Oldest Holocaust survivor dies in New York

The American Rose Girone, according to the Jewish Claims Conference probably the oldest survivor of the Holocaust to date, has died. According to her daughter Reha Bennicasa, Girone died on Monday at the age of 113 in a nursing home on Long Island ( New York ).

Girone, who was born on January 13, 1912 in Janów, then in Poland, spent her childhood and youth in Hamburg before moving to Breslau, now Wroclaw, with her first husband Julius Mannheim in 1938. When Mannheim was taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp after the November pogroms, his pregnant wife managed to escape the city. The family was able to buy Mannheim's freedom after a few months.

After the birth of their daughter, Mannheim and Girone fled to Shanghai with the child to escape the Nazis. During her years in China, Girone began knitting. When the family moved to the United States in 1947, Girone opened two knitting shops in New York, which she continued to run with her second husband, Jack Girone, after separating from Mannheim.

At the time of her death, Girone was not only the oldest survivor of the Holocaust, but also the oldest New Yorker and the fifth oldest American, according to the Long Island Herald.