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Holocaust Survivor And Founder Of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Dies At 90

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp who was the wife of the founder of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and a passionate advocate of Holocaust remembrance has died. Rosalie Chris Lerman was 90.

Daughter Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer said her mother passed away Thursday of natural causes.

Born Rosalia Laks in 1926 and sent to Auschwitz as a teenager, she survived the camp and later came to New York with her husband, Miles Lerman. They had a chicken farm in Vineland, New Jersey, and a home heating oil distributorship.

Rosalie Lerman
Pictured left to right are Hania (later Anna Wilson) and Rozalia (Krysia, later Chris Lerman). Circa 1946 - 1947 (credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Miles Lerman was the founder and chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and she lectured widely on the subject.

Lerman-Neubauer said her mother may have grown up "in a time of great convulsions," but the next 70 years "were filled with all the wonderful things one would hope to do in life."

(© Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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