Rose Girone was eight months pregnant when her husband, Julius Mannheim, was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
His release came after their child was born and on the proviso the family leave the country.
Despite being forced to flee her home under Nazi Germany, and living in impoverished conditions in China for years after, Ms Girone's family remembers her as always having a positive outlook on life.
At 113 years old, Ms Girone was believed to be the oldest living Holocaust survivor, according to non-profit Claims Conference.
She died at a nursing home in Long Island, New York, on Monday, local time, her daughter and fellow survivor Reha Bennicasa confirmed in a statement.
"She was a strong lady, resilient," Ms Bennicasa said.
"She was very level-headed, very commonsensical. There was nothing I couldn't bring to her to help me solve — ever — from childhood on."
Ms Girone, nee Raubvogel, was born on January 13, 1912, in Poland.
She and Mr Mannheim had married and moved to Breslau, Germany, in 1938 shortly before his arrest.
It was there she witnessed Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass — a nationwide pogrom carried out against Jewish people in Nazi Germany on November 9-10, 1938.
During the violence, which is estimated to have killed 91 Jews, Breslau's synagogues and schools were destroyed.
"My father was in a concentration camp when I was born," Ms Bennicasa said in a Fox News interview that aired last month to coincide with her mother's 113th birthday.
"They had come and taken [him] and his father.
"But apparently they paid his way out with the proviso that within six weeks, we would [escape to Shanghai]."
Escape from Germany
The young family left everything to escape to China, the only country still accepting immigrants at the time, arriving in Shanghai's international settlement after a month-long journey by boat.
But when the city fell into Japanese occupation, the Jewish community was forced into a ghetto.
Her granddaughter, Gina Bennicasa, told the Bellmore Herald in January that for seven years the family lived in a small, rat-infested room, which had originally been a bathroom.
She said Ms Girone managed to earn some money by using her knitting skills to start a small business in the ghetto.
It was the start of what would become a decades-long lifeline for Ms Girone.
By 1947, the family had secured a visa to the United States, where they swiftly set up in New York.
Within a few years, Ms Girone had divorced Mr Mannheim, and managed to sustain herself and Reha with money earned working at knitting stores.
Eventually, she had saved enough to open two of her own stores, and continued to work and teach knitting until she was nearly 102.
"I had a pretty good life," Ms Girone said in her interview with Fox News last month.
"Through it all, mother always said we're lucky," Ms Bennicasa added.
Ms Girone attributed her longevity to her family, in January saying they "keep me alive", but her daughter suggested a penchant for dark chocolate may also have played a role.
Ms Girone is survived by her daughter and granddaughter.
About 245,000 Holocaust survivors are still alive and about 14,000 of those live in New York, according to Claims Conference.
ABC/Reuters
