Turning 100, This Holocaust Survivor Never Gave Up Hope

Masza Rosenroth was born in 1924 to a middle-class, Orthodox Jewish family in Poland. Her older brother, Leon, and two younger sisters, Gutia and Surra, were fun-loving, and their family was close knit.

“Our home was a loving Jewish home. Every Friday night after synagogue, my father, Mordechai, brought home a new guest for dinner. I always saw him inviting guests to our apartment.”

Masza’s mother, Malka, cooked for Shabbat every Friday. She would boil noodles and make a soup from the leftover water by adding potatoes and chicken fat. She would make a big pot of this soup and would invite all the poor people to eat.

Masza with her daughter, Michelle

Despite their family’s warmth and generosity, Poland was a difficult country for Jews as antisemitism was prevalent and increasing. Masza explained, “In Poland, they were the biggest antisemites. We just ignored it and went on living. We were hoping for the day that we could leave.

“But I had a very happy childhood. My father was a smart man. He would read the newspaper every Friday night, shake his head, and say, ‘You, my children, will have to leave Poland when you grow up.’”

The day they needed to leave came faster than anticipated. On September 7, 1939, she woke up to the deafening sounds of airplanes flying overhead. Masza’s family ran to an underground shelter. Hours later, they emerged to discover that the Germans now occupied their city.

Her father assured them, “This will be over in a few weeks.”

In early October, Mordechai’s German friend warned him that Jews were going to be hunted down and murdered. He helped Leon escape to Russia, while Masza, aged 15, ran through alleys warning other Jewish families.

By the end of the year, all the Jewish families in her town were forced on a 22-mile march to the town of Glowno. “Many Jews perished on that march.”

In the Ghetto

In Glowno, Masza’s family lived with another family in overcrowded and unhealthy conditions. After several days, they left for Lodz, where a Jewish Ghetto was established soon after.

The Lodz ghetto made the Glowno seem like an oasis. They were always starving and full of fear. Masza and Gutia were both assigned to work; Masza in a children’s clothing factory and Gutia sewing soldiers’ uniforms.

The girls both had to steal food in order to survive. On the way home from work they would find pots of cooked food cooling on nearby windowsills. They would grab them without being seen and share the pots of food with their parents and younger sister who were not working. “You had to learn how to steal and to fight for survival,” Masza said.

Ultimately, these pots of food were not enough to sustain their family and Mordechai eventually died of starvation. Days passed before anyone removed his body from the room. A year later, her mother, Malka, also succumbed to starvation. Her body also remained in the room for days before being removed. Masza still has vivid memories and nightmares of sleeping near her parents’ deceased bodies.

There was no space in her life for emotion.

“I handled it. I was very young. I never saw the graves… It just was what it was.”

After the loss of her parents, her sister Surra was deported by the Nazis.

With Surra gone, Gutia became very sick. “My sister was always under my protection. She was very sick in the Lodz ghetto and I went to visit her in the hospital almost every day. Each day she would beg, ‘Please, take me home.’ But there was no home to take her to. Finally, I agreed for her to leave the hospital and brought her back to our ‘home.’ The very next day, German trucks came and cleared the hospital… Everyone was killed.”

Masza Rosenroth (Photo: Lynn Abesera Photography)

The deportations were horrific. Masza, then 16, stood in the courtyard of the ghetto during selections. She watched German soldiers grab children from the arms of their mothers and toss them onto trucks. She also saw Nazis fling infants from third-story windows as they searched throughout the building. “We had to watch, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

In 1944, deportations continued to become more regular and Masza and Gutia began hiding to avoid being sent to the camps. They found a long-term spot and hid with ten other people in a small dirt space under a kitchen floor. They would tremble in fear as they heard the footsteps of the soldiers searching for Jews overhead. One time, there was a baby with them who was inconsolable. Masza recalled, “I watched as the mother suffocated the baby with a pillow. This was so terrible. Gutia kept saying she wanted to die, but I said to her, ‘If I will live, you will live, too.’”

