Rachela Rottenberg papers

Rachela Rottenberg (1920-1995) was born in Sandomierz, Poland and was raised in Radom. Her family fled to Warsaw when Germany invaded Poland. She and her mother returned to German-occupied Radom after Poland surrendered. Her father and brother ended up in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. Rachela and her mother were forced into the ghetto at Radom, were selected for slave labor, and escaped. They lived in Warsaw under false identities, Rachela using first “Halina Latoszewska” and later “Marianna Brus” or “Maria Bruśnicka.” She was separated from her mother in the streets during the Polish uprising in 1944 and never saw her again. After the war, she was reunited with her father and brother who had survived in Soviet Asia. She immigrated to the United States in 1947 and married Othmar Gabriel. The Rachela Rottenberg papers consist of identification papers and certificates documenting the life of a Polish woman living under a false identity in Warsaw during the war, antisemitism in Radom at the end of the war, and her stay at the displaced persons camp in Stuttgart, work for UNRRA, and immigration to the United States after the war.