Anneliese Reins of Reading, MA

March 8, 1924 – March 15, 2018

Anneliese Reins age 94, of Reading, passed away on March 15 2018. She was born in Memel, East Prussia, a former province of Germany. Today this city is known as Klaipeda, Lithuania.

Anneliese was the eldest daughter of Leopold and Lotte Becker, along with sister Barbara and brother Dieter. The day after she graduated from nursing school, World War II broke out. Not long after the war started, her family was separated and sent to concentration camps. Her parents and siblings would later die in the concentration camps. Anneliese survived brutal forced labor, famine and disease by always volunteering. "If I am going to die, I might as well die, doing something good", she would say. This saved her life, where millions of others perished. After the war ended she found her way to a relocation camp for displaced people near Rome, Italy where she met a young Russian soldier Morduch Polonski who also volunteered in the relocation camp. They soon married and moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where she worked in a number of hospitals.

In Brazil, Anneliese had two children, Lilian and Leonardo, only to find herself a single mother raising two children and working full time. Later, in addition to nursing and working for a newspaper, she took on an additional job as a nanny, caring for a baby boy of a family where the father was a traveling lecturing professor. When his assignment ended in Brazil, he invited her to move to Miami, Florida to continue caring for his son full time. She eventually moved to Massachusetts with her children and worked at the former New England Memorial Hospital. In 1973 she met and married Dale Reins and moved to Cleburne, Texas where she lived until 1996, moving back again to Massachusetts and worked at the Walmart store in North Reading, until she retired in 2006.

Anneliese passed away peacefully at the Royal Meadowview Center, in North Reading, MA, and donated her brain to research.

Anneliese is survived by her children Lilian (Polonski) Carter and her husband Robert Carter of New Hampshire, and Leonardo Polonski and his wife Lynn of Massachusetts. She also leaves four grandchildren: Nathan Polonski, Ryan Polonski, Denise Landry, and Laurie Lewis. As well as seven great grandchildren: Cameron, Katelyn, Madison, Abigail, Noah, Anneliese, and Alexander.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday March 24 at the International Family Church 99 Concord St, North Reading at 10 am. Burial is private.