Living this way became unbearable, and in early August there was an announcement promising that whoever showed up at the train station would be resettled more comfortably. Out of desperation and starvation, Masza and Gutia went there. They were fooled and pushed into a cattle car that brought them to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Auschwitz

Auschwitz-Birkenau shocked Masza to her core and a few terrible memories still haunt her to this day.

“I walked out of my barrack and I saw a young man. He was 15 years old and was known as a famous painter. They broke every finger so he should never be able to paint again.”

Another time, Masza was in her barrack with 100 other women. “Next to me was a woman giving birth right there on the dirt floor. An SS woman came in with a piece of newspaper, wrapped the baby up, and took her out. The mother was left to bleed to death. I see this vision every night in my dreams.”

After a short time in the camp, a merchant arrived to make selections. He needed 100 women to make ammunition for the Germans. “He counted 99 women, and I was the 100th. My sister was standing next to me and didn’t make the selection. I spoke German well and figured I had nothing to lose so I said to him, ‘Please, send my sister with me.’ Miraculously, he said yes.”

With daughters, son-in-law and grandson

The girls were sent to Bad Kudowa (now Kudowa Zdroj, Poland), near the Czechoslovakian border. They were then sent to work about a mile from their barracks to an underground factory to mass produce V2 rockets. Masza worked on a machine with several buttons. “God forbid I missed a button. My fingers would have been cut off.”

In April, there was no more ammunition to make, so the girls were forced to move 100-pound rocks from one spot to another. They were emaciated and starving. Despite it all, Masza always said, “It’s going to be a better day one day.”

Masza focused on hope, remaining positive despite her horrific surroundings. She and her sister became close with ten other girls. Masza feels they all survived because they clung to hope. They spent a lot of time talking about post-wartime their dreams. All 12 girls remained lifelong friends.

Liberation

They awoke one morning and all the guards were gone. Czechoslovakian partisans entered the camp and yelled, “You’re free!” Masza was downtrodden, realizing they had no place to go. The girls found an empty house together, but after a few days, Masza and Gutia left for Lodz to try to find their family.

They learned that Surra was killed in a mobile gas van in Chelmno. But their brother, Leon, was alive. She sent him letters with the help of the Red Cross, but to no avail.

Then, on New Year’s Eve 1945, Masza went dancing with a group of friends in Regensburg. There, she unexpectedly discovered Leon, who initially didn’t recognize her or Gutia. “We were just young children when he left. It was wonderful to finally be reunited.”

She soon met Jacob Rosenroth, an Auschwitz survivor from Kalisz, Poland. In December 1946 they married and settled in Frankfurt.

“We had to wait for immigration. President Truman opened the door and said whoever wants to come to America can come. I registered, but it took about four years.”

In the meantime, Masza was interested in fashion and clothing design. She took sewing classes in Germany and visited Paris to see the fashion shows and learn more.

Masza and Jacob arrived in the United States on January 1, 1949. They initially moved to Buffalo, New York, where Masza became a dressmaker, and Jacob found a job in a steel factory. There, they had two children, Sharon and Michele.

Beverly Hills

They eventually moved to Beverly Hills, where Jacob opened a liquor store and Masza continued dressmaking. Her reputation as an excellent dressmaker rapidly spread and soon she had a massive clientele base with some of the most elite names in the entertainment industry.

Masza created a thriving business alongside her husband. They made sure their two children had a strong Jewish education, and wonderful memories of traditions and holidays.

They worked long hours which kept her mind off the atrocities. “In my younger days, I used to work 20 hours a day. I was working, working, working, so I never talked much. I just talked about my work and building up a family.”

Masza believes that staying logical and positive are her best tools for resilience. Just like her parents, she continued their legacy and found ways to give back to the community.

Playing with the great grandchildren

She was always active in the 1939 Club and Chapman University to educate about the Holocaust. She would have the students meet survivors and get to know them.

“I always thought that I would survive and make a better world for my family and my people.”