufeld) Meerbaum Lifschitz (b.1913) and Avraham David Lifschitz. Rifka was born on December 12, 1936 in Vascauti, Romania where her father wove and sold textiles. At the start of World War II, Avraham David was drafted into the Russian army and never returned. Tabel and Rifka were deported to Transnistria along with Tabel's sister Bayla Meerbaum and Avraham's mother, Tzirel Lifschitz. The family settled in a small ghetto in Shargorot where they subsided under conditions of starvation. Tzirel perished in Transnistria. Four of Tabel's siblings Shmuel, Yita, Manusa, and Esther, were murdered in Millie (Romania), as were their parents, Zev and Sura Brana Meerbaum. Following liberation Tabel, Rifka and Bayla returned to Romania where they lived for a year before making their way to the American zone with the help of Bricha guides. The women came to Feldafing. Bayla married Shlomo Szebrynski (Sol Sabrin), and they immigrated to the United States in 1947. Tabel remarried Leo Neufeld, and in 1949 Rifka, her mother and step-father immigrated to the United States. Rita later married Nathan (Naftali) Rubinstein, a Holocaust survivor who was born in Pulawy on October 14, 1934 and spent the war in the Soviet Union.