Mirjam Rosenstein

Mirjam Wolff-Rosenstein (née Rosenblum) was born on 3.3.1911 in Berlin. Her mother was Gertrud Rosenblum-Rosenthal (née Vogelsdorff), who was a director of a business. Gertrud was deported to Riga by the Nazis and was murdered on 9.5.1945. Gertrud's second husband was Erich Rosenthal, who was deported together with her. Mirjam's father was Hermann Rosenblum, and her siblings were Alexander Rosenblum and Eva Thea (Chava) Perls. All three children went to high school. Mirjam attended a Realschule in Berlin and left it in 1928. From 1928 to 1929 she attended a commercial school also in Berlin and worked as a stenotypist until 1931. Afterwards, she trained in social work at the Social Women’s School Berlin-Schöneberg founded by the social work pioneer Alice Salomon. Mirjam completed her studies in 1933. She was unemployed for two years and volunteered at HeChalutz – a Jewish youth movement that sought to prepare young people for emigration to the land of Israel in that time – before working as a social worker from 1935–1938 at the employment agency of the Jewish community. Mirjam emigrated first to the Netherlands in November 1938, then in summer 1939 to Palestine, to Kibbutz Giwath Brenner. In 1944 she married Michael Wolff, with whom she moved to the children’s and youth village Ben Shemen, which was founded in 1927 by the physician and pedagogue Siegfried Lehmann. In 1945, the couple had a daughter, Edna. After her husband's death in 1954, Mirjam moved to Jerusalem, and during the 1950s worked as a social worker with families. In 1958, she married Helmut Zwi Rosenstein (born in 1911, a piano teacher) and moved to Tivon. The date of Mirjam’s death is unknown.

Authors: Ayana Halpern, Dayana Lau