Yellow cloth Star of David badge with Juif for Jew worn by a Polish refugee in Paris

Esther Feld was born on December 22, 1940, in Paris, France, to Max and Raisa (Rose) Steinberg Feld. Max, born on January 6, 1915, in Berlin, Germany, and Raisa, born on April 1, 1917, in Kiev, Russia (Ukraine), had met as students at the Israelite School for the Deaf in Berlin, Germany. Raisa had emigrated with her family from Germany to Paris in 1938. Max joined her there and they married in December 1939. After Paris fell to the Germans on June 14, 1940, anti-Jewish regulations were enacted and foreign Jews were targeted for arrest. Her father was deported to Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp in May 1941 and transported to Birkenau concentration camp in July 1942. Her mother was assigned to a clothing factory, sewing fur coats for German officers. In July 1942, a French policeman warned Raisa that she should leave Paris. Raisa and Esther left Paris with Raisa’s mother and sister, Tauba and Sara Steinberg. The family had a summer home in nearby Villepointe and after staying at multiple farmhouses in the countryside, they decided to hide there. Esther was put in the care of a babysitter and then a non-Jewish couple, Monsieur and Madame Trene, a nurse. Raisa, Tauba, and Sara hid in the basement under a vault and a trap door. They lived this way for about nine months, until American soldiers came into the house in the summer of 1944 to tell them that they were free. Madame Trene did not want to give Esther back to Raisa. But after repeated demands by Raisa, Madame Trene thrust Esther at Raisa. The family returned to Paris where they found that their apartment had been emptied of all its contents. Max never returned and it was not until many years later that they learned that at age twenty-seven, he had been killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau in September 1942. In 1947, the Venezuelan government announced that they would accept 2000 Jewish refugees from Paris. Esther, Raisa, Tauba, and Sara emigrated that year. In 1949, Esther and Raisa moved to New York. Raisa married Ted Rosman. Esther moved to California in 1963, where she married and had two sons.

Raisa Steinberg was born on April 1, 1917, in Kiev, USSR (Ukraine) to Michel, born in Pinsk, Poland, on June 26, 1879, and Tauba Ducat, born in Kiev, Russia, on November 17, 1890. The family was Jewish and kept kosher. Raisa had two older sisters, Clara, born on December 19, 1909, and Sara, born on April 13, 1915. Her father was a furrier but the business that was confiscated during the Communist Revolution in 1917. When Raisa was three, she lost her hearing due to illness. In 1921, the family moved to Pinsk; they were issued new birth certificates that listed their birth place as Pinsk. The family then moved to Warsaw, Poland, and the business was reestablished. Her parents sent her to the Israelite School for the Deaf (Hebrew Institute of the Deaf) in Berlin, Germany, in 1923. She met Max Feld, born on January 7, 1915, in Berlin. Raisa graduated in 1932 and then enrolled in a private high school. However, in 1933, after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, her father had Raisa rejoin the family in Warsaw. In 1935, because increasing anti-Semitism was making it very difficult to make a living in Poland, Michel moved to Paris, taking several sewing machines with him to reestablish the family fur business. Tauba managed to reach Poland the next year by travelling via the North Sea. Raisa and her sisters sold the house and its contents and stayed with friends. In 1937, their father told them to take the train to Brussels where they would meet a friend of his who would help them get to Paris. They bought Belgian papers in Brussels and then their father’s friend drove them to Paris. Raisa had stopped in Berlin to visit Max Feld, her friend from the Israelite School for the Deaf. At the end of the year, the Feld family decided to leave Germany for South America. They stopped over in Paris and Raisa and Max became engaged. Her family did not want her to go to South America, so Max remained in Paris. Max’s parents and his two brothers eventually moved to the United States. They married on December 26th, 1939. In June 1940, France surrendered to Germany. Paris was occupied by the Germans and ant-Jewish regulations were put in place restricting their movements, and establishing curfews and food rationing. Foreign Jews were especially vulnerable and often arrested and imprisoned. Max and Raisa’s daughter, Esther, was born on December 22, 1940. Max and Raisa gathered their photographs and other important documents and placed them in a suitcase a suitcase which they entrusted to non-Jewish friends, Marcel and Marcelle Demay. In May 1941, Max was imprisoned in Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp. Her father’s factory was confiscated by the Germans. Raisa was assigned to work in a factory sewing fur coats for the German army. The seamstresses were given five needles and told that if they lost or broke them all, they would be deported to a concentration camp. Her sister, Sara, was assigned to dye the material. Their mother got false papers for Raisa under the name Marcelle Gilbert in order to obtain more food coupons. Her father, Michel, was arrested one day when he forgot to wear his Star of David badge. He was sent to Drancy internment camp and later deported. Raisa was detained when she went to get her passport renewed, but she was released after twenty-four hours. After the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, deportations from France to concentration camps in Germany and Poland became increasingly frequent. Raisa had been able to visit Max three times at the camp. In the summer of 1942, Raisa received a letter from Max telling her that he was being deported. That July, as Raisa and her mother were walking to the factory, a French policeman them they should leave and not to go inside. The family had a summer home in Villepinte (Seine-et-Oise), north of Paris where Raisa, Esther, her mother, and her sister, Sara, decided to go into hiding. They hid in multiple farmhouses in the countryside but when, because of an increased Gestapo presence, they could no longer find someone to hide them, they returned to their summer house. Esther lived with one babysitter for a while and then with a non-Jewish couple, Monsieur and Madame Trene, a nurse, who would claim that the baby was their own. Raisa, Tauba, and Sara lived in the basement under a vault and a trap door. Madame Trene would bring them food at night and they lived underground for nine months. Paris was liberated on August 15, 1944, and not long after that, American soldiers came into the house and told them that they were free. Madam Trene did not want to give Esther back, but after a couple days of arguments and repeated demands from Raisa, she threw Esther to her. They stayed in Villipointe until February 1945, and then returned to their apartment in Paris which had been damaged and emptied of all its contents. Their neighbors were very glad that the family had returned Max had left with them. The family was told that Max was missing. It would be several years before they learned that he had been deported on June 6, 1942 and killed at age twenty-seven years that September in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Her father had been deported on September 14, 1942, on transport 32 from Drancy to Auschwitz-Birkenau where he was killed. Raisa was visited in Pairs by Sigi Feld, Max’s younger brother, who was a soldier in the United States Army, as was another brother, Alfred. In 1947, the Venezuelan consulate announced that they would accept 2000 Jewish refugees from Paris. Raisa, Esther, Tauba, and Sara emigrated that year. They had a three month visa to visit Max’s family in New York and were finally able to get passage on a small freighter, Nanny’s Lines, which took them to Galveston, Texas. Her sister, Clara, moved to the United States. Raisa and Esther moved to New York in 1950. She changed her name to Rose and married Tibor (Teddy) Rosman, a hearing impaired Hungarian Jew, (1908-1981) though they later divorced. Her mother and sister later moved t the US as well. Rose passed away on November 24, 2001.

The Star of David badge was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005 by Esther Feld Weisel, the daughter of Rose Feld-Rosman.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Esther Feld Weisel