Larry's Lives
Tragedy, Trauma, Triumph
by Larry Rotenberg

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The death march to Nazi-occupied Ukraine of tens of thousands of Romanian Jews is one of the most horrifying—yet one of the least known—of the Nazi’s wartime atrocities. In this gripping memoir, Larry Rotenberg, now in his nineties, recalls in vivid detail his childhood in a loving, deeply religious, Romanian Jewish family and his experience of the brutal winter march into Ukraine and the starvation, disease—and deaths of his parents and brother—that followed. It is a story of cruelty and desperation but also of tenderness, ingenuity, and bravery. Had Larry only told this story, he would have given a rare gift to the field of Holocaust studies. Instead, Larry offers readers something much greater: a window into what an orphaned, deeply traumatized boy from Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi) was able to forge from the barren hell of a wasteland that few know and even fewer survived. From postwar uncertainty and isolation to life as a young immigrant in a new land, Larry shares his journey through foster care in Canada, haunted by loss and self-doubt yet excelling in every new challenge. His struggle to transform unimaginable hardship into creativity carries him through the ups and downs of medical school, a turbulent stint as Chief of Psychiatry at the US Army Pacific Command during the Vietnam War, a successful campaign to rebuild the dysfunctional psychiatry department at a major Pennsylvania hospital, and finally an acclaimed career in the challenging world of forensic psychiatry. His perseverance after a childhood of traumatic loss unfolds into a rich and meaningful life—one that he now shares with us as the enduring gift of this memoir.

https://www.larryslives.com/

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Born in 1935 into a religious Jewish family in the city of Czernowitz in what is now part of western Ukraine, Larry Rotenberg’s idyllic childhood in a close-knit, loving family and culturally rich Jewish community was torn apart when Romania joined the Axis and its Jews were brutally ghettoized, then deported on foot to Transnistria. Larry survived to enjoy a long and distinguished career in psychiatry. He is well known as a pioneer in humane approaches to mental illness and as an expert consultant in forensic psychiatry, but during Larry’s sixty-plus years of dedicated professional service, only a few family members and close friends knew anything about his harrowing experience as a Holocaust survivor. Now retired, Larry lives with his partner Elaine in Wyomissing, PA, but still travels widely and shares with Elaine a deep love of opera, art, museum-going, and Jewish culture and learning. He continues to participate in numerous professional and charitable societies including the Berks County Medical Society, the Pennsylvania Medical Society, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, the Psychiatric Society of Pennsylvania, and the Jewish Federation of Reading/Berks. He is a longtime member of Temple Oheb Sholom in Wyomissing.

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Contributors

Author

Larry Rotenberg

Editor

Daniel Housman

With

Jennifer L. Goss

FriesenPress Editions