Women of Valor: Partisans and Resistance Fighters
Rose Meth | Part I | Part II | Part III | Footnotes

Rose Grunapfel Meth

Rose Meth was born in 1925 into a prominent Hasidic family in Zator, Poland, a small town between Oswiecim and Cracow. She was the fourth of six children. In pre-war years, Rose's father welcomed the President of Poland on a state visit to Zator, as representative of the Jewish community. When the Nazis occupied Poland in September 1939, the family tried to escape eastward, but the effort was futile. Rose and her sisters were taken to clean German armyy lodgings; her father was forced to scrub the German carriages. As a result of this his shoes were ruined. The purchase of a new pair of shoes for her father was a "crime" for which Rose was imprisoned for six months.

From the Zator ghetto, where she lived after serving her sentence, Rose and other young people were sent to the Wadowice1 ghetto to sew uniforms for the Wehrmacht. They were hoping that their labour would protect their families in Zator, when they learned of the liquidation of the Zator ghetto and the deportation of the Jews to their deaths in Belzec,2 July 1942. In August 1943 the Wadowice ghetto was liquidated. Rose and her three sisters were deported with the Wadowice Jews to Auschwitz.

© Copyright Judy Cohen, 2001.
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