Rosalie Simon

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Rosalie Lebovic Simon was born on 25 July 1931 in Velká Krivá, Czechoslovakia, now Ukraine. The youngest child of Israel and Regina Lebovic, she grew up in a Jewish family that later settled in Teresva. Her father worked as a wholesale fruit merchant. A gifted student, Rosalie was expelled from school because she was Jewish as persecution intensified under Hungarian rule.

In April 1944, Rosalie and her family were forced into the Mátészalka ghetto in Hungary, before being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was only twelve. Her mother and brother William were murdered, while Rosalie survived the arrival selection by running back to find her four older sisters: Helen, Charlotte, Lenka and Rose. The sisters’ determination to remain together became crucial to their survival.

Rosalie escaped death during further selections, including one conducted by Josef Mengele. She later recalled how a Jewish woman assisting with the selections opened a locked room, gave her a striped dress and told her to run. Rejoining her sisters, Rosalie eventually left Auschwitz on a transport to Geislingen an der Steige, where the women performed forced labour manufacturing munitions. They were subsequently transferred to Allach, a subcamp of Dachau, and were liberated by American troops in spring 1945. All five sisters survived.

After the war, the sisters reunited with their father, who had survived Buchenwald. Rosalie emigrated to the United States in November 1949 and settled in Baltimore, where she met fellow survivor Sidney Simon in an English class. They married, raised three children and built a new life in New Jersey.

Later living in Floral Park, Long Island, Rosalie shared her testimony with generations of students. Her memoir, A Girl in a Striped Dress, preserves the story of her family, her repeated escapes from death and the bond between five sisters who helped one another survive.