The hobby that spins yarns into scarves, hats, and sweaters has a community of devotees, for whom Forest Hills’ Rose Girone, 113, who died on Monday, February 24, of old age, was a legend. “She would drive in her little red convertible, she was in her late 80s,” said Dina Mor, owner of The Knitting Place in Port Washington on her podcast in 2021. “Then she celebrated her 90th birthday and went on a cruise.”
When Girone, considered to be the oldest Holocaust survivor in the world, was unable to drive, Mor picked her up, but as she passed the century mark, she visited her shop less frequently. “When Rose turned 105, she turned to me and said, ‘I need to retire,” Mor noted, adding that her mind was sharp, and her vital signs were strong enough to impress doctors and nurses.
When Girone spoke, she shared her long account of surviving the Holocaust as a refugee, finding home in Queens, and creativity in knitting.
Rose Raubvogel was born on January 13, 1912, in Janov, Poland, when it was under Austrian rule. Her parents later moved to Hamburg, Germany, where they ran a theatrical costume shop and where her aunt taught her to knit. In 1938, she married her first husband, Julius Mannheim, and they moved to Breslau. Having stripped the Jews of their civil rights and citizenship, that year the Nazi authorities organized the Kristallnacht pogrom, in which Julius was transported to the Buchenwald concentration camp while a pregnant Rose went into hiding.
Her ticket to survival was written in Chinese, a visa to Shanghai from her cousin. It enabled her to free her husband and they took a month-long voyage on a German liner to the other side of the world. With no money or valuables, Girone presented her talent to an upscale boutique, which then sold her sweaters. The Shanghai Ghetto was packed with German and Austrian Jews, living in unhealthy conditions but grateful to have escaped the Holocaust.
In 1947, the couple received a visa to the United States, where Rose reunited with her mother, brother, and grandmother. After divorcing her first husband, Rose married Jack Girone in 1968, and they settled in Whitestone. She then opened a knitting shop on Austin Street in Forest Hills.
“Mother was pretty proud of all her designs,” her daughter Reha Bennicasa said in a 2022 interview with JTA. “People would bring ads from Vogue and the like and say they wanted something just like this particular picture. Some with intricate patterns, Mother would sit, figure it out, lots of times with graph paper. She loved it.”
Girone retired and sold her shop in 1980, but then continued as a volunteer at The Knitting Shop, where she first met Mor. “Mother saw that Dina had a knack for knitting, so that when Dina voiced that she would love to open her own store, she was happy to help,” Bennicasa said.
After suffering a fall in her apartment, Girone moved to a nursing home in Bellmore, which is close to her granddaughter, who lovingly called her Oma, the German word for grandmother.
“Who has a mother at the age of 86, my husband is 87. A mother-in-law? That’s amazing,” Bennicasa said in an interview with Fox 5 News last month on the occasion of Rose’s 113th birthday. Taking stock of her long and accomplished life, her granddaughter Gina Bennicasa said that with fewer survivors among us, “You cannot erase the history. You need to learn from it.”
In a 2025 interview, Girone shared the secret to her long life: “Live each day with purpose, have wonderful children, and enjoy plenty of dark chocolate.”
By Sergey Kadinsky
