UPDATE: The funeral will be held at Emek Sholom Holocaust Memorial Cemetery (within Forest Lawn Cemetery at 4000 Pilots Lane) on Wednesday, July 17, 2019 at 11 a.m. The meal after the funeral will follow from follow from 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. at Virginia Holocaust Museum (2000 E. Cary St.). Free parking is available at the museum’s upper and lower lots.

We are sorry to inform you that Boleslaw “Bud” Brodecki passed away Sunday, July 14, 2019 in Washington, D.C. Bud was a hero and friend. We mourn his passing with his family; our thoughts and prayers go out to Sonia, Joe, Roma, Maria and Debbie and their families.

Boleslaw (Bud) Brodecki was born in Warsaw, Poland on March 1, 1921 to Meiloch and Sura Brodecki. He had one sister, Rosalia, who was six years his senior. With the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, Bud and Rosalia fled to Eastern Poland to stay with his sister’s fiancée in November of 1939. The three were later moved to a ghetto before being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. Bud’s sister, brother-in-law, and nephew perished in this camp. Over the next two years, Bud was moved between Swientochlowitz, Gusen, Reca/Dresden, Mauthausen, Leitmeritz, and Theresienstadt. He was liberated from Theresienstadt on May 8, 1945.

Bud returned to Warsaw to find his family but discovered they had perished in the Holocaust. He ended up in a displaced persons (DP) camp in Germany where he began work as a police officer. Through this position, he met his wife Zosia (Sonia) Piekarska. Sonia was born in Sosnowiec, Poland on July 8, 1927 to Miriam and Joseph Piekarska. The couple had one other child, a son named Lolek. Joseph owned and operated a sweets shop in Sosnowiec that was eventually taken over by the Nazis. On September 4, 1939 the Piekarska family was forced to move into a ghetto erected in Sonia’s hometown. From there, Sonia was deported to Breslau-Guentherbrueke labor camp in 1943. She was later moved to Kletendorf, where she assembled plane parts, and Ludwigsdorf, where she weighed gunpowder. She was liberated on May 8, 1945.

Like Bud, Sonia returned home with the hopes of finding her family, all of whom perished in the Holocaust. She ended up at the Landesberg-am-Leche DP camp in Germany where she met Bud. The couple was married shortly after and had their first child, Joseph, in 1946. The family immigrated to the United States in 1949, raising their four children in the States.

May the family be comforted among the mourners of  Zion and Jerusalem.