From 1924, the heart patient and mentally handicapped Rosa Strauss worked as a domestic help in the Neu-Isenburg Home of the Jewish Women’s Association. In 1939 Helene Krämer, the head of the home referred to her as a "mentally deficient and unable to depend on herself in life," but also as an "industrious worker who can work under guidance.”

Rosa Strauss was born in Miehlen near St. Goarshausen. She had two brothers, one of whom died as a toddler and the other was killed in action in 1916 in the First World War. After her discharge from elementary school, Rosa lived for some years with a relative in Griesheim near Darmstadt. She later lived and worked for two years in a household in Mannheim. In early 1924, at the age of about twenty-six, Rosa Strauss was pregnant and was therefore given to the care of the Isenburg home in October of that year. She gave birth to a son who died a few months after birth.

Rosa Strauss stayed in the Jewish Women's League home in Neu-Isenburg until the forced dissolution of the institution. On March 19, she was taken to Darmstadt together with the last home director, Sophie Sondhelm, where she lived for another six months at the Jewish retirement home in Eschollbrücker Straße 4 ½. At that time, this retirement home was a rallying point for people who were later deported from Darmstadt.

On September 30, 1942, Rosa Strauss, along with Sophie Sondhelm, and eight other women and children from “Heim Isenburg,” as well as the Neu-Isenburg families, Cahn/Schott and Schlamm were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp where they were murdered.

Sources: Stadtarchiv Neu-Isenburg; Hessian State Archives; Memorial Book - Victims of the Persecution of the Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 - 1945 (Bundesarchiv - National Archives); Die Deportationslisten. Veröffentlichung der Namenslisten der 1942/43 aus dem ehem. Volksstaat Hessen deportierten Juden, Initiative "Gedenkort Güterbahnhof Darmstadt"