Katty Rosenstock
Katty Rosenstock was born in 1956 in San Jose, Costa Rica. Both of her parents came to Costa Rica as teenagers, following grandparents who had emigrated from Poland. Her father's family came from a small shtetl near Warsaw, and her mother's family came from Lukow, a somewhat larger town. Facing rising antisemitism and severe poverty, her paternal grandfather Dov (last name transcribed as Rochwerger) was among the earliest of the 1930s wave of Jews to reach Costa Rica, arriving through the Caribbean port of Limon. He married Sarah, who kept a kosher house that welcomed many newly arrived men. A winning Panamanian lottery ticket allowed her father's family to bring everyone over at once, while her mother's family, bringing relatives one at a time, lost two of her mother's sisters and their families in the Holocaust, including an uncle who was a shochet.
Katty grew up immersed in Costa Rica's small but vibrant Jewish community, attending a Jewish school from preschool through high school and graduating in one of its earliest classes. She met her future husband, Julio Rosenstock, through a Zionist youth scouting group where he was a leader; he had traveled to Israel during the Six-Day War. They married in 1975 and spent a year in a coffee town, San Marcos de Tarrazu, for Julio's required social service. The couple later received scholarships to study in London, where Katty earned a master's degree in population studies through the World Health Organization and Julio trained in endocrinology.
About 40 years before the interview, the family moved to Dallas when Julio joined UT Southwestern, joining his brother David, a rheumatologist, who already lived there. Their daughter Javi was born in Dallas, and the family enrolled their children at Solomon Schechter, then in Sherith Israel, where Katty felt immediately welcomed among a community of fellow immigrant families. Katty's oldest brother Henry died young after polio, and she has a sister, Susie, and a brother, Benny, an engineer living in Israel. Devoted to family, Katty gathers her children and grandchildren, and made memorable journeys back to Poland, including one with the March of the Living, to visit her ancestral towns and honor her family's history. She treasures both her Jewish and Latin American roots and considers Dallas, like Costa Rica before it, a warm and welcoming home.
Full Transcript
name is fonda are better and i am interviewing kathy rosenstock for the one story at a time project viva shalom celebrating latin american jews in dallas hello kathy hi will you please tell us where you're from originally i'm originally from san jose costa rica and talk about when and why your family originally immigrated to costa rica my both of my parents came to costa rica as teenagers my grandfather my two grandparents my grandfathers in both sides came along before from poland my fa my grandfather from my father's side come from a little town little shtetl a close to warsaw called a jello hove he came
in the earliest ferriss one of the first second a group of jews that came to costa rica the first group of jews that came to costa rica came in the in the 1800s and then they assimilated they didn't build a community my father was one of the first ones they came from this town that i'm telling you they were they went to look for a place to run away and costa rica was offering a visa they had no idea where they were going and they just got in the boat and came to costa rica why why did they not why did they get a sense
that poland wasn't good for them long term well basically what i understood there was a lot of antisemitism going around in the 1800s we were talking about the theories the first group of jews that came came from they are sephardic jews and that community doesn't exist they disappeared they assimilated the second group of jews that came to costa rica came in the early 30s most of them came actually from the same little stretcher that my parents came from i mean the the so they recognized early on that poland was not going to be good for them for what i understand there was a lot of
financial issues also like the state where my father came from they were very close to the russian a frontier they doing the first war they were the ones making the boots for the russian army once the war was over that was no longer a business so they they just were very poor they were looking for new opportunities they all have very big families my grandfather came first then a actually there is a story that he arrived in colombia and there were people from his town in colombia they told him to stay in colombia and he stayed he started working and they put him in jail
because he was illegal so he had to wait in jail until the next boat came and he arrived in costa rica um he was my father was the oldest he saved money for a few years and brought my father that was 18 years old the oldest of the family the story of my of my on my father's side of the family is really interesting in this sense that they were six more children and it would have take a very long time for the family to save the money to to bring everybody and my grandfather played the lottery from panama and won the first prize and
that money uh saved my family safe they were able to come to or to bring the whole family to costa rica so what is your grandfather's name my grandfather's name was dolph zvelen d-o-v last name brock berger r-o-c-h-w-e-r-g-e-r and how who did he marry he married sarah rose and this is the picture of this spell oh spell rose to can you see this is my rock burger grandparents and r o s g o s w i t c okay something like that that's my friend and what is this picture up this is a picture of a they were already in costa rica in 1950 is
