Mira Rothenberg, whose experience and commitment to caring for concentration camp orphans as a college student in Manhattan shaped her pioneering therapy for autistic and schizophrenic children, died on April 16 in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 93.

Her death, from respiratory distress, was confirmed by her son, Akiva Goldsman, with whom she had been staying.

Ms. Rothenberg and her husband, Tev Goldsman, operated a group home in Brooklyn for emotionally disturbed children and a summer camp in Sullivan County, N.Y., where, she told The New York Times in 1963, “we try to reach into a child’s hiding place and draw him out.”

“We try to show him that sunlight is not so frightening, and neither is darkness,” she said.

All of the campers had been found to have schizophrenia, and half of them did not speak. “It’s training in everyday living,” Ms. Rothenberg told The Times. “You learn to wash, to dress, to scrub your hair. You learn to depend and to be independent. You learn that it’s safe to be a child.”