Hanna Sukiennik

Of Blessed Memory 1923 – 2001

Hanna Rydelnik was born in 1923 in Zagórze, Poland but grew up in Będzin with her five brothers and sisters. The family was placed in the Będzin ghetto until 1942 when the majority of her family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hanna and her sister were briefly in hiding before enduring a series of forced labor camps and surviving a death march in the winter of 1944. Upon her arrival at Christianstadt, Hanna and four other girls escaped. They were liberated by the Soviet army in Sommerfeld, Germany in February 1945. After a trip back to Poland, Hanna lived in and around Munich until she immigrated to the United States with her husband and first child in 1949.