Man revisits the house where he and his mother hid from the Nazis 80 years ago
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Nearly 80 years after the Holocaust, a man who hid from the Nazis as a child has visited the house in Brussels where he secretly hid with his mother.
David Rossler, now 83, was five years old when his mother, Haja Sura Zoltak, was hidden by the Bourlet family, Georges and their four children: Paul, Jacques, Anne-Marie and Christiane.
Rossler met the Bourlets for a meeting when he visited their former safe haven.
The extraordinary meeting would not have taken place if not for the persistence of Rossler’s son, Lionel, 55. Lionel spent years trying to find the family that saved his father and his grandmother without success until a genealogist responded to his social media group. .
Two months later, David finally met with the descendants of the Bourlet family and visited the house in which he secretly lived. His son Lionel was elated to grant his father his lifelong wish.
Back left to right: Bernard Moens, Anne Moens, Pascale Moens Front left to right: Christine Moens, David Rossler, Xavier Dedoncker
‘Well, hello everyone,’ David said to George Bourlet’s grandchildren: Anne, Pascale, Bernard and Christine Moens, and Xavier Dedoncker’, who were waiting anxiously to greet him.
As he looked at the house, the imposing three-story house with its large windows and wrought-iron balconies, which looked almost the same as he remembered it, he was overcome with emotion. Suddenly, more than seven decades worth of memories came rushing back.
‘It’s been 80 years since I last saw this house,’ he said with great emotion. ‘It’s not just a good deed, it’s risking your life, pure and simple.’
‘I was there when the tanks came in from the side,’ he said, pointing up. When the Allies liberated Brussels. My father was on the second floor,’ he said, standing on the path of the house.
When he walked in, he started pointing to things he remembered. ‘In the corner of the room, there was a radio set. The radio where we hear about the liberation of Brussels and everything.
“You couldn’t go 100 meters in the city without running into the Germans.”
He then talked about the brave and compassionate people who risked their lives to save others during World War II.
‘It’s not often said… the people protecting the Jews were simply risking their lives. You would not end up in jail, but in Auschwitz… and in Auschwitz, you would not end up anywhere other than the crematorium,” he said.
One of those truly remarkable human beings was his adoptive father Georges Bourlet. She shared how she managed to keep him and his mother hidden from the Germans.
‘Mister. Bourlet, who worked in an administrative position, actually left in the morning and returned at night. There was nothing unusual about it,” David said.
‘And then we found out that for almost a month he did not go to work. She would go to the local cafe. He was not drinking alcohol, but he would spend his time in the cafe so they would not see him and then he would come home, ”David cried.
“Because he feared that he had been denounced for having Jews hiding in his house.”
The house in Brussels where David secretly lived with his mother Haja Sura Zoltak (aka Sabine) after they were rescued by the Bourlet family.
Lionel Rossler, 55, spent years searching for the Bourlet family without success until 2022 when he took to social media and was told by a MyHeritage genealogist she “believed I could help.”
A photo of a young David with his father. According to MyHeritage, David’s father was not arrested as was his brother and his father. He hid and then he got sick and died.
Lionel explained that Georges never revealed to his family what he was doing, and only after the war did he tell his grandmother and father what he was doing for them.
“Thanks to his heroic action, Georges was able to save the lives of my father and my grandmother,” Lionel said. ‘Nine people were saved thanks to what he did; My brother, I and our children would not be here today if it weren’t for his courage and kindness.’
Lionel said his father was born Daniel Langa in 1938. The family was living in Brussels when the persecution of the Jewish community began.
David and his family moved several times during the course of the war. His grandfather and his uncle were found by the Nazis during a raid, arrested, deported, and later taken to Auschwitz – never to be seen again. His father was hiding elsewhere, then fell ill and died, according to MyHeritage.
His father and grandfather sought refuge in a Catholic convent in Brussels; but later, the convent was raided and they were able to escape with the help of Mother Superior. She was later bestowed the title of Righteous Among the Nations, Lionel said.
After their evacuation from the convent, David and his mother were taken in by the Bourlet family. They secretly lived in their house located in Auderghem, one of the districts of Brussels, during the spring and summer of 1944 until the liberation of Brussels in 1945.
Lionel said that the Bourlet children were like brothers and sisters to their father.
“They took very good care of him, entertaining him with stories and keeping him busy while he couldn’t venture off the course,” he said. “They even told him where to go and what to do if he had to escape.”
After the war, David’s mother remarried and his father took the surname of his stepfather, who was an Auschwitz survivor.
He said the family moved to Austria and then lost contact with the Bourlet family.
A photo of the Bourlet family located in Auderghen, Brussels, taken sometime in the 1930s or 1940s.
After Marie Cappart, the MyHeritage.com genealogist, connected with Lionel on Facebook, she began digging through search records and cross-reference data.
He found Ann-Marie Bourlet born in Auderghem in 1929 and later learned that Anne-Marie married someone with the surname Dedoncker and had five children, all of whom are possibly still alive, a MyHeritage.com spokeswoman told DailyMail.com, Sarah Vanunu.
Cappart said: “I really felt for David’s story and also for the fact that it was a race against time to fulfill his dying wish to find family.”
After further searching, Marie found Xavier, one of Georges Bourlet’s grandsons, and managed to contact him. She learned that Xavier had heard a bit about this story, and from there, Cappart was able to communicate with the other Georges descendants, including those who still owned the family home in Auderghem.
It was then that they all decided to meet there.
“I got to see, with my own eyes, the place where my father was safe from the Germans so many years ago,” Lionel said.
He described it as “an incredibly emotional day…one he’ll never forget.”
David Rossler and geneologist Marie Cappart pictured here during the meeting. Cappart helped unite the family
An undated photo of Georges Bourlet, the man who helped hide David and his mother from the Nazis during World War II. David’s grandfather and uncle were murdered at Auschwitz.
A photo of Georges Bourlet and his daughters Anne-Marie and Christiane in an undated photo
Georges Bourlet frolicking in the hay with some of his children
Lionel expressed how grateful he was to Marie and MyHeritage ‘for making it possible’.
“In the Jewish tradition, there is a saying: ‘He who saves one life saves all of humanity’, Georges Bourlet saved humanity nine times,” he said.
The family plans to send their testimony to Yad Vashem in the hope that Georges Bourlet will be recognized for his heroism and awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations.
‘The cost of the war, as he experienced it, was too high. We hope and pray that this message is heard, for the good of all those who still suffer from violence.’
David’s extraordinary story marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day today, January 27.
The day marks the slaughter of six million Jews, two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population, and millions more by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during the Holocaust between 1933 and 1945.
In closing, Lionel added: “It is important to my father that the younger generations hear his story and understand that there must be no more hate and no more war,” he said.