[1] She was born in the Austro-Hungarian town of Érsekújvár, now Nové Zámky, where the main language at the time was Hungarian,[2] and which later became part of Czechoslovakia and then Slovakia.

[2][3] Roth was a leading member in the Socialist-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair youth movement from an early age.

[4][5][2] There, she studied at the Seminar HaKibbutzim Teachers College in Tel Aviv, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

[4] In 1937, Roth was one of the founders of Kibbutz Sha'ar HaGolan, in what was then Mandatory Palestine, where she worked as a kindergarten teacher and lived for many years.

[7][8] Her cousin Alfréd (Ali) Aladár Neuwald, who had survived the Holocaust, had lost touch with Roth, but his daughter, Ruth Neuwald Falcon, a documentary filmmaker in Seattle, searched the computer database of Jerusalem's Yad Vashem and learned that her mother's family had been murdered at Auschwitz, but also discovered information that led her to find and re-connect with Roth.

[9][7][8] Her great-granddaughter, Amit Ivry, is an Israeli Olympic swimmer, Maccabiah Games champion, and national record holder.

[5] She started writing relatively late in life, and authored popular Israeli children's literature classics.

[3] Roth was revolutionary, in that she created a new literary genre focused on children's emotions and experiences, instead of on collective themes.

"[14]In the Israeli city of Holon, a sculpture of an enormous corncob next to a weathervane inspired by Roth's "Corn on the Cob" was installed in the Tel Giborim neighborhood.