She survived the gas chambers. Almost 80 years later, her granddaughter tells her story
Young Rosie had been in Auschwitz only a few days when she was assigned to split huge boulders into pebbles. She and her friends were starving; there had been little to eat in the Cehei Ghetto where they had come from, and the watery coffee and soup they ate not only tasted like diluted mud, it scarcely provided any nutrition. Equipped only with the hammers, splitting the rocks was difficult work, but with the meager, inedible food, it became unbearable. At that point, Rosie says, she was a muselman, walking dead.
Only a month previously, Rosie and her family had been living in Crasna, a small town on the border of Hungary and Romania. In May 1944, they were deported to Cehei, a muddy ghetto built around the Klein brick factory, where Rosie and her family were forced to carry heavy bricks across the yard.
From there, she was taken to Auschwitz, where she was separated from her mother and younger brother — they were sent to the gas chambers. Her sister, Leah, was with her, as were some of her friends from Crasna. Their heads had been shaven, and as she slammed her hammer into the boulder with whatever strength she was able to summon, she looked at her friends and noted how different they looked without their hair.
Noticing her sad expression, her friend Lily tried to comfort her. “Don’t be sad. We’re going to Heaven from here.”
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