Obituary | Knit one, purl one
Stitch by stitch, Rose Girone kept her family going
The oldest known Holocaust survivor died on February 24th, aged 113
訃聞 |針織一件，金銀絲一件
羅絲·吉羅尼 (Rose Girone) 一點一滴地維持著她的家庭
已知最年長的大屠殺倖存者於 2 月 24 日去世，享年 113 歲
Mar 6th 2025
https://www.economist.com/obituary/2025/03/06/stitch-by-stitch-rose-girone-kept-her-family-going
Knitting divides opinion. On one side are those for whom it is traumatic. First, the very look of a knitting pattern, in which a suave and fancy-sweatered man introduces two pages of impenetrable mathematical code; the fiddliness of casting on; the reluctance of the needles to co-operate; the panic of a dropped stitch, the aborted rescue, the unravelling; and then the indescribable sadness of the finished object, whatever it was meant to be, tight, shapeless and useless.
編織是一個讓人意見分歧的活動。一方面，有些人對此感到痛苦不堪。首先，是那令人費解的編織圖樣——一位衣著時尚、身穿華麗毛衣的男子，介紹著兩頁難以理解的數學符號；接著，是起針時的手忙腳亂；針不願意配合的頑固；掉落一針的驚慌，拯救失敗後的整體崩壞；最後，成品所帶來的無法言喻的悲哀——無論原本想要編織什麼，最終的結果總是緊繃、無形且毫無用處。
For others, though, it is a delightful symbol of slow living, best practised in a Scandinavian hut glowing with hygge, with thick needles and thicker yarn, to make designs as intricate as snowflakes. It can also be fished from a bag whenever calmness is called for, in queues or at airports, or when frustrated. With a piece of knitting on the go, there is no dead or unprofitable time. Every moment can be devoted to progress and satisfaction.
然而，對另一些人來說，編織是一種充滿愉悅的慢活象徵，最適合在一間散發著 hygge 氛圍的斯堪的納維亞小屋中進行，手持粗針與更厚的毛線，編織出如雪花般精美的圖案。編織還可以隨時從包中取出，無論是在排隊、機場，或是感到沮喪時，都能帶來內心的平靜。有了編織在手，就不會有空閒或無意義的時光，每一刻都能投入於進展與滿足之中。
Rose Girone was definitely in the latter camp. She loved knitting from childhood, when an aunt in Hamburg first put the needles in her hands, to when, at 110, she was given nice new needles and a ball of red wool for her birthday. By then it was tricky for her to do the slip-knot for casting on, but she managed a few stitches all the same. Until she was 105 she had been teaching at the Knitting Place in Port Washington, New York; until she was 102 she had kept briskly clicking away; and in her 90s she had thought nothing of crawling on the floor to pin out still-damp knitted pieces into the shape of a jumper or a dress. When people brought her pictures from Vogue and wanted the same, she might** stay up all night **with her measure and graph paper, doing the maths. Quite simply, she could not imagine a life without knitting.
蘿絲・吉羅內（Rose Girone）無疑屬於後者。她從小就熱愛編織，最初是在漢堡的一位姑姑將織針交到她手中，此後一直持續到 110 歲生日那天，當時她收到了一副嶄新的織針和一團紅色毛線作為禮物。到了那時，她已難以順利打出起針的滑結，但仍然設法織出了幾針。直到 105 歲，她仍在紐約州波特華盛頓的 Knitting Place 擔任編織老師；直到 102 歲，她仍能熟練地讓織針靈活敲擊；甚至到了 90 多歲，她仍毫不在意地跪在地板上，把尚未乾透的編織作品拉整固定，使其呈現出毛衣或洋裝的形狀。當有人帶著《Vogue》上的圖片來找她，想要相同的款式時，她會徹夜不眠地拿著捲尺和方格紙，計算編織所需的數據。簡單來說，她無法想像沒有編織的生活。
Yet plenty had occurred in hers to disrupt a knitter’s calm. In 1938 she endured Kristallnacht in Breslau, when everything Jewish in the city was smashed or set on fire. Soon afterwards, the Nazis arrested her husband Julius and sent him to Buchenwald; she was spared because she was hugely pregnant with her first and only child. With luck and ingenuity, her relations obtained Chinese exit visas that allowed her, her baby Reha and even Julius to escape to Shanghai, one of the few open ports that still accepted Jews. By 1941, though, the Japanese took over Shanghai and set up a mile-square ghetto for the city’s 20,000 Jewish refugees. She and her family saw out the war there, before seeking refuge in America in 1947. There, her life had to start again from scratch.
