Biography
Dvorah Rabinowitz (born Dorota Jawerbaum) is the daughter of Minia Rabinowitz and Jakob Jawerbaum (later Jack Yaver). She was born on September 10, 1942 while her parents were in exile in Uzbekistan. Minia Rabinowitz was the only daughter of Pinchos Rabinowitz and Sara Gefen Rabinowitz of Warsaw. Her family moved to Miedzyrzec Podlaski once her father became the cantor there. Minia, who planned to attend nursing school in Warsaw, dated Jakob Jawerbaum. Jakob was one of six children of Lejb and Ester Jawerbaum. The young couple had planned to immigrate to Cuba and join Jakob's oldest brother Chil, but were prevented by the outbreak of World War II. In September 1939, a few days after the German invasion of Poland, the Rabinowitz and the Jawerbaum families crossed the Bug River to Brzesc which was under Soviet occupation. Minia and Jakob Jawerbaum married soon thereafter on December 31, 1939. Minia found work as a census taker for the city labor department. In early 1940 the Soviets demanded that the Polish refugees choose between accepting Soviet citizenship, returning to German occupied Poland, or doing neither. The Jawerbaum and the Rabinowitz families chose the third option. In response, on June 29, 1940, Minia and Jakob were deported to a Soviet labor camp, Gulag #53, in Komi, some 600 kilometers north of Moscow. Later that fall, Minia learned that her parents, Pinchos and Sara Rabinowitz, were also in an equally miserable labor camp elsewhere in Komi. They were sent to work cutting down trees in the forest. On July 30, 1941, about a month after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Soviets announced a general amnesty and released Polish citizens imprisoned in the camps. After their release, Minia, Jakob and Minia's parents traveled south to Uzbekistan. One year later, Minia gave birth to Dorota. After the end of the war, the Rabinowitz and the Jawerbaum families moved to the Hasenecke DP camp near Kassel, Germany. They remained in the DP camp until June 1949, when they immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago, Illinois.
