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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/13446/full/13446/rachel-piotrkowski-survivor-dies-at-81/ <br /><br /> <b>Rachel Piotrkowski, survivor, dies at 81</b> <br /> Friday, June 9, 2000 | by <p>ALEXANDRA J. WALL </p> <br /><br /><p>Rachel Piotrkowski, a survivor of a death march and Bergen-Belsen who later became a Petaluma chicken rancher, died on May 17. She was 81.<br /><br /> Born Rachel Weglinsky in Zawierce, Poland, in 1918, she was the daughter of a shoe manufacturer. Before the war began, she apprenticed as a seamstress.<br /><br /> During World War II, she was a forced laborer, making twine in one factory and operating machinery in another. After enduring a death march that ended at Bergen-Belsen, she was liberated from the camp in April of 1945. None of her immediate family—neither her parents nor her two brothers—survived the war.<br /><br /> She met her husband, Gabriel Piotrkowski, in a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1947. Their son, Joe, was born in a nearby hospital in 1948.<br /><br /> In 1949, the family came to San Francisco, with the help of Rachel Piotrkowski's uncle, Isidore Weglinsky. Soon after, they moved to Petaluma and worked for a chicken rancher. A few months later, they bought their own 5-acre plot of land and went into the poultry business on their own, doing both farming and processing.<br /><br /> Piotrkowski retired in 1976. She was active in her synagogue, Congregation B'nai Israel in Petaluma, its sisterhood and Hadassah.<br /><br /> In addition to her son, she is survived by her daughter-in-law, Fran, and her grandson, Ari Piotrkowski, all of Petaluma.</p> <p> </p>

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