Running head: ROSA BLUM

Rosa Blum
Kevin Asirvadam
University of Texas at Tyler

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Abstract
The number of Holocaust survivors still alive is small and dwindling, with less than half a
million still alive, and roughly 50,000 passing away each year (O'Connor, 2008). This paper tells
the story of one of these living survivors: Rosa Blum, a survivor of Auschwitz, born on August
11, 1928 in a small, Jewish-Romanian village. In 1944, when Blum was only fifteen years old,
she and her family were deported to a mountaintop ghetto, and after several weeks of living
there, the Nazis took them to Auschwitz, where Blum was accidentally separated from her
family. After many months in the camp, where Blum survived by working in a hospital and even
eating grass, the U.S. army finally liberated her at Dachau. After a long hospital stay and a short
time working as a maid for a German family, Blum moved to the U.S. in 1950, where she
married and had two children, though her husband died after 60 years of marriage (Gross, 2013).
She is currently 86 years old, is living in Dallas with one of her sons, and is a featured survivor at
the Dallas Holocaust Museum (Gross, 2013), telling her story freely and often.

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Rosa Blum
Rosa Blum is a survivor of the Holocaust, born August 11, 1928, in a secluded village in
Romania. Because the village was so remote, the people knew little of the Nazis and their antiSemitic activities, and they made fun of a woman who came and told them of the problems,
claiming that she was deranged (O'Connor, 2008). In 1944, after the Jews in the village were
forced to register their names and to wear the Star of David, the Nazis took them to a ghetto on
top of a mountain, where they were trapped for several weeks (O'Connor, 2008). The conditions
on the mountain were awful, so awful in fact, that when the Nazis informed the Jews that they
would be traveling somewhere where they could become cooks, and to take with them only a
few pots and pans, the Jews did not for one moment suspect deception (Gross, 2013). Of course,
the Nazis had indeed deceived the Jews, and the pots were not for training them to be chefs, but
rather to hold their excrements for four days and four nights while the Nazis had stuffed them in
a train car that was taking them to Auschwitz.
Once the Jews arrived at Auschwitz, it was a beautiful morning, and they received an
extraordinarily warm welcome, with music and dancers, which further fooled them into believing
that they were going to get what they had been promised (Gross, 2013). However, the events that
followed not only shattered Blums illusion, but also changed the course of her life, very likely
even saving her from the crematorium. Blum went back into the train in order to find something
with which to tie up her hair, and she found a woman who had given birth to triplets during the
train ride, whom the Nazis immediately threw into a van filled with cadavers (O'Connor, 2008).
This experience horrified Blum, and made her suddenly aware to the fact that the Nazis were evil
and not who they claimed to be; the van also obstructed Blums path back to her family,
separating them forever, but this probably saved Blums life, as children were often cremated

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with their mothers (O'Connor, 2008). Blum was taken to the infamous Josef Mengele shortly
after to be examined for fitness, and he beat her brutally after she turned away from him in a
final attempt to find her mother, leaving a bald spot that Blum still has to the present day (Gross,
2013).
A few weeks after arriving at Auschwitz, Blum broke out in a rash, earning her a five to
six day stay in the infirmary, on the last day of which the Nazis began to evacuate the hospital to
send the patients to the crematorium (Gross, 2013). Blum was able to escape because she hid in a
water puddle underneath one of the beds, and the next day, when new patients were checking in,
Blum snuck into the line and registered as a new patient. One of the nurses recognized Blum, but
rather than turning her in, the nurse allowed her to stay and work as nurse who would prepare
dead bodies for mass burial (Gross, 2013). The nurse asked Blum, after six months of working at
the hospital, to leave and never return, and although she did not know why, she obeyed (Gross,
2013). During her time at Auschwitz, Blum would get very hungry, and she turned to eating
grass, which she found by sneaking into a restricted area behind the kitchen (O'Connor, 2008).
However, she was eventually caught, and was given a job hauling 25-kilogram bags of powder to
compensate, and this allowed her to have access to potatoes so that she could eat without having
to sneak into the grassy area (O'Connor, 2008).
When Blum volunteered, six months later, to work in a factory in Dachau, she took the
last train out of Auschwitz, and the U.S. Fourth Army liberated her shortly after arrival (Gross,
2013). Blum moved to the U.S. in 1950 after a long hospital stay and a short time working as a
maid for a German family, where she learned how to sew (Gross, 2013). Her only family
member to survive the Holocaust was one of her brothers, who moved to Belgium and died at 85
years of age, though Blum created a new family in America, with a husband who she was

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married to for 60 years, and two sons, one of which she currently lives with in Dallas (Gross,
2013). Blum is now a featured survivor at the Dallas Holocaust Museum, telling her story often,
and has even traveled to Lubbock to tell a group of students about the horrors she has
experienced. Every time she tells her story, Blum tells all the children to go home and do her a
favor: to go give their parents a hug and a kiss, because when she was their age, she did not have
anyone to hug or kiss, and they ought to make it up for her (Weiss, 2013).

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References
Gross, N. (2013, December 21). Holocaust survivor shares memories with students .
Retrieved from Amarillo Globe-News: http://amarillo.com/news/latestnews/2013-12-21/holocaust-survivor-shares-memories-students
O'Connor, C. (2008, November 20). Holocaust survivor Rosa Blum tells her story.
Retrieved from OBU Signal Web site:
http://www.obusignal.com/index.php/holocaust-survivor-rosa-blum-tells-herstory/featuredstories/
Weiss, J. (2013, June 14). Rosa Hirsch Blum. Retrieved from Vimeo Web site:
http://vimeo.com/68399574