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Rosen, Michael, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Michael Rosen was born in the Bronx in Parkchester in 1943 to immigrant parents who came to New York in the early 20th century. He remembers the freedom of his childhood and going all over the city with his friends, visiting the New York Stock Exchange, sports games, and even once interviewing the artist Salvador Dalí.

Rosen had a fast-tracked education, skipping both kindergarten and one year of middle school, eventually graduating at the age of sixteen. Rosen went to PS 106 for elementary school and fondly remembers his teachers from the time. For middle school he attended Junior High …

Several, Ruth, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Ruth Several was born in 1951 and grew up living on the Grand Concourse, where her parents were living at the time. Her father worked at the Concourse Center of Israel, an orthodox synagogue on the Grand Concourse. They lived in a large apartment in an art deco style building. She remembers 95% of the building as Jewish, not including the non-Jewish superintendent. The neighborhood had many mom and pop stores, no chain stores, and many synagogues. Several attend a Jewish Day School in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so her mother was a bookkeeper nearby who would take …