In the kick-off workshop of "HerStories" in Berlin, we discovered the stories of Jewish women in 20th century Berlin together with students from Hamburg and Berlin. First, we addressed the question of why it is important to focus on the life stories of Jewish women, especially personal narratives. Later, in a workshop unit, the students created potential social media posts on five women from the HerStories project, in which they focused on the women's stories.
On a walking tour of Berlin-Mitte, we followed in the footsteps of Rosa Rosenstein: She grew up in Berlin-Mitte with her parents and three siblings, worked in her father's tailor shop, and went to school and synagogue. After Hitler's seizure of power laid the foundation for the later exclusion of Jews from German society - later followed by persecution, forced labor, deportation and systematic murder - Rosa fled to Budapest, where she survived the war in hiding. In her interview with Centropa in 2002, she told her life story and that of her family. The city tour focused on places in Berlin-Mitte that were significant in Rosa Rosenstein's life, at which passages from her memoirs were read by the students.
