Meet the oldest living Holocaust survivor
Rose Girone, at 113 years old, is believed to be the oldest living Holocaust survivor in the world. Born in Poland in 1912, Rose escaped Nazi Germany with her husband and daughter, surviving incredible hardships, including years in Shanghai, China. Now living on Long Island, she is a testament to resilience and positivity, sharing her incredible story of survival and legacy as International Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches. FOX 5 NY’s Jodi Goldberg brings us her inspiring journey.
NEW YORK – Rose Girone, the oldest known survivor of the Holocaust, has died.
Girone, who had celebrated her 113th birthday on January 13, 2025, escaped Nazi Germany with her then-husband and only child, before coming to the United States in 1947.
RELATED: Meet the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor: 113-year-old Rose Girone
What we know:
According to CNN, Girone’s daughter, Reha Bennicasa, confirmed her death. She passed away at a nursing home in Bellmore on Long Island.
The backstory:
Born Rosa Raubvogel in 1912 in Poland, and moved to Germany as a child.
While in Germany, she got married, but her husband was taken to a concentration camp.
“My father was in a concentration camp when I was born,” said Bennicasa. “They had come and taken him and his father…but apparently they paid his way out with the proviso that within six weeks we’d get out of Shanghai.”
The family escaped to China, and for the first nine years of her life, Bennicasa was raised in Shanghai, which opened its doors to 20,000 Jewish refugees during World War II.
When Rose and her family arrived in New York, Rose opened two knitting stores in Queens.
“People would bring her something from a fashion book, she could transpose it into knitwear,” said Bennicasa.
She knit until she was nearly 102 years old.
According to The Claims Conference, there are roughly 245,000 survivors of the Holocaust still living today.
The Source: This article was written using information from FOX 5 crews in the field, along with CNN and The Claims Conference.
