Mrs. Miriam Rosen (nee Kaufman) lived in Baltimore and Washington area for over 68 years and touched the lives of so many people. She lived a beautiful and meaningful life as a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and teacher. She was full of love and smiles for all who knew her, to the point where you’d never know what she’d lived through during the Holocaust.
Mrs. Rosen’s early childhood years in the shtetl left her with lasting traditions, a delicious Yiddish wit, and an emunah peshutah, simple faith. A few stories of her life follow.
Mrs. Rosen was born in 1924 in a small shtetl called Sarnik, near Pinsk, in what was then Poland, to Reb Herschel and Mrs. Bayla Kaufman. She was the youngest of seven children. When she was a young teen, her mother passed away, and she was raised in what she recalled as a warm, loving home by her father and older siblings.
Her family lived a simple Jewish existence. Her father worked shipping logs down the river. Her sisters ran a school in their home and took in sewing to help make ends meet.
She often recalled living next door to her cousins and playing outside with them all day as a young child. Many summer afternoons they would sit on a hammock and watch the clouds pass or swim in the nearby river together. Miriam and her siblings and cousins fished in the river in a unique fashion, stretching a sheet across the river and catching the fish inside, thus bringing extra food to the family’s table.
In this small Jewish shtetl, only the rav’s son went away to learn in yeshiva. But Miriam’s father, Reb Herschel, sent his oldest son, Lazar, away to a yeshiva in Koritz for seven years, even though he couldn’t really afford it, because he didn’t want his son to become a cabinetmaker or a shoemaker like the rest of the town. Miriam was born after Lazar left to yeshiva.
Every night Reb Herschel tucked young Miriam into bed and told her, “Shluf gezunt mammaleh, morgen Mashiach vet zayn doh. Sleep well, mammaleh, tomorrow Mashiach will come.” It was this emunah peshutah in Hashem’s goodness and in Bias Hamashiach that sustained her in the harsh days to come.
Miriam was only 17 when Nazis invaded Sarnik. Together with three sisters and some cousins, she was hidden in the barn of a non-Jewish neighbor. A couple of nights later, the farmer’s son-in-law came to tell the group that he had overheard his father-in-law reporting that he had ten heads in the barn. The son-in-law gave them a bag of bread and told them to run for their lives.
The group lived in the forest for the next few months and ate potatoes dug up from neighboring fields. They kept warm by taking tapestries off the tombstones in non-Jewish cemeteries, using this to warm their feet during the winter months. By Chanuka, they knew that they could not survive the winter in the forest.
Two of the men had heard that there was a group of Jewish partisans in the neighboring forest. They decided to trek the 50 kilometers (31 miles) to this forest to see if it was safe to bring the entire group there. For some reason, Hashem put the idea in Miriam’s head that she should go with them. The men told her that it would be a long, dark walk and that she would slow them down. Miriam begged, promising that they wouldn’t hear a peep from her. Finally they agreed to take her.
Two nights later, when the three of them returned for the remaining seven, they discovered that the Nazis had been there the night before and had killed them all.
Alone and without immediate family, Miriam joined the Jewish partisans’ fight against the Germans. For three years she lived in the forests – fighting, hiding, and surviving on the bare minimum of food and clothing necessary to survive the bitter Polish and Russian winters. At one point she developed a severe infection in her leg, but the partisans had no medicine to treat it. They located a Polish peasant who treated the infection, and Miriam fortunately recovered.
In 1944, her troop of partisans crossed the Russian front line, and the Red Army took an active interest in them. The troop joined the Red Army, receiving the food, medical treatment, clothing, and other supplies they’d previously been lacking. However, the Nazis became aware of the partisans’ activities and regularly strafed their position in the forest with bombs. Miriam witnessed the death of friends and a cousin during this time.
Meanwhile, young Miriam fell ill with typhus and ended up in a Russian army hospital. When she recovered, one of the doctors told her that the front was moving and asked her to join the Russian army and help in the hospital. Having no one to turn to but Hashem, she thought, Hashem has looked after me until now and He will continue to look after me even if I join the army.
A search for surviving immediate family members with the war’s end turned up only her eldest brother, Lazar, who had served in the Ukrainian army and was now in Siberia. Determined to reach him, Miriam traveled from Rivne (Rovno) to Kiev on the roof of the train, about 200 miles. The trains were packed with soldiers trying to return home, and young Miriam wasn’t willing to wait for a seat on a train – she just wanted to find her brother. Finally, she made it from Kiev to Siberia and was reunited with Lazar, who became a father figure to her and guided her for the rest of his life.
