Rozia Susskind

Rozia was born to a Jewish family in the town of Kolbuszowa. Her family lived outside of town, near her uncles. The Susskinds owned a flour mill and a lumber mill. Their home was one of the few in the area with electricity, which was generated at their mills. Rozia had an older sister, Hanka, and an older brother, Yanek.

1933-39: In the early 1930s, the Susskinds' mills burned down. Hanka moved to Cracow to study in the university and married, and Yanek was working in Kolbuszowa's Jewish bank. The Susskinds could not afford to continue Rozia's schooling, so she was apprenticed to a seamstress. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Hanka and her husband returned to Kolbuszowa and fled to the USSR with Yanek and Rozia's father. Rozia, 17, remained in Kolbuszowa with her mother, who had cancer.

1940-42: In January 1940 Rozia's mother died. In 1941 the Germans established a Jewish ghetto in Kolbuszowa, and Rozia and her uncles were moved there. Like many in the ghetto, Rozia was put to work sweeping streets, shoveling snow and cleaning the homes of the Germans. On June 20, 1942, the Germans issued a decree: Kolbuszowa's Jews had three days to leave their homes and resettle in the Rzeszow ghetto 20 miles away.

On July 7, 1942, Rozia and her uncles were deported from the Rzeszow ghetto to the Belzec extermination camp, where they perished.