Kestenberg Archive

RO (F), an only child, was born in 1928 in Berlin. They lived with her maternal grandparents who came from Graz. Her father and grandfather ran a business together from their apartment. Her father's two older sisters with whom he had no contact, immigrated to Palestine before the war. He felt German, fought at the age of 17 in WW I, earned an “Iron Cross” and had no intentions of leaving Germany. Her first childhood memory: playing quietly on the floor while her mother was playing Bach on the piano. She describes her childhood as pleasant and protected. Her grandfather taught her to read at the age of four. She went to a German elementary school. In the second grade, in 1937, she had to be transferred to a Jewish school. She remembers Kristallnacht, and remembers that every Jewish man had to add the name Israel and every woman the name Sarah to their first names, and that they had to wear a yellow star arm band. RO remembers the children's transports. ; Her parents sent her to her uncle in Stockholm in 1939, to be in a safer place. Her uncle had four children, all much older than herself. Today she still has brotherly relations with her cousins. At first she missed her parents badly but learned to hide her feelings because the atmosphere in her adoptive family home was cold and controlled, unlike the warmth in her parents' home. Her grandmother told her before she left not to forget her beautiful German. She lived in Stockholm with her relatives' family for several years, learned Swedish quickly and did well at school. RO received a letter from Theresienstadt that her father had killed himself and her grandparents, in their eighties, "died of natural causes". Her mother disappeared. She mourned first the separation from her parents and at the age of 14 - their death. Her best friend committed suicide at the age of 17 and RO couldn't stop crying and mourning over her, more than over her own parents. This was her first depression attack. She continues to suffer from severe depression, but is not taking any treatment. RO returned twice to Germany. Once in 1954 with some other girls with whom she lived in a boarding house, and again in 1957. She has no problem speaking German and visiting Germany. She married a Swedish Christian man. RO refused to baptize their children. At the time of the interview she belongs to the Jewish congregation in Stockholm. She hardly ever discussed her past with her children.