Rolnik family photograph collection

David Lorber Rolnik (1920-2008) was born on 4 March 1920 in Chełm, Poland to Szyja Rolnik (1890-1974?) and Rajzla Lorber (1910-1941). He had two sisters, Dvora (1924-1941) and Chana (1923-1941), and three brothers, Abraham (1918-2006?), Jacob Israel (1927-1941), and Manis (1929-1941). Szyja had at least two brothers, Pinchas and Joseph. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, David fled to nearby forests to hide. He went to the Ural Mountains where he was sent to a Soviet labor camp. After the war, he returned to Chełm to try and locate any family members, but was not able to. He reconnected with an old friend, Malka Milchtajch, and they married in 1946 at the Tempelhof displaced persons camp, Berlin, Germany. Soon after, they immigrated to Bolivia and then to Brazil.

David’s mother and four of his siblings were killed at the Sobibór extermination camp in 1941. His father, Szyja, went to Vilnius, Poland (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania) and survived the war. He later immigrated to Israel. David would not discover that his father survived the war until the late 1950s. His brother Abraham also survived the war, and immigrated to the United States. Syzja’s brother, Pinchas, survived the war, but his wife Khaia and his son Abraham both perished. He went to the Tempelhof displaced persons camp, and later immigrated to Israel with his second wife, Sonia.

Malka Lorber Rolnik (née Milchtajch, 1922-1987) was born on 16 May 1922 in Chełm to Bluma (b. 1877) and Berish Milchtajch (b. 1879). She had seven siblings whose names include Henia (b. 1904), Jakov, Josef (b. 1902), Mindl. Malka was a writer and poet whose poems were published while she was still a child. After the start of World War II, Malka and several siblings fled Chełm for Russia. She was then deported to Siberia where she was a forced-laborer for the duration of the war. After the war, she returned to Chełm where she learned that her parents and two siblings, Henia and Josef perished in 1942 or 1943.