Maria Kawecka was born in 1918 in Lewiny, Poland, 40 km away from Łódź In April 1942 the Germans picked up the 24 year old Maria, her two brothers and her parents. The brothers and sisters went on a transport to work in Güstrow. Maria Kawecka had to help out as a nanny for a gardener for three months. When she returned to Łódź, she was arrested again shortly afterwards during a raid on a tram. Together with many other women, she came to a collection point where the women were examined naked by German men, which she found very humiliating.

From Łódź the journey went to Berlin. Maria Kawecka was sent to a camp in Reinickendorf. She had to work in the arms industry. In the summer of 1944 she fled, but police picked her up and took her to the Gestapo labour camp Fehrbellin near Neuruppin. There she had to work hard for three months in a bast fiber factory. When she returned to work after her release, she weighed only 28 kg. None of the other forced laborers recognized her. In 1944 the factory in Reinickendorf was seriously damaged in an air raid and production was relocated to Klausdorf near Teltow. Maria Kawecka worked there until the liberation.

Back in Poland Maria Kawecka was employed at the Technical University in Łódź . She died in 2007 in Łódź.