Rose Giron, the oldest known Holocaust survivor, has passed away at the age of 113. The New York-based NGO Claims Conference announced the news on Thursday via social media. Following her passing, 108-year-old Miriam Bolek is now believed to be the oldest living Holocaust survivor.
Born in Poland in 1912, Rose passed away on Monday at a nursing home in Bellmore, New York, according to CNN. The Holocaust, also known as the genocide of Jews in Europe, was a mass extermination campaign led by the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler during World War II.
The Nazis, through their military forces, systematically imprisoned and killed over six million Jewish people, along with other minority groups, in concentration camps and labor camps across Europe. In total, the Holocaust claimed the lives of more than half of the Jewish population in Europe at the time.
Reflecting on her mother’s life, Rose’s daughter, Reha Benicasa, described her as a resilient and vibrant woman. “She knew how to turn even the hardest moments into opportunities,” Reha said. “She was level-headed and empathetic. I’ve never seen a problem she couldn’t solve.”
A Life of Strength and Survival
The Israeli embassy in Berlin also paid tribute to Rose, stating that she was “a testament to the strength of the human spirit.”
Rose was born in the town of Janów, which was then part of Germany but is now in Poland. In 1938, she and her husband, Julius Mannheim, moved to the German city of Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland). At the time, Nazi forces were escalating their violent persecution of Jews across Germany. Rose witnessed Nazi soldiers burning synagogues and destroying Jewish books.
While she was eight months pregnant, her husband was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. After his release, the couple fled to Shanghai, China. Later, in 1947, they permanently settled in New York.
In 1948, Rose and Julius divorced, and she later married Jack Giron. She became known as a wool-weaving artisan and taught weaving skills to immigrants. Throughout her life, Rose openly shared her experiences of survival during the Holocaust, ensuring that future generations would never forget the horrors of history.