Part of David Lorber Rolnik’s Family

Left to right: Dwojra (sister); Rajzla (mother) David; and Ester Oksman (sister in law).

Children: Jakob-Israel and Manys.

In Chelm, Photo circa 1935.

David Lorber- Rolnik was born in Chelm, Poland, in 4 March 1920, to Szyja Rolnik and Rajzla Lorber. He had two sisters, Dwojra (20 March, 1925) and Chana (25 December 1923), and three brothers, Abraham (1918), Jacob (5 January 1927) and Manys (18 March 1929). He had to flee from Chelm when he was 19 years old and survived hidden in forests. He came back and tried to take his family with him, but it was too late. He took part of the Chelm's Death March, on 1st Dec. 1939, and by a miracle he survived it. He crossed the Bug River and lived for a while in Ukraine, in small towns and villages, till he was taken by the Russians to the Urals to be put  to work in very terrible conditions in their labor camps and gulags.

Many times he was under a gun by the SS men and anti-Semitic Ukrainians and Poles. At the Urals, he worked day and night cutting trees and was under NKVD's (Secret Russian Police) severe observation. As the war was over, he returned to Chelm to try to find survivors, but found nobody.  Most of the family might have been taken to Majdanek, the death camp near Lublin, where they were executed. While in Chelm, he took part in the Jewish Committee which was created in order to look for survivors. Leibl and Jacob Milchtajch, whom David knew very well, returned to check about survivors. They were Malka’s brothers (David knew her from the Schomer Adati, a religious organization, when they were very young). He heard she survived and was living in Szczecin, now part of Poland. They married in Berlin, Germany, in Lager Tempelhof, a DP camp, at 4th December 1946. Later they left for South America and decided to live in Brazil. 

Rajzla Lorber-Rolnik was born in Chelm in 1897 (?), was David's mother. He believed she was murdered together with her children Chana, Dwojra, Jacob and Manys.

Ester Oksman and her husband, Abrahm Lorber-Rolnik, survived the war and lived in the United States till they passed away.