Rose Lipszyc was born in 1929 in Lublin, Poland. By all accounts, her life was a good one, full of family and happy memories. All that changed in the early days of the Second World War, when the Nazis invaded. Her family was sent to the ghetto, watching as the liquidations took their neighbours away. Rose’s mother had a moment of clarity, and when their turn came, she pushed Rose out of the truck, telling her young daughter to flee. On October 14, 1942 Rose escaped forced deportation. She survived the war under a false identity, posing as a teenage Polish child worker in Germany. Rose’s mother, father and two brothers were murdered by the Nazis. After liberation, Rose and her future husband Jack immigrated to Israel in 1948, but the climate did not agree with her, so they chose to immigrate to Canada in 1952, where they built a new life together.
We were fortunate to meet Rose in September 2015, when a group of students met her at Baycrest. Guanghao, Victoria, Julian and Greg were impressed by Rose’s optimism and by her approach to Holocaust education. Rose visited Crestwood again in December 2018, sharing her story with Mr. DeFranco’s Grade 8 class.
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