然而，她的生活中曾發生過許多足以打破編織寧靜的動盪事件。1938 年，她在布雷斯勞經歷了水晶之夜（Kristallnacht），當時城裡所有與猶太人有關的東西都被砸毀或付之一炬。不久之後，納粹逮捕了她的丈夫尤利烏斯（Julius），並將他送往布痕瓦爾德集中營；而她則因為懷著第一個、也是唯一的孩子而幸運地逃過一劫。憑藉機緣與機智，她的親屬設法取得了中國的出境簽證，使她能夠帶著嬰兒瑞哈（Reha），甚至連尤利烏斯一起逃往上海——當時少數仍願意接納猶太人的開放港口之一。然而，到 1941 年，日本接管了上海，並為該市的 20,000 名猶太難民設立了一個僅一平方英里的隔都（ghetto）。她與家人在那裡度過了戰爭歲月，直到 1947 年才前往美國尋求庇護。在美國，她不得不從零開始重建生活。
She did not forget her knitting, though. No other career had appealed to her anyway, and after marrying Julius (an arranged marriage, but he was plump and prosperous, in the shipping business) she was happy to be a Hausfrau. Soon enough there was little Reha to knit for, chunky little items that could wrap her from the breeze on the deck of a ship. Reha was not the name Rose had wanted; it was the one she disliked least on Hitler’s list of permissible names for Jewish babies. But she did not believe in fretting over foolishness, or small things. She did not complain about the money and jewellery they had been made to leave behind, nor about their place in the Japanese ghetto, in a tiny room that had once been a bathroom under a staircase in a block of flats. True, there was only a single bed for the three of them, ticklish with cockroaches and bed-bugs, where rats ran over them as they slept. But, as she kept reminding the family, weren’t they lucky? They were together, and out of Europe.
然而，她從未忘記編織。反正她對其他職業也毫無興趣，而在與尤利烏斯結婚後（這是一樁包辦婚姻，但尤利烏斯身材富態、事業有成，在航運業務上頗有積累），她樂於當個Hausfrau（家庭主婦）。不久之後，小瑞哈出生了，她開始為女兒編織溫暖的小衣物，讓她在船上的甲板上不被冷風吹透。「瑞哈」這個名字並非蘿絲的首選，而是希特勒允許猶太嬰兒使用的名字中，她最不討厭的一個。但她不相信該為這種小事煩惱，也不會為瑣碎的事情抱怨。她沒有為他們被迫丟下的金錢與珠寶而埋怨，也沒有抱怨自己在日本人設立的隔都裡的居住環境——那是一間位於公寓樓梯下的狹小房間，曾經是個浴室。的確，那裡只有一張小小的床，三個人不得不擠在一起，床上滿是令人發癢的蟑螂與臭蟲，老鼠甚至會在他們睡覺時從身上爬過。但她總是提醒家人：他們是幸運的。他們還在一起，並且，已經逃離了歐洲。
She had also, luckily, found work. A man she met persuaded her to show her knitwear to an elegant** boutique** in Shanghai, which took her on. So many orders came in that she recruited Chinese women to a workshop to help her, acting out any parts of the patterns they did not understand. Julius meanwhile traded the few things they had brought with them, trinkets and linens, and went hunting, bringing back pheasant and quail full of buckshot. He could not make much money, though, and she could. She was soon providing knits for the most fashionable folk in Shanghai, all while living under the stairs. When they finally left, and could take only $10 with them, she folded eight $10 bills very, very small and stitched them over with yarn, to make buttons on one of her sweaters. That way, they took $80 out.