this an anniversary book no this is a the story of my family actually here there are a lot of who can have this but the family we we were this is a very interesting picture i don't know if there is a way to show it here this is the whole family back in poland and what how do you spell the city that you're from germany jello you h o w so if you see that picture this is the house that i actually find when i went to poland with the picture a and these are all the children and they were shoemakers and they are barefoot
that tells you how poor they were okay on my mother's side my grandfather my mother's side my mother family is from the next chapter that is a big a little bit bigger city i i actually was very lucky to go and visit the two cities did they meet in poland um my grandparents yeah yeah they have all these kids okay how many kids do they have in poland um six seven six okay and they my my grandfather so my mother's side is from lucof l-u-k-o-w that is a little bit of much more of a city i had the privilege to be in both places i
find a lot of memories from my family my grandfather was a from my father's side from what i hear at that time the jews were communists zionists or orthodox that was the three choices my father's they were all communists from my father my side of the family the title bombs they were a little bit more better off actually when i visited town they had a building they have rentals they were and he was very very religious so my grandfather from my mother's side came to the port of limon that is in the caribbean in the boat the same reasons they were running away from right
wait wait tell me this again you're they got in a boat to the caribbean no they costa rica has coast in caribbean okay so that's how it came he came to limon is the port where the boat comes they all came the other way let me get this straight yeah who was on the boat well exactly first by my grandfather from my father's side your father's father was the first person not the first one of the first of the to come to costa rica correct on my my grandfather also came along the same plan they come along but no they were not in the same
boat my was a very orthodox mom okay so he arrived in this tropical place hot and humid with the long beard and the heart that the the whole they were accepted they when he got to costa rica he has never worked in his life he was a tournament he was studying torah all his life he was never happy about it and he was the first rabbi in that community my grandfather he was not a rabbi but he was sort of you spelled his name before my that was the way they spell it when they got there who knows how how he got today so he
works a few years he hated the whole costa rican yeah he worked with a horse he had the big coat all of what he believed for that source totally out of place he brought my uncle my uncle moises that was a uh starting to be a ah a sofia again writes taurus huh he wrote tours yeah right so they were very very religious people so my my uncle also came to work and a little bit misplaced you know the the experience of my father when he got to costa rica he was very liberating for him the people were very nice costa rican people were always
very welcome to jews and my father felt like everybody was a jewish it looks like everybody said you costa rica there are 3 000 jews but if you ask a boy they will tell you that they i mean the jews let me ask you something who who's the the first person that figured out that costa rica would accept jews i have no idea that i have no idea my father used to say that they went to a an office in warsaw and they were looking for a place to go so like a consulate they had no no no it was like an agency to go
out and they will give you a list of places and there was a quote up to them and they were all coming to america basically but they didn't make it my father's side of the family they were all safe because of the lottery ticket that they play forever the same number by father and by the uncles because it saves their life my mother's side of the family they keep working and working to bring one at the time my he was able to bring the daughters that were single the two daughters that were married one he was the shohen and he made the the the kosher
mate because he was supposed to get in the boat on a saturday and he refuses so he was killed with six children and the other one just they didn't have the money they were doing it by steps and the oldest one had two children and she was killed with her husband so you have a family that was killed my mother's two sisters and their families were killing me but half your family escaped yeah because where they were doing it like slowly because it's money they had to have the ticket for the boat and they have to pay for all these stuff and they would they
they will tell you the story that they would bring a blanket to the president to sign the paper shortly for the visa and they were doing it slowly my father's side was lucky that they he with the lottery i brought everybody at the same time otherwise it took a long time and in costa rica you don't know if if the other costa rican dallas side told you this story but they just came to be a clappers you know what clappers they were they helped the germans no clapper does it where they make a living they will buy let's say four blankets and they will go
house to house selling the the the blankets and the population was so poor they couldn't pay the dress colloids that the blanket caused so they will sell it credit okay so they they said that the jews established the credit system in because they like my grandfather first he went go on a horse he goes to this house so he make a point this is the yellow house across the thing or whatever and they put 20 cents at 20 cents and that's how they they the population of the country got access to stuff that they never had before because they were very poor and that did
