Jerry Rawicki

Born: April 30, 1927, Plock, Poland

Jerry Rawicki was born in Plock, Poland where he was raised with two older sisters in a middle class home. He had religious training and completed one year of law school before World War II broke out. His father managed an agricultural machinery factory. In 1939, when the German army took over Plonsk, Jerry fled. For awhile he dug graves in a small town to save his family from starvation.

Jerry escaped with his oldest sister in 1942. After a perilous journey he joined his father in the Warsaw Ghetto. There he joined the ZOB, a Jewish Fighting Organization, as a courier. His job was smuggling goods and messages in and out. During the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, he ran out of ammunition, and hid in an abandoned cellar. He was ill for weeks and was caught by German satellite troops, but escaped. His father, mother, and one sister were killed. Jerry left Warsaw in 1943, pretending to be a Gentile. He worked on a farm and became a member of Polish Peasant Battalions, a group of partisans fighting the German occupiers. He was liberated by the Soviet Army in 1944 in Lublin, Poland and remained for three years in Wroclaw (Breslau) Poland, then spent one year in Sweden.

In 1949, he arrived in the United States. Jerry married and has two children and six grandchildren. As of January 2015 he was living in Florida.