Rose Meth

Who is Rose Meth?

Rose Grunapfel Meth, born as Ruzia Grunapfel, also known as Reisel Grunapfel Meth, was a surviving participant in the October 7, 1944 "Sonderkommando uprising" of inmates in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. She was born in Zator, Poland.

Meth was among the forced labor workers in the Union munitions factory. Her role in the preparations for the uprising was to smuggle gunpowder out of the "Pulverraum", where she and several other women worked making bomb parts. She was a very close friend of Estusia Wajcblum; people often mistook them for sisters. She, Estusia, Regina Safirsztajn, and a woman named Genia Fischer worked together to sneak the powder out concealed in kerchiefs stuffed into a pocket or their bosom. Often there were searches; to avoid discovery, they would dump the powder out onto the ground and rub it into the earth with their feet. Following the investigation of the uprising, four women conspirators were interrogated and tortured, then condemned to death. On January 5, 1945, Ruzia was forced to watch the executions of Estusia, Regina, Roza Robota and Ala Gertner.

She never saw her younger sisters after they were taken away. She ultimately survived a death march. While in the camp, she traded bread for paper so that she could write notes while in Auschwitz, in order to bear witness later, heeding her father's admonition to remember what happened. Some of the surviving notes are in the archives at Yad Vashem.