ALEXANDER ROSLAN
Polish Rescuer

Photograph of Alexander Roslan, David Gilat, Roslan's daughter, Jacob Gilat and Roslan's son, c.1946

The expense of protecting his enlarged family necessitated that Roslan move his family from their relatively roomy apartment to one of just a single room. He bought an ultraviolet lamp for the boys who could never play outside in the sunshine. He sought out difficult to obtain vitamin rich foods, sometimes seeminly favoring the Jewish boys over his own children. The emotional strain on the family cannot be calculated.

Roslan's care of the Gilat brothers did not end when the war was over. He hired a private tutor to help them catch up with the years of missed schooling. He moved to Germany to attempt arrangements to personally escort the boys to their family in Palestine. Although this last effort proved impossible to accomplish, the boys did arrive there in 1947 where David eventually became a university mathematics professor. Alexander and his wife Mela emigrated to the United States and settled in Florida.

In his testimony to Yad Vashem (translated from Hebrew in 1968), David Gilat wrote:

"There were many cases of people who took part in rescue campaigns because of religious motivations. Many were saved by priests and monks. Roslan however is not a religious man; he is an atheist. He has never visited a church. And so we were spared the Christian missionary indoctrination which befell many of the children who were saved but became forced converts of modern times.

Photograph of Alexander and Mela Roslan, 1984
Roslan's motivation was purely humane. Roslan did for us more than the most devoted father does for his own son, and for this we are personally grateful to him. But his deeds have implications beyond the personal level and are of general humanistic significance."

"Roslan, and the few people of his kind are exemplary of altruism and of human spirit in the darkest era of human history. They are a rare phenomenon and deserve to be remembered and revered throughout the generations to come."


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