Rose Kaplovitz papers

Rose Kaplovitz was born Rózia Zaks (Saks) on September 6, 1930 in Sosnowiec, Poland, to Mendel and Hindel (Helen) Zaks. Her parents owned a grocery store, and Rose had six siblings: Regina (later Rosenman), Cesia (later Kaiser), Tola (later Gilbert), Romek, Mania (Maria, Malka, later Ullman), and Cyma (Cymusia). The children attended the Jewish public school on Ostrogórska Street in Sosnowiec. When the Germans occupied Sosnowiec in September 1939, they shot and killed Rose's brother Romek and her uncle and cousin. The Zaks family was forced to live in the Sosnowiec ghetto. Mania was selected for forced labor in February 1942, sent to the Parschnitz subcamp of Gross-Rosen, and later to the Ober-Altstadt subcamp. That summer, Rose, her parents, her sisters Cyma and Regina, and Regina’s husband and daughter, Lala, were selected for Auschwitz but escaped. Tola was selected for forced labor in August 1942 and, like Mania, sent to the Parschnitz and Ober-Altstadt subcamps of Gross-Rosen. The rest of the Zaks family was forced into the closed ghetto at Środula, and Rose was ordered to work in a factory making dominoes and checkers for the German army. In July 1943, her parents convinced her to volunteer for the Ober-Altstadt camp, where Rose was assigned work making thread. In August, Mendel, Hindel, Cyma, Regina, and Lala were deported to Auschwitz and gassed upon arrival. Rose, Tola, and Mania survived together in Ober-Altstadt. After liberation by the Soviet army in May 1945, the three sisters made their way back to Sosnowiec and discovered that only their sister Cesia and her son Jurek had survived. Rose’s sisters found her a place in a Jewish orphanage in nearby Chorzów, where she could resume her schooling. In July 1946 she moved to the kibbutz at the Leipheim displaced persons camp, and her sisters lived at the Bergen-Belsen DP camp. She hoped to immigrate to Palestine, but in December 1946 learned that her sisters wanted her to immigrate to the United States with them. She registered with UNRRA, under the altered birth date she had created to make herself eligible for Palestine, and was moved to the children’s home at Prien am Chiemsee. In September 1947, she and other child survivors immigrated to the United States aboard the SS Ernie Pyle. She married fellow survivor Henry Kaplovitz in September 1951, and the couple had three children.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Rose Zaks Kaplovitz

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Gerald Kaiser

Rose Kaplovitz donated the Rose Kaplovitz papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1996, 2004, and 2006, and Gerald Kaiser added an autograph book to the collection in 2014. Accessions formerly cataloged as 1996.A.0576, 2004.207, 2006.441.1, and 2014.137.1 have been incorporated into this collection.