Rose Roth was born in Lwow, Poland in 1925. She had an identical twin sister, Irka (Irene), with whom she was very close.
Because of their "Aryan" appearances, Rose’s parents made the heartbreaking decision to send her and her sister to Krakow with forged papers. For a while, the 17-year-old girls managed to survive by staying on the move and finding different forms of employment. By late 1942, it became increasingly difficult for the twins to maintain their false identities in Krakow, and after escaping arrest, Irka made her way to Zakopane, with a new false identity. Rose and Irka met one more time in Krakow in January 1943; it was the last time Rose saw her twin sister.
Rose survived the rest of the war in Bavaria, where she had found work as a Polish Christian woman and accommodations with a local couple. After liberation, Rose joined a group of Poles returning to Poland in search of family. She traveled to Krakow, where she found her uncles. There she learned that her father had suffered a fatal stroke while in hiding, and that her mother was murdered in Belzec death camp. Additionally she discovered that her beloved sister, Irka, had been denounced in Zakopane, arrested by the Gestapo, and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau where she was murdered.
In November 1947, Roth met Henry Moskowitz, a survivor of the Lodz ghetto and Ravensbruck and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. In February 1948, they were married. Several years later, in 1951, the couple immigrated to the United States, where they built a family and a successful business. Henry lived to age 103.
Rose has four children, ten grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
