Berti Giesberg grew up with her parents in Fulda. Her father was a butcher by trade. In 1939, the family lived at 17 Petergasse. Berti first completed the first four grades of elementary school in Fulda. She then attended the Evangelical Lyceum, but was forced to leave in 1933 at the age of 15, shortly before completing the 9th grade, due to persecution.

Berti wanted to train to become a kindergarten teacher, a dream she could no longer fulfill after being forced to drop out of school. Instead, she learned to do whitework embroidery. From April 1935 to January 1936, she was a student at the private domestic science school “Institut St. Mariae der Englischen Fräulein” in Fulda. Afterward, she worked for about two years as a nanny in a private household.

In April 1939, at the age of 20, Berti Giesberg went to work for three months as a nanny at the Jewish Women’s Association’s home in Neu-Isenburg. She then took another private position in Wiesbaden for a few weeks, presumably as a nanny. On September 1, 1939, she returned to Fulda to be with her parents. Between September 1939 and May 1940, the Giesberg family fled to Argentina.

When Berti Giesberg arrived in Argentina in early 1940, her father was living in the province of Eterios. Berti ran his household and also took care of three boarders, from whom she received a modest stipend.

In July 1940, Berti Giesberg married a farmer named Sajnin. The couple had four children.

Sources: Neu-Isenburg City Archives; Hessian State Archives, Wiesbaden; Aktives Museum Spiegelgasse, Wiesbaden