Rose Girone, considered the oldest living survivor of the Holocaust and a strong proponent of sharing stories of survivors, died. She was 113.
She died Monday In New YorkAccording to the Claims Conference, a New York -based conference on Jewish material claims against Germany.
My father survived the Holocaust. Censorship did not stop the Nazis, it helped them
“Rose was an example of steadfastness, but now we are obliged to continue in her memory,” said Greg Schneider, vice president of the conference, on Thursday in a statement. “The lessons of the Holocaust should not die with those who have endured suffering.”
Girone was born on January 13, 1912 in Janow, Poland. Her family moved to Hamburg, Germany, when she was 6, she said in a filmed interview in 1996 with the USC Shoah Foundation.
When asked by the interviewer if she had a certain career plans for Hitler, she said, “Hitler came in 1933 and then it was over for everyone.”
Girone was one of the approximately 245,000 survivors who still lived in more than 90 countries, according to a study released last year by the Claims Conference. Their number is declining rapidly, because most are very old and often of vulnerable health, with a median age of 86.
Six million European Jews and people from other minorities were killed by the Nazis and their employees during the Holocaust.
“This death reminds us of the urgency to share the lessons of the Holocaust, while we still have witnesses firsthand with us,” said Schneider. “The Holocaust slips from memory to history, and the lessons are too important, especially in today’s world, to be forgotten. “
Girone married Julius Mannheim in 1937 via an arranged marriage.
She was 9 months pregnant and lived in Breslau, now Wroclaw, Poland, when Nazis arrived to bring Mannheim to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Their family had two cars and so she asked her husband to leave his keys.
Jens-Christian Wagner (R), director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, speaks with participants during a wreath who on the Roll Call Square on the Buchenwald Memorial on January 27, 2025. (Martin Schutt/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
She said she remembers that a Nazi said, “Take that woman too.”
The other Nazi replied: “She is pregnant, leave her alone.”
The next morning her father -in -law was also taken and she was left alone with their housekeeper.
After her daughter Reha was born in 1938, Girone was able to secure Chinese Visa from family members in London and to secure the release of her husband.
In Genoa, Italy, when Reha was only 6 months old, they boarded a ship to Japan-using Shanghai with little more than clothing and some bedding.
Her husband first earned money by buying and selling second -hand goods. He saved to buy a car and started a taxi company, while Girone sweaters broke and sold.
But in 1941 Jewish refugees were completed in a ghetto. The family of three was forced to cram in a bathroom in a house while cockroaches and bed bugs crawled through their possessions.
Her father -in -law came just before the Second World War started but got sick and died. They had to wait for food and lived under the rule of a ruthless Japanese man who called himself “king of the Jews.”
“They have done really terrible things with people,” Girone said about the Japanese military trucks who patrol through the streets. “One of our friends was killed because he would not move fast enough.”
Information about the war in Europe only circulated in the form of rumors, because British radios were not allowed.
When the war was over, they began to receive mail from Girone’s mother, grandmother and other family members in the US. With their help they boarded a ship to San Francisco in 1947 with only $ 80, which hid Girone in buttons.
They arrived in New York City in 1947. She later started a knitting chore with the help of her mother.
Girone was also reunited with her brother, who went to France for school and eventually got his American citizenship by becoming a member of the army. When she went to the airport to pick him up in New York, it was her first time he saw him in 17 years.
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Girone later separated Mannheim. In 1968 she met Jack Girone, the same day that her granddaughter was born. They were married by the following year. He died in 1990.
When asked in 1996 for the message, she would like to leave for her daughter and granddaughter, she said: “Nothing is so bad that something good should not come out. Whatever it is.”