they make the blankets no they bought them but they were give them on credit and they come every week and make the rounds and charge i still remember my father's i don't i i was not alive but my fight was a clapper but i remember the cards there's a card they had yellow house on the corridor they will be three colors and they paid 25 this week and 25 and that's how they make their body so what year did your grandfather come to costa rica i think nineteenth third and your uh mother's family came close to this i don't i cannot i cannot say which
one came first but around the same time i know that my this this grandma of mine was sarah she had the the kosher house most of them were just men that came to make a living and bring their family so they all stay at my grandma's and she was in charge of the caution food all right show me some of the other pictures uh okay these gentleman right here what did i do this one this one here is my mother's father and tell me his name is was a very severe religion he was a rabbi he was devout for a while because they did he
got his beard yeah well he this is probably many years later you know and they they were i i have a lot of respect for all of them because they well the first thing they did they did a every question to to i got a little place to verdi and they did their little social area with their shoes they make sure that there was always a minion if somebody has to say guys and being such a small community well i went to a jewish school from preschool to high school half the spanish of the hebrew and they they had the vision and their pride and
they were very poor they were making a living but they really wanted to establish the jewish world so they had teachers they brought teachers to teach the kids fast and slowly slowly i am the number four graduation from the school to school before class before class yeah so my father was very involved with the board of the centuries tell me about your siblings okay my parents they got married in costa rica they came my mother was 12 my father was 18 when they came they were very few so you they make a cheetah between them my mother always used to say that if they were
in poland they would have never accepted my father because he was not religious okay so but but it was jewish yeah you make whatever you have i mean my parents had a very hard life my oldest brother a henry that is this one this is henry he got polio in the 50s he was so loose in a wheelchair is he living now when he was 16 and i was four he had a surgery that we because he was in a lot of pain and he passed so that's my oldest brother then i have my sister susie was there a lot of polio in costa rica
i asked you that was before the vaccine okay so yeah in the 50s there was a lot of leo here too my brother my father it took my brother to the united states uh and he was in a hospital in a a how do you call it one of those that helped them with the pain and everything for six years we have we have it's a funny story because when my number five granddaughter was born uh she's they live in new york so i she was born i figured out that she was born in the hospital in the upper west side where henry was everyone
oh wow so they've missed my sister susie where's susie's picture picture and where's susie living and she married she's married to bill and she has four children and one of them lives here moshe is married to the jacobson daughter to lauren esme is my sister's children so your nephew is married to esme's dark all right right yeah and i make this i did i make this yeah so that's so nice yeah that's my sister and we're very close they were very close siblings by between my sister and me there was another brother that was mentally and he passed a few years ago and this is
this is how old was he he passed he was like 16 16 16 60 yeah he was an adult he was an adult yeah and any others and then my baby brother after those problems my parents had a i have a brother eight years younger than me okay he lives in israel and what's his name benny benny this is benny this is my parents wait ben is married yeah ben is married and he when he in costa rica there is a tradition that when the jewish kids finish high school they go for a year of action of course a gap year yeah in israel right
so my brother was very very bright he always said that he wanted to live in israel and he got the during that year he got ready to enter the technion which is like the mit yeah in israel and he got in so these days and he married gila okay she's from istanbul okay he was a classmate they have two kids that's well this is a very old picture this is gal and karen karen is a doctor in bercheva and she has a little girl one and a half years old and is pregnant finishing so what does your brother do my brother is an engineer he
he works for many many years for ibm and gala works for it for the another one of the big they have the same type of job but now they have changed they live in a beautiful place south of haifa okay and but they also have an apartment in tel aviv so tell me about your children okay my child well you don't want to hear about my husband not yet okay these are my three kids he is going to be 44 is he the oldest this is he is 40 and this is so 44 40 and 34. they are all very he lives in new york and this is his second wife sarah eli is my oldest grandchild from the first marriage and this is alexandra beautiful she he's six no seven and she is a little bit older than having since almost two years old in september then around is um sarah is an attorney too two attorneys and then two doctors here this is a rod and his family i don't know if you can see the picture well he's an oncologist and she's an obgyn and they live in boston in boston they have leave that is six years old going to 25.
