Born in Poland, Girone fled Nazi persecution in 1939 with her husband, who had been incarcerated at the Buchenwald concentration camp, and baby daughter on a chance visa to Shanghai, which opened its doors to nearly 20,000 Jewish refugees during the Holocaust and was one of the last open ports in the world. After the war, they immigrated to the United States in 1947.
She ran a knitting shop in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., a trade that helped her family survive the Holocaust and which she continued until the last decade of her life, even after she passed the century mark. In the last decade, she lived in a Long Island nursing home.
The supercentenarian attributed her longevity to her child, eating lots of dark chocolate and living daily with a purpose.
