Two Roses

In October 1942, thirteen-year-old Rózia Handelsman (Rose Lipszyc) manages to escape certain death as her family is being deported from their home near Lublin, Poland. Alone and terrified, she flees to a neighbor’s house and is reunited with her aunt, Róza Finkielsztajn. With the help of friends and strangers, the two Roses adopt false identities and disguise themselves as Polish gentile sisters. Against all odds, they survive the war in a forced-labor camp in Nazi Germany.

A collaboration between award-winning graphic novelist Miriam Libicki and Holocaust survivor Rose Lipszyc, this book illuminates a crucial part of our shared history with care, honesty, and creativity.

Graphic novelist Miriam Libicki is a sessional instructor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. A recipient of the career achievement Inkpot at San Diego Comic-Con, Libicki has published widely and received many awards for her comic arts work .

Holocaust educator and survivor Rose Lipszyc was awarded the Order of Canada in 2021. Lipszyc still meets with Canadian and Polish youth to recount her wartime fate as a witness to history.

Mark Celinscak is the Leah and Paul Lewis Chair of Holocaust Studies and the Director of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.


Charlotte Schallié is a professor of Germanic Studies in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Victoria. Her areas of interests include memory studies, visual culture studies, genocide education, care ethics, and more. She also edited the award-winning collection of graphic novels But I Live.

Timothy Snyder holds the inaugural Temerty Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.