Maria Orlicka was born into a poor Polish family in Jaworzno on July 2, 1928. She helped take care of the house while her parents worked. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and German troops took over Jaworzno, an area that had once belonged to Germany.
In 1942, when Maria was 14, she was arrested for using black-market ration cards to get food, accused of selling it for profit. She was sent to Auschwitz and registered as prisoner number 39849 on April 2, 1943. She was held in Bunker 11, where prisoners were usually chosen to be executed by firing squad at the “death wall.”
Instead of being killed, Maria was sent to a slave labor camp for children in the Łódź ghetto, called Litzmannstadt by the Germans. Her parents were told she had been executed, and her father died from a heart attack.
At 16, Maria was released on November 9, 1944, weak and suffering from scurvy, typhus, and malnutrition. She returned home to Jaworzno.
Remember Maria Orlicka. May her memory be a blessing.