Hilda Singer Rudnick




Hilda Rudnick (see also Abe Rudnick) was born Hudla Singer on January 6, 1926, in Warenz, a town in southeast Poland. Her parents were Jonas and Rachel Singer. She had an older brother Ouzer and four younger siblings, David, Yossel, Mina and Harry. Hilda’s maternal grandparents, Sarah and Hershel Laszczower, also lived with the family until their death in 1939, shortly before the war began. The family had a business selling housewares, traveling from town to town. They kept kosher and considered themselves religious.

Soon after the war broke out, the family crossed the river and fled to Sokal, Russia, now part of the Ukraine, where they remained for six to ten months until they were taken by train to a settlement near Siberia. They lived with thousands of other displaced persons, primarily Jews, some of whom were their friends. A year later, they traveled to Samarkand in east-central Uzbekistan, near the Chinese border. At one of the railroad stops, Hilda’s father got off the train looking for food for the family, only to discover that the train had left without him. They never heard from him again nor could they find out what happened to him.

The family ended up in Osh, Russia, now part of Kyrgyzstan near the Uzbekistan border, where they remained for a few years under challenging living conditions, including picking cotton to support themselves. When Hilda became 15, her older brother Ouzer, weakened by poor living conditions, died of diphtheria. After Hilda’s mother and brother Yossel also passed away, Mina and Harry were sent to an orphanage which housed them and gave them an education. Hilda, on the other hand, went to live with Yelena Alexander Sror whom she would knit for using bicycle spokes and burlap. Her brother David eventually joined her at Yelena’s and worked in a tailor shop. Hilda often walked barefoot to the orphanage to check up on her siblings.

When the war ended in 1945, Hilda, along with her siblings David, Mina and Harry, joined a children’s group which was being repatriated to Poland. Later they were sent to Prien, Germany, where a children’s center for displaced children had been established. At the center was Abe Rudnick who would later become her husband. (See photo of Abe and Hilda in the Iro Children’s Village in Bad Aibling). Also at Prien was survivor Carl Voldman who eventually came to live in Rochester.

Hilda and Abe kept in touch after they both emigrated to the United States. A Jewish agency had arranged Hilda’s travel to New York to live with her great aunt, Esther Eisenberg, and her husband Jacob in Bensonhurst. The Eisenbergs owned the Equitable Paper Bag Company. Hilda’s siblings were sent to Boston where they resided with a foster mother, Mrs. Adams.

In 1950 Hilda married Abe and moved to Rochester, New York, where Abe had been residing with his sister. Shortly thereafter, Abe’s brother Sanford and Hilda’s brother David, having finished their service in the US Army, came to live with them as well. Later, Hilda’s siblings, Mina and Harry, also stayed with the couple for a while. Eventually David, Mina, and Harry all married Canadians who were also survivors and settled near Toronto.

Abe and Hilda had two children, Rita and Howard. Howard married Miriam Hoffman and has three children, Joel, Rachel and Marcie. The couple owned and ran Rudnick’s Unfinished Furniture, a well-known store in Rochester, for many years. In addition to working at the store as bookkeeper and salesperson, Hilda was also a master seamstress who sewed both her own and daughter’s wardrobe. She was expert in knitting, crocheting and needlepoint, and taught knitting at the Jewish Community Center until 2006.

Hilda passed away on December 17, 2020. 

Biography edited by daughter, Rita Rudnick