Nathan Rohloff photograph collection

Nathan Rohloff (Natan Roloff) was Dagmar Phillips and Aviva Zylberberg’s paternal grandfather. The Roloff family lived in Riga, Latvia and Natan was an activist in the boy scouts movement. Natan’s son, Joachim Roloff married Thea Raudis. Their daughter Aviva was born in April 1940 and Dagmar in November 1941. After the German invasion of the USSR, the daughters stayed with their mother until sometime in 1943, when Dagmar inadvertently was separated from her mother and sister. Joachim Roloff probably was killed one day before the liberation of Riga. Natan Roloff found his granddaughter Dagmar in Duchero in 1948 and smuggled her to West Germany. At the same time, he found his daughter-in-law and older granddaughter Aviva and brought them over to the DP camp that he managed in Neustadt/Holstein. In the early 1950s Natan Roloff and his granddaughters immigrated to the United States.