幸運的是，她還找到了一份工作。她結識了一位男子，對方說服她將自己的編織作品帶去上海一家高級精品店展示，結果店家立即錄用了她。訂單如雪片般飛來，她甚至雇用了幾名中國婦女在作坊裡幫忙，對於她們不理解的圖樣部分，她就親自示範演繹。與此同時，尤利烏斯靠著販賣他們僅剩的零星物品——一些小飾品與亞麻布料——來維生，還時常外出打獵，帶回滿是鉛彈的野雞與鵪鶉。然而，他賺不了多少錢，而她卻能夠賺錢。不久後，她已經成為上海最時尚人士的編織供應商，儘管她依舊住在樓梯下的那個小房間裡。當他們終於能夠離開上海時，每人只能攜帶 10 美元。於是，她靈機一動，把八張 10 美元紙鈔折得極小，再用毛線縫製在毛衣上當作鈕扣。就這樣，他們成功帶出了 80 美元。
Her time in America showed similar ingenuity. After two weeks she applied for a job, even though she hardly spoke English (let alone knitting English, with its swatches and blockings and bloomings), and got it. After she divorced Julius for not pulling his weight, and she and Reha were scrimping in furnished rooms, by sheer luck she met a man who owned a resort in the Adirondacks, where the rich of the north-east went on holiday. He set her up with a stall in the hotel lobby, and soon she was opening her own business in Queens. It expanded to Rose’s Knitting Studio in Forest Hills, which ran for years before, in 1980, she sold it. By then she had long met and married Jack Girone, her perfect partner.
她在美國的日子同樣展現了非凡的機智與適應力。抵達僅兩週後，她便開始應徵工作，儘管她幾乎不會說英語（更別提編織專業術語，如「織片」、「定型」、「膨鬆處理」等），但仍成功獲得了一份工作。後來，她與尤利烏斯離婚，原因是他未能承擔應有的責任。母女二人省吃儉用，在租來的簡陋公寓裡勉強度日。然而，命運再次眷顧了她——她偶然結識了一位經營阿迪朗達克山脈度假村的男子，該地是美國東北部富人度假的勝地。對方在飯店大廳為她安排了一個攤位，她的生意迅速起飛，最終她在皇后區開設了自己的編織工作室。隨著業務擴展，她創立了 Rose’s Knitting Studio，位於森林小丘（Forest Hills），並成功經營了多年，直到 1980 年，她決定將其出售。此時，她早已遇見並嫁給了自己的理想伴侶——傑克・吉羅內（Jack Girone）。
She did not stop teaching knitting, though, and her classes were among the most sought-after in New York. As a teacher she was kind, telling** novices** to have a coffee in Dunkin’ Donuts rather than watch as she ripped their efforts undone. After all, she had known her own disasters, including a batch of white sweaters in Shanghai which she tried to dry too fast, and singed in the oven.
然而，她並未因此停止教授編織。她的課程成為紐約最受歡迎的課之一。作為老師，她待人和善，對於新手，她會建議他們去 Dunkin’ Donuts 喝杯咖啡，而不是留在原地眼睜睜看著她拆掉他們的作品重織。畢竟，她自己也曾歷經編織的「災難」。她還記得在上海時，有一次她想讓一批白色毛衣快速乾燥，結果放進烤箱時溫度過高，竟然把毛衣給燒焦了。
Her instructions for life remained the same. Anything you could fix with money was not a problem. Nothing was so very bad that something good couldn’t come of it. Don’t sweat the small stuff. **Her recipe for longevity was good children **(you had to be lucky with that. She had the best child in the world), and lots of dark chocolate. Most important, though, was always to have a plan. Don’t wake up and say, “What am I going to do today?”
她對生活的指導方針始終如一：凡是能用金錢解決的，都不算問題。再糟糕的事情，總能帶來些許好處。別為小事煩惱。至於長壽的秘訣，她認為是擁有好孩子（這需要運氣，而她自認擁有世上最好的孩子）以及大量的黑巧克力。但最重要的是——永遠要有計畫。
別在早晨醒來時才問自己：「今天該做什麼？」
She definitely had a plan. Sometimes as she snoozed in very old age her daughter would hear her muttering in German, eins, zwei, drei, vier. She was counting stitches again. ■
她當然一直都有計畫。到了晚年，她偶爾會在打盹時輕聲呢喃，女兒側耳傾聽，會聽見她用德語低語著：eins, zwei, drei, vier（一、二、三、四）。她又在數著針目了。■
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