Born in 1920 in Radom, Poland, to a family of five, her father was a shoemaker and a member of the Bund, a socialist Jewish party. The Jews of Radom were interred in a ghetto in 1941; she married Moniek Rakocz there, but was separated when she was sent to a forced labor camp with two of her sisters in Ukraine. Both in the ghetto and in the camp, she was offered means of escape, but refused to separate from her family.
In 1942, Moniek and his family and Lonia’s mother were killed in Treblinka; her father was presumed killed en route.
In July 1944, with the advance of the Red Army, Lonia and her sisters were sent on a death march across Poland. On 3 August, they were deported to Auschwitz, where Lonia concealed her sister’s bad back to save her life as a slave laborer.
In December 1944, Lonia and her sisters were transferred to Ravensbrück and its sub-camp, Malchow. They were forced to work in a munitions plant. Lonia’s leg had been injured by SS beatings at Auschwitz, but her sisters helped her until she was reassigned to work in the kitchen.
In April 1945, the sisters were released in a prisoner exchange deal. They went to Sweden, where Lonia began working as a teacher of child Holocaust survivors on behalf of Youth Aliyah. In March 1948, Lonia boarded a ship bound for Haifa. She moved to Kibbutz Afikim, where she married Jacob and worked as a teacher of young immigrants.
Lonia and Jacob have three children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren
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