"Rosa" by Cynthia Ozick was first published in the New Yorker in 1983. However, its protagonist, Rosa Lublin, was introduced three years earlier in "The Shawl," a much shorter story also published in the New Yorker. The two stories were re-released together as a book in 1989 entitled The Shawl. "Rosa" also appeared in the anthology Prize Stories 1984, a collection of O. Henry Prize winners.

While "The Shawl" tells the painful story of how Rosa's infant daughter is brutally killed by a Nazi guard in a concentration camp, "Rosa" revisits the protagonist 30 years later, who is still devastated by her daughter's death. Living a meager, isolated existence in a "hotel" for the elderly, financed by Stella her resentful niece, Rosa is unable to let go of her daughter and the past.

"Rosa" dramatizes the lasting impact of the Holocaust on a unique, complex character who is not entirely sympathetic. While obviously the far-reaching effects of the Holocaust is a major theme in this story, Ozick also deals with themes of alienation and denial and explores how American culture devalues and isolates the elderly.