and then they have the twins that are going to be fourteen next week four beautiful yeah they have a beautiful probably really nice i mean javi and in marketing in the fashion business uh the max is an attorney they live here in dallas and they have the little boy noah that is a year 14 months no 15 months now wait javi's in the fashion business yeah what does she do she worked for stanley culture stanley courgette yeah she works for very many years for demons and now she's kind of she was with layman's yeah for very many years since she was a little girl she's
always worked with us but she went they vetted american university and she lived in philadelphia for a while and then finally they decided to come home because i didn't have anybody here because they wanted to come and she started working for for sally koshy okay tell me a little bit about julio and when how you got married uh when you got married where you met julio julia's family originally came from galicia in poland his father came from galicia his body is from warsaw they immigrate from poland to argentina originally and where did you meet julia what is that picture of julia's family here is julia's
family when my brother david my brother david a was born in argentina but julio's father lived in costa rica julio's brother lives in costa rica and he was doing very well so he asked his brother to come and they moved to costa rica and julio was born in costa rica he was a he lived when he was a little kid in another province and then when he was a teenager that moved to san jose and we met in the we they had a very at that point and we had like a zionist scouts like an organization for kids and he was very involved he was
the head here and of course you fall in love with the head of the police he went to israel during the six-day war and came back and was the leader of the scientist and that's how we beat that i think i know him since i was a little girl i think we got married in 1975 and we had doctors in costa rica need to do a year of social service before they become officially doctors so we we got married because i wanted to go with him and i was very young and they wouldn't let me go right so we spent a year in a little
town a coffee town like two hours from san jose a call san marco de tabasu we lived there for a year and then he moved back to san jose where i finished my studies and he finished his presidency and we had our first child there he was born in costa rica then um we both got a scholarship to go to england to study i did my master's there indiana in england london oh in england in london london so i did my master's there and julio did what did you study i studied population studies i did i was i had a ba in sociology i did
from from which college from costa rica and the name i what's the name of the college university of costa rica okay that's what i did my first degree and my second degree i studied two more years and it was a combining degree called sociale de la salud like social sciences health okay and then from there i got a a scholarship from the world health organization to study population studies in london and julio did his endocrinology and how did y'all come to america right so we we went there for three years my second son is british yeah we brought him back to costa rica when he
was eight days old the boy he traveled with an eight day yeah all to costa rica back to costa rica the way but we went to buy abby first but the boyle didn't wanted to do the breeze he said i am not doing a breeze and you're taking him to the other side of the wall so we stay we stay in bayabi for a few days and then he was like three weeks old when he got his cut yeah you need to be young to do those things we stay in costa rica that's a story that's a story i know i have a very big
work family there actually at one point i had the biggest family costa rica everybody was related to me and we love costa rica we love growing up it was very special times very warm very family no it's not it's home it's home it was hard for me to go to england it was really hard but then we were looking forward to come back home at that time we arrived in costa rica was a very huge financial price for costa rica at julio always wanted to come and to the states and in order for a physician to to be able to practice here you need to
take like three million tests and he was always touching them and finally he finished so he came for an interview here uh he julius brother lives in dallas he has a brother he's a robotologist a rheumatologist what's his name david david baby david in rosenstein yeah he was eventualist for a long time but now he is in duncanville um still in practice still practices she's six years older than julio so we tried to come to that julio got a position with the southwestern and we said okay let's try it that is 40 years later so they they brought a man from costa rica yeah so
we decided it was really hard for me to leave costa rica we have to stay very close we have very good purpose that at least once a year we will come the kids always vacation in costa rica they speak spanish they they know all these stories that i'm telling you because for us it's very important that they know their roots um let me see hold on one second um hold on one second tell me um about that what it was like at the beginning of your life in dallas uh your introduction to jewish life here uh was it the school was it the synagogue what
