Interview begins with Rosenshein's recollections of family history. Her parents, Samuel Garfinkel and Hannah Garfinkel (distant cousins) were born in the same Russian village (near modern day Belarus.) A brother of Samuel Garfinkel's immigrated to New York in the early 1900s and his siblings, including Sam and his new wife, soon followed. Rosenshein's father worked as a garment worker in New York for several years then moved to Charleston, South Carolina, following the lead of another brother. The Garfinkels began a family in Charleston (after losing two children in New York) and their second daughter, Helen, was born in 1919. Rosenshein recalls that her father labored as a mattress worker in Charleston and her parents read The Forward to "get Americanized." (Both also learned to speak English.) She describes the family's African American nanny, Louisa, who learned to speak Yiddish and knew all the "Jewish rules." Other childhood recollections include playing with friends on the Battery, attending Courtney and Bennett Schools and having only one non-Jewish friend, as having Gentile companions was not "the thing to do." In terms of Judaism, Rosenshein recalls that her mother kept a kosher home, the family attended Brith Shalom and she went to Hebrew school. She fondly remembers Rabbi Jacob Raisin and his family as individuals who shared their knowledge of America with Jewish immigrants such as her parents. Rosenshein describes her teenage years in Charleston (which included trips to soda fountains and flirting with Citadel cadets) and the adventure she took with companion, Frieda Goldberg. When Goldberg and Rosenshein were just twenty-one, they traveled by train (on their own) to San Francisco where they found jobs working at the Navy yard. Rosenshein describes how the girls rented rooms in a Jewish boarding house and volunteered at the local Jewish center. After living in San Francisco for a year, Rosenshein moved to New York (to live with a sister) where she eventually met her husband and had three children.
