Rose Greenbaum (born Rose Ejzman) was born on September 7, 1918, in Łódź, Poland. Her father, Josef Ejzman, was a watchmaker and owned a jewelry store. Her mother, Frymet Gutman Ejzman, worked with her father in his store. Josef and Frymet had five children: Esther, Sara (b. 1912), Rose, Leon (b. 1922), and Manya (b. 1926). At age 34, Josef died of a heart attack prior to Manya's birth. After Germany invaded Poland, they stood on their street and watched the Germans march into the city and they were forced into the Lodz ghetto.
Sara's boyfriend, Janek Malinowski, was already in the Soviet Union with the Polish Army, and she fled Poland to find him. They were reunited and eventually married. Leon, Rose's brother also fled to the Soviet Union, found work, and stayed there throughout World War II. In 1940 the remaining members of the Ejzman family were forced to move out of their home into one room where they worked sorting clothing that had been collected from deported Jews, and Esther, Rose's sister, worked in a shop. Esther was taken during a selection and deported to a concentration camp, most likely Auschwitz, where she perished. At one point, Rose became very ill with typhus and remained home to recover. Her cousin was also ill with typhus and died in the hospital.
The conditions in the ghetto were harsh, and the food supply was extremely limited. Rose would steal beets for food in order to help keep her mother alive. Frymet, Rose, and Manya remained in the Lodz ghetto until it was liquidated in 1944. When the ghetto was liquidated, the family gave themselves up for the promise of bread and a pound of sugar. They were sent to Auschwitz where they arrived on August 24, 1944. Manya and Rose were sent to the right, and Frymet was sent to the left to the gas chambers. A week later the sisters were sent to Hamburg, Germany. For two days they worked in a kitchen peeling potatoes. Two weeks later they were sent to a smaller camp in Hamburg where for the next nine months they built houses. In January 1945, the camp supervisor selected Rose to clean and start the fire in his room. Manya had pneumonia at the time, and Rose asked the supervisor to let her sister take her place.
One day Rose was riding on the rail of a lorry and a passing vehicle crushed her leg. She was taken to the camp hospital, but a week later the camp was liquidated. They sent her by truck to Bergen-Belsen while Manya and the others had to walk there on a death march. One week after their arrival in Bergen-Belsen, they were liberated by the British. The British placed Rose in a hospital where she contracted typhus once again. Rose was sent to the Feldafing DP camp in Germany where she worked for the Jewish Labor Committee. Rose met her husband in Feldafing. Manya and her fiance, whom she had met in the hospital, also moved to Feldafing Rose and her husband immigrated to the United States in June 1946, following Manya and her husband who had arrived shortly before them. Both couples settled in New York City. Sara, Sara's husband, and Leon first went to Poland and then to Germany to search for their family Rose was able to obtain immigration papers for her siblings Leon came to the United States, and Sara and her husband settled in Toronto, Canada, in 1948.
