Zwi Rosenwein (Cwi) was born to Moshe Baruch (b. 1884, Czestochowa) and Hinda Devorah Rosenwein (née Dudek, b. 1887, Klabuzke) on December 6, 1918 in Czestochowa. The family was very religiously observant. Zwi spent much of his early childhood in a hospital due to various illnesses, but did well in school and joined the Gordania organization. After the German invasion in 1939, he joined a group of friends who left for Krakow, but when he was unable to escape into Russian territory, he returned to Czestochowa. As a forced laborer, he joined the workers council, which challenged the Judenrat for better wages and bread distribution. He participated in a successful hunger strike in December 1940. In the fall of 1942, after avoiding the mass deportations from Czestochowa, Zwi escaped the ghetto and made his way to relatives in Bendin, where he spent five months. Due to his contacts on the workers' council, Zwi's personal information was sent to Nathan Schwalb and Adolf Silberschein in Switzerland, who sent Paraguayan protective papers. A group of people in Bendin with papers were arrested, briefly detained in prison, and then sent to Tittmoning. He maintained contact with Nathan Schwalb in Switzerland. In the summer of 1945, he was transferred to Laufen, and then to Spital. They were sent back to Laufen in January 1945 and were liberated there on May 5, 1945. With a group of other newly liberated prisoners, he led a group of American soldiers to liberate the camp of Liebenau. Zwi took control of the camp's administration and lived there for four months. he transferred to the Ainring displaced persons camp and worked in the administration. In December, the camp was closed and the survivors moved to Lechfeld. He was very involved in the Jewish Central Committee in Munich. In 1950, he arrived in the United States.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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The Zvi Rosenwein collection is arranged in a single series.
The Zvi Rosenwein collection consists of documents, postcards, and photographs relating to Zvi (Zwi, Cvi) Rosenwein's internment in Tittmoning civilian internment camp and to his work in the Liebenau displaced persons camp in Laufen, Germany. The collection includes original postcards and letters, mainly circa 1943-1945 from friends, relatives, and associates in Switzerland, Budapest, the Łódź ghetto, Palestine, and other locations. Includes a series of original correspondence, much of it using coded language, with Nathan Schwalb in Switzerland and Josef Kraus in Budapest. Also includes an English-language translation of Mr. Rosenwein's 2000 untitled memoir about his childhood in Poland, experiences in the worker's circle, acquisition of Paraguayan papers, and internment in Tittmoning, Liebenau, and Spital, as well as his work managing displaced persons camps after the war.
Zvi Rosenwein collection