Rose Girone, Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor, Passes Away at 113

Rose Girone, believed to be the oldest living Holocaust survivor and a passionate voice for sharing survivors' stories, has died at the remarkable age of 113. It's like losing a living history book.

She passed away on Monday in New York, according to the Claims Conference, a New York-based organization dedicated to securing material claims for Jewish Holocaust survivors against Germany.

"Rose was an example of fortitude, and now we are obligated to carry on in her memory," said Greg Schneider, Claims Conference executive vice president, in a statement. "The lessons of the Holocaust must not die with those who endured the suffering." He's right, it's on us now to keep these stories alive.

Born on January 13, 1912, in Janow, Poland, Girone's family relocated to Hamburg, Germany, when she was six years old. In a 1996 filmed interview with the USC Shoah Foundation, she recounted how her career aspirations were abruptly halted by the rise of Hitler in 1933.

Girone was among approximately 245,000 survivors still living across more than 90 countries, according to a Claims Conference study released last year. With a median age of 86, their numbers are dwindling rapidly.

During the Holocaust, six million European Jews and other minorities were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.

Schneider emphasized the urgency of sharing Holocaust lessons while firsthand witnesses are still with us. "The Holocaust is slipping from memory to history, and its lessons are too important, especially in today’s world, to be forgotten." Absolutely, we can't let history repeat itself.

Girone married Julius Mannheim in 1937 through an arranged marriage. In 1938, while nine months pregnant and living in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), Nazis arrived to take Mannheim to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Thanks to her quick thinking, securing Chinese visas from relatives in London after the birth of her daughter Reha, she managed to secure her husband's release.

The family then boarded a ship to Japan-occupied Shanghai with minimal possessions. They faced numerous hardships, including being confined to a bathroom in a house overrun with insects. After the war, with help from relatives in the U.S., they arrived in New York City in 1947, where she later opened a knitting store.

Girone was reunited with her brother, who had joined the U.S. Army. She later divorced Mannheim and married Jack Girone in 1969, who passed away in 1990.

In 1996, when asked about the message she would leave for her daughter and granddaughter, Girone said, "Nothing is so very bad that something good shouldn't come out of it. No matter what it is." A powerful testament to resilience.