Rose Sohmers
Rose Sohmers was admitted to the Home in December 1926 at the age of 23 months by her father, Felix, a cabinetmaker. What happened to her mother, the former Rosie Felsenstein, is today unrecorded. As told to her by Home Nurse Anna Levine (“Veenie”) Kamin, Rose was accompanied by a social worker on the Louisville & Nashville train ride from her home in Houston to New Orleans.
She attended Isidore Newman School for the lower grades before transferring to Louis E. Rabouin Vocational High School for Girls. In 1942, before graduating, Rose was discharged to her aunt in New York. She later moved to San Francisco where she worked as a bookkeeper while living with her father, but remained in touch with her friends from the Home; in 1948 she returned to New Orleans to attend the wedding of Home peer Sara Karp.
Rose married a man named Siebenthal and had a daughter. She died in El Dorado, California in 2011 at age 86.
Rose Sohmers (12), on bed, with Mollie Beerman (15), in one of the Home’s bedrooms. Unattributed photo from “It’s Really ‘Home Sweet Home’ For Jewish Children,” Sunday Item-Tribune, Jan. 9, 1938.
In Rose's Own Words
In 1983, Rose Sohmers Siebenthal was interviewed by fellow Home alumna Sara Ogden Sweet for the Jewish Children’s Home alumni project. Read Rose’s recollections of her childhood in the Home, including chores, Jewish holidays, rules, camp, and more here.