Rose Sherman Williams was born in Radom, Poland in 1927. In 1939, when she was twelve years old, Nazis invaded. In 1942, she was separated from her family and sent to Auschwitz, then to Bergen-Belsen. In 1945, she was liberated by British soldiers, and today tells her tale to the last generation who will know a Holocaust survivor. Letters to Rose was compiled over several years and expresses the instant and enduring bond between young students and a courageous, resilient woman. Some drew from her strength and found parallels in their own lives, while others swore to defy the deniers and to never become bystanders.
Becky Ebner Hoag, a veteran high school English teacher of thirty-six years has been involved with teaching the Holocaust both in the classroom and, upon retirement, at the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio. In 2010, Hoag co-authored a bool for the museum, called Our Voices/Our Lives: Twenty Holocaust Survivors Remember, to memorialize local survivors. Her twelve-year close relationship with survivor Rose Williams is the basis for Williams' entrusting Hoag to tell her story, setting personal events in their historical context. Hoag received a Gordon Hartman Award for Excellence in Caregiving in April of 2019 for her caregiving of Rose.
Robin Philbrick is a retired English teacher from San Antonio, Texas. When teaching the Holocaust to her students, she brought her rich experience as a military spouse living in a divided Berlin, Germany. Her lesson plans included photos, artifacts, and observations from places such as Dachau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, Hitler's Eagles Nest, and the Wannsee residence where the Final Solution was crafted. But the key element in her lesson plans each year was the precious time spent with Holocaust survivor Rose Sherman Williams whose incredible story created an enduring bond that led to Letters to Rose.