RACHEL ROTH

Ruchama Rothstein grew up in Warsaw, Poland.  After the Nazi occupation of Poland, her father was as quickly targeted as a journalist and forced to flee to Palestine. The remaining family moved to the Warsaw Ghetto, where they suffered from hunger, forced labor and in the summer of 1942, the deportation of her mother, siblings and other family.  Still working, Rachel managed to smuggle in a few weapons used in the heroic Warsaw Ghetto uprising in April 1943. 

The Nazis deported those who survived and, alongside her aunt Hela, Rachel faced hard labor, illness and deprivation in Majdanek, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. To sustain hope, she would tell other camp inmates about the Shabbat dinners in her home before the war. One older woman in Majdanek made Rachel promise to write about her experiences if she survived. 

After the war, Rachel was reunited with her father in Palestine.  Today, Rachel, author of Here There Is no Why talks about the Shoah at local schools. Rachel lived on Staten Island with her five children and husband, Shlomo until 2006. She now resides in Manhattan, New York.