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The Independent
28-02-2025
- General
- The Independent
Rose Girone death: Oldest known Holocaust survivor dies at 113
Rose Girone, the oldest known Holocaust survivor, has died at the age of 113. Her death was confirmed by daughter Reha Bennicasa, herself a Holocaust survivor. Bennicasa said that Girone died on Monday in a nursing home in New York 's Bellmore. 'She was a strong lady, resilient. She made the best of terrible situations. She was very level-headed, very commonsensical. There was nothing I couldn't bring to her to help me solve – ever – from childhood on,' Bennicasa said in a statement reported by Reuters. Girone lived not only through Nazi Germany but survived the Japanese occupation of Shanghai as well. Born Rose Raubvogel on 13 January 1912 in Janow, Poland, she moved to Hamburg, Germany, as a child. She married Julius Mannheim in 1937 and moved to Breslau, where, while pregnant with Bennicasa, she watched as her husband and father-in-law were arrested and sent to a Nazi concentration camp in Buchenwald. 'I could not name her what I wanted – Hitler had a list of names prepared for Jewish children and this was the only one I liked so I named her that,' Girone told the USC Shoah Foundation in a 1996 interview about Bennicasa's birth. Mannheim and his father were released but only after the family's shipping business, jewellery and savings were handed over to the Nazis. Girone sought help from a relative in London, who got her exit visas to Shanghai. Girone left for Shanghai with six-month-old Bennicasa, her husband, and 20,000 other Jewish refugees fleeing Germany. However, as Japan entered the war in 1941, Jews in Shanghai were rounded up and forced to live in ghettos. After much pleading with the ghetto overseer, Girone and her family moved into an unfinished, rodent-infested room that had once been a bathroom, The New York Times reported. 'Nothing is so bad that something good shouldn't come out of it,' Girone told the USC Shoah Foundation. After the war ended, Girone and her family moved to New York in 1947. Girone became a knitting instructor, continuing the work she had started in Shanghai to make money. She continued to teach until she turned 102. 'We were lucky to get out alive from Germany and from China, but she was very resilient, my mother. She could take anything,' Bennicasa told CNN. Girone's marriage to Mannheim ended in divorce in 1948 and she married Jack Girone in 1968. 'She always says the secret to her longevity is she loves to eat dark chocolate,' her granddaughter Gina Bennicasa told The Long Island Herald earlier this year, when Girone turned 113. 'She has good children and she has a purpose. She always said to me, 'Always have a purpose in life. Get up and always have a purpose.'' There are about 245,000 Holocaust survivors still alive and around 14,000 of them live in New York, according to the Claims Conference, which is based in the city and represents victims of Nazi persecution and helps them negotiate restitution. Girone is survived by her daughter and granddaughter.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Rose Girone, oldest known Holocaust survivor, dead at 113
Feb. 27 (UPI) -- Rose Girone, the oldest known Holocaust survivor and someone who suffered at the hands of Germany and Japan during World War II, has died at the age 113, her daughter, Reha Bennicasa, confirmed Thursday. Bennicasa said her mother died on February 24th at a nursing home in New York state. Claims Conference, based in New York and which oversees compensation from Germany to victims of the Nazis, confirmed Girone was the oldest survivor. Girone was born Rosa Raubvogel in 1912 in Poland, which at the time was part of Russia. She moved to Hamburg, Germany, during her childhood during which her family ran a theatrical costume shop. Girone married a German Jew in 1937 and, while on the verge of giving birth, her husband was taken from their home by police and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. She later said while telling her story to the USC Shoah Foundation that the officers wanted to arrest her, too, but that her husband, Julius Mannheim, talked them out of it because she was pregnant with Bennicasa, who was born shortly thereafter. "I could not name her what I wanted -- Hitler had a list of names prepared for Jewish children and this was the only one I liked so I named her that," Gireon said in her oral history to the Shoah Foundation. She said she told her husband about Bennicasa's birth with a postcard while he was at Buchenwald. She said she had a family member in London who was able to get her and her husband exit visas to China, she told the Shoah Foundation. "He knew someone who knew someone who gave out Chinese visas," she said in the interview with the Shoah Foundation, according to CNN. "I don't know what would have happened to us" if that had not happened, she continued. Girone moved with her husband and daughter to the U.S. in 1947 where she opened a pair of knitting shops in Queens and continued to knit until she was 102, according to local media reports. The marriage ended in divorce. She later married Jack Girone. She would later say that she learned important life lessons from her experience as a Holocaust survivor. "Nothing is so bad that something good shouldn't come out of it," she said. She said the experience made her unafraid. "I could do anything and everything." Girone credited her long life to having children and eating dark chocolate, she told a New York TV station.