happened i always lived very immersed in jewish life immersed absolutely i always say it was socially religiously very excited absolutely so we had two little boys at that point javi was born in dallas i have three different nationalities in my family so we came poor okay we couldn't afford a whole lot of things but in jewish studies a new doctor started starting out yeah yes so for us it was very important that the kids get jewish education so we started the kids saying eric was a kid decided and that it was in the tools but we came here we went to salomon sector when it
was still in sherry at that point and it was they adapted that i was my family everybody has a south african accent but we came here it was so funny i this is not the accent that i was you brought the latin american yeah right yes so it was a at that point saluboscheck there was a school full of foreigners that grew up very similar to us like south africans for instance they they are very british and very proper and everything but they have their jewish identities very similar like us so it was a very easy transition i make a lot of friends and the
kids were friendly and and i felt at home i really felt at home jccc but basically the school really after that joint sharing we became very close with wendy stefan uh because they are weinberg recipes when the uh the girls became very good friends by it was an automatic thing by jewish that it was just part of it i i've always felt very welcomed by the jewish community very very welcome the only hard part is that this place is that pretty and costa rica is so pretty so what do you do on the weekends you watch the cowboys game it's like well we have a
good airport you can go anywhere you want easily yeah so but this has been a great place for we raised a fabulous here we have a lot of friends we do have that very well with both i bought with him it's been a great place but the jewish community was ultra welcoming and i really find my place in salomon so you um get together with all your kids and all your grandkids all the time tell me about the traditions with your family as i told you before it was very important for who you and i to have that relationship with our families back in costa
rica so we have make a tradition and they begin with your wisconsin last week of the year oh yeah during christmas and new year every everybody comes well i'm talking but they were little i did from new york and from boston when they were little everybody was is somehow we have kept it it's been like another two years like one year there was sick the girls were about to get pregnant so we went to this they were but somehow that because they are all so busy sometimes they come they are together three days and wednesday longer than the other state but we have tried that
they ten years ago we bought a condo at the beach with that purpose so sometimes we go also this summer and everybody comes now we're building a house there we're gonna still because they're building a house and the idea is that those that's how i see it that the kids will spend a lot of time the parties are very busy they can deposit the kids in my in my house and we can take care of them i i think that even the little ones have some sort of relationship with costa rica they know that the beach because it's a fun place you know so they
have good memories and and at this point in my life that's what i want i want my legacy to be very jewish but very latin and they have gone as i said i have this humongous family i try not to miss any good occasions so i hope millions of weddings and bar mitzvahs birthdays birthdays very close to my family so anything else you want to say as we wrap this up you showed every picture you want to show i don't know if i yeah i think i have well this is a picture of my parents from the wedding day and what day was that they
got married february 16 what year could that be i don't know in the 20s oh no the 50s 50s 40s baby because i'm number 40 in my family i was born in 56 so probably in the 40s yeah it's probably happening again two years ago when did they pass away pass in 99 and my past five years ago well kathy it's been a pleasure uh interviewing you and um i appreciate all the wonderful information well i hope you get a taste of what my life was we're lucky to have you here in dallas thank you yeah it's been a good place for us costa rica
was a very good place for my parents for my grandparents and for my whole family they the jews in costa rica were really they really blossomed there and it's a beautiful community with a lot of institutions and as i said people think that we are a lot more than we are because they are very successful in academia government business banks everything well your grandparents were very smart to get out of europe they weren't smart to get out of europe i don't know they were smart to choose costa rica because they have no idea they're living there my brother used to say that she was in
this polish school the teacher was very anticipated and she came to say that she was going to sosta visa that's how they failed in polish and the teacher guiding the map and started looking and looking and she couldn't find it so she made fun of my mother she was a little girl and she still remembered the last time her last memory she remembered that teacher making fun of this jew that was going the place because she couldn't find that she couldn't find costa rica on the map but the teacher knew that she was leaving to go to costa rica told her she was moving to