Lazar and Miriam made their way across Europe to a displaced persons camp in Milan, Italy, where they were able to contact their Tante Malka in Washington, DC. Their aunt brought the two survivors to the United States and into her home. Lazar, who had been a melamed, became a rebbe at the Hebrew Academy in Washington, and Miriam was employed in Tante Malka’s family business and went to Americanization school.
With her move to America, Miriam was determined to start over and leave the horrors of the war behind her. She dreamed of the things every normal young Jewish woman wants…a good marriage and a warm, loving home filled with children.
In 1950 Miriam Kaufman married American-born Mr. Sam Rosen (ybl”c), her beloved husband for the next 65 years. Together they decided that their legacy would be Netzach Yisrael, to perpetuate the Jewish people, in order to bring new life and light into the world.
The Rosens’ first home was in Southeast Washington, DC. As the children grew older, the family moved to the suburbs in Silver Spring, MD. The Rosens were pillars of their community, hosting guests, sending food and treats to others for Shabbos, and helping in their shul, Ezras Israel.
In those days in the Washington, DC, area, very few people sent their children to Jewish day school. With the exception of Mrs. Rosen’s brother Lazar, none of the Rosens’ friends or relatives did so. The Rosens, however, were committed to a life of growth for their children and enrolled them in the Hebrew Academy of Washington and then in the Yeshiva of Greater Washington when it opened in 1965. Their sons, Tzvi and Howard, eventually went on to learn in Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim in New York.
Meals at that time were billed separately from tuition in Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim. Instead of buying dinners from the yeshiva, Mrs. Rosen cooked and froze all her sons’ meals and shipped them biweekly via the Trailways bus. The Rosen boys ate royally with food lovingly prepared by their mama.
Mrs. Rosen took tremendous pride in her yeshiva bochur sons (and eventually grandsons and great-grandsons) and always inquired into how they were learning. She took great satisfaction in sending her sons to yeshiva just as her father had done for her brother back in Sarnik.
The Rosens had an open home, with the children’s friends, cousins, and eventually grandchildren coming to stay and enjoy her legendary cooking, hospitality, graceful manner, and lively Old World wit.
Once her children were in school, Mrs. Rosen began working as a preschool teacher at Beth Shalom, at the time still located on Eastern Avenue in Washington, DC. Upon moving to Baltimore, she taught at Yeshivat Rambam’s preschool until it closed. She retired at the age of 87.
Morah Miriam made it a point to give love, hugs, compliments, and lots of nurturing to each preschooler. Her students would literally run to greet her in the morning when they’d leave their carpools, so happy were they to be in her care for the day. Teaching preschoolers was a natural outgrowth of Mrs. Rosen’s lifelong drive for Netzach Yisrael. How proud she was to be a teacher to Jewish children and to nurture their love for Torah and Hashem.
Mrs. Rosen indeed felt deep gratitude to G-d for how her life turned out. When asked, “How are you?” she replied with the Yiddish expression for “thank G-d,” “Gut zu dineken.”
She experienced such deep joy at every family simcha. On joyous occasions she would cry tears of gratitude and give her family a bracha: “If Hashem will only give us one more year.” Indeed, Hashem did bless Mrs. Rosen with many good years of marriage and family life. After several months of illness, she passed away on the 2nd of Shevat at the age of 91.
At her levaya Rabbi Heinemann pointed out that Mrs. Rosen was one of the last few remaining connections we had to the shtetl life that existed before the Nazi terror began. She remembered life before the war, keeping those pre-war customs alive and passing them on to her family and students. Both of her daughters commented that their mother’s memories of the shtetl life were so vivid, they’d always wished they could somehow go back and see it for themselves.
Mr. and Mrs. Rosen gave over not only the ta’am, flavor, of the Alte Heim, Old World, to their children, but also the example of respect for Torah and mitzvos. Together they raised a beautiful family of bnei Torah: children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are all shomrei Torah u’mitzvos.
Mrs. Miriam Rosen, a”h, passed away on the 2nd of Shevat. She was the loving daughter of Reb Herschel and Mrs. Bayla Kaufman; beloved wife of Mr. Sam Rosen (he should live and be well); devoted mother of Rabbi Tzvi (Liora) Rosen, Mr. Howard (Shelley) Rosen, Mrs. Esther (Rabbi Moshe) Zimberg, and Mrs. Rachie (Rabbi Eliyahu) Reingold; and is also survived by many adoring grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
