Image was among the possessions the Posner family fled Kiel with and now returns to the city as part of an exhibition
When she used her compact camera to capture the view from her window in the German city of Kiel one December afternoon in 1931, Rosi Posner was doing more than just taking a snapshot. In the foreground is a brass menorah, the candlestick used to mark the Jewish festival of Hanukah; in the near background, the chilling image of a swastika flag flying prominently from the Nazi headquarters that had opened up opposite her flat earlier that year.
“Most Jews, after the rise of the Nazis, pulled their curtains shut so that the chanukiah (menorah) couldn’t be seen from the street. But she was determined to show she and her husband were not afraid,” says Nava Gilo, Rosi’s granddaughter.