As a woman in a male-dominated field and in the increasingly antisemitic climate of Austria, Goldstern struggled to find a permanent position in her field. By the end of the 1920s, Goldstern stopped publishing and withdrew from her field research. In 1937, Goldstern's work, along with that of von Gennep, was featured in a display about Savoie at the Exposition Internationale in Paris. However, with the takeover of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, Jewish people were officially excluded from public life and subjected to antisemitic racial laws. Many of her family members fled Vienna, but Goldstern remained in the city. On 14 June 1942 Goldstern was deported to the Sobibór extermination camp in Poland, where she was killed.