Rose Girone died at the age of 113 after enduring the oppression of both Germany and Japan.
As reported by CNNRose was the oldest living Holocaust survivor who lived in for 80 years since the end of World War II.
News of Rose’s death was confirmed by Reha Benicasa, the daughter of Rose, who is also a Holocaust survivor, and shared that the 113-year-old passed away in a nursing home in New York on Monday, February 23, 2025.
Rose’s real name was Rosa Laubgogel, born in 1912 into a Jewish family in southeastern Poland.
In 1937, she moved to Hamburg and married a German Jew named Julius Manhei, and when she was nine months pregnant, her husband was deported to Buchenwald, Central Germany, one of the Nazi concentration camps.
While her husband was in Butchenwald, Rose was able to learn about London relatives and help them obtain an exit visa to Shanghai, one of the only ports that accept Jewish refugees.
On a visa, she was able to secure her husband’s release and left China with him and her child, leaving all her belongings.
As they were preparing to begin their lives in China, Japan simultaneously began a war with the country, and shortly after its arrival, Japan was ordered to move Chinese ports and Jews into the ghetto.
According to Rose’s statement, they moved to a room fested by a small cockroach once a bathroom, and were not allowed to leave without permission from a Japanese official called the “King of the Jews.”
After the war ended, Rose and her family moved to the United States, where she began working as a knitting instructor, living in several areas of New York before opening a knitting shop in Queens.