At the beginning of September 1942, the Jewish scientist was deported from her place of residence in Berlin to the Riga Ghetto, where she was murdered a few days later.
From Easter in 1912, Rosenthal studied natural sciences and philosophy at the Schlesischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (Silesian Freidrich-Wilhelms-University) in Breslau.
Both alone and together with her former teacher Ferdinand A. Pax, she contributed numerous scientific articles in Adolf Engler's multi-volume publication Das Planzenreich, which originally had aimed to cover all plant species on earth.
[5] After the name change ordinance of the National Socialist regime of Germany, from 1 January 1939, she was forced to use the Jewish-signifying first name Sara as well as her actual name.
[6] Together with several hundred other Berlin Jews she was deported to the Riga Ghetto, in then German-controlled Lettland, now the nation of Latvia, on the 5 September 1942.
There immediately after their arrival on 8 September, as part of the systematic Nazi extermination of Jews, she and her fellows were murdered.