go to sosta that's how they teacher made fun because she couldn't find it on the back that's funny that's funny that's that's interesting yeah yeah it was painful for her she remembered something she i can't believe she even told the teacher yeah yeah well uh their stories are like i love the stories i had the opportunity to go to poland uh julio was lecturing so he has then that was many years ago i went again with the march of the living and poland looks very different now but that will be about 15 16 years ago and we requested that somebody take us to to our
places we couldn't go to julio's family because galicia is ukrainian okay so we were very lucky because the tour guide that we got was a woman that was in the start of a soap opera she was a soap opera actress oh a super a super a soap opera actress right okay so obviously she was not making a lot of money at that time she spoke english so she was a tour guide too but she was famous so wherever we go people got very excited and i saw the autograph of the whole tree so we were lucky this is that people were born when people go
to poland as jews they are not so nice to them because they think that you are coming to take over their properties so we were very lucky i had the address of my grandparents house and that picture that i showed you with everybody barefoot yeah i find the house and then she started interviewing the old people it was really very moving for me amazing because this lady would be smart and these faces i remember there was this lady with this red hair it was really really amazing but happy then we went to luke of my mother's house and we got she had a way to
do it she goes to the park and looks for the old people and start asking questions and then she goes to the register to look for papers apparently my mother's family was [Music] so they they knew him so i mentioned to you before that my uncle was killed because he was questioning the meat so this we got to the museum they call it and there is this man and she talks polish to him so she turns around and said to me i think that he's jewish that he's scared to save so the guy who talked to him about the title about family so he said
he decided that he was not gonna work anymore that he was gonna go and show us it so we walk around the town he showed me the building that my grandfather used to own and they took me behind and he said and this is the place where the shohen was killed it was he knew who i was then he took us on a walking place two miles to a place in the forest he said at the very end when the russians were coming they put they make everybody walk in the forest and in the middle they just kill everybody after the war the survivors came
put together all the whatever was left for those people and there is this monument with the medicine we may say void because the germans took the messiahs from the cemetery to make ropes so they make like a big monument he really wanted me to see that it was really a very very special time for me was like six months later he took my my address i get this package with a million stacks this is when a poland was just coming out of the communist world and he sent me a lot of material of it down he knew she said he's jewish he's not gonna tell
you but he's jewish and he probably knew my family and for his age he probably was my uncle's classmate or something he really wanted me to know and to keep that stuff it was in polish i took it to costa rica one of my uncles translated it was the story of the town but it was he really wanted me to know my story he really wanted to know when my uncle was killed it was really really watch which town is this this is l-u-k-o-w that's a there are a lot of jews in dallas that come from that town and my mother a the princess wrestlers
you know he's wiedermann you know you know the betterment yeah yeah all those people come from the same town as my mother i grew up with with susan bitterman yeah right exactly so when when i went with federation that's how i find out they they were we were having a training session julia was on one side i was on the other side and then he comes calling me cut the cat there's somebody in that group that come from the town your mother is from so it was the oldest bed you know i don't know if i don't remember today max goldman maybe mark no no
no no no this is the regular speculators sprinkler urban greenland yeah one of them yeah so i tell him the titles and he knew the so when my mother came we were invited there are like six brothers that came all after the war all of them and they started it was very interesting they took the album of the town and they started telling my mother this is this and this is this and my mother said i don't remember that i was a little girl when i missed but they were from the same little people i can't believe the houses and the building was my father's
house was up the building when my other grandfather lived was now they just showed me the place and he showed me up excuse me my mind used to say that they live there was a plaza in the middle and the only building that has three stories was my grandfather's so he showed me he knew the family he wanted me to know i was a one time in your life experience at this i didn't show you this is i i keep this the february is the paper when my father became costa show it to the camera republic to costa rica yeah that's the day that he
became a costa rican my father will tell you that the best thing that ever happened to his king which is life was to come to costa rica my father loves costa and i do is there they want wonderful people to to my family and i hope dallas has been equally as thailand has been wonderful to us very very very very we are very fortunate and i'm israel high whenever we we we get together we are brothers and sisters and that's how i felt when i came here thank you so much candy it's been a pleasure thank you okay bye