Holocaust survivor reunited with family that saved his life
David Rossler of Walloon Brabant, Belgium, is reunited with the family that saved his life during WWII.
After more than 60 years of searching, an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor was reunited with the descendants of the family that saved him from the Nazis.
David Rossler and his family spent decades trying to track down the distant relatives of George Bourlet.
Bourlet was a Belgian man who risked his own life by hiding Rossler — who was a young child at the time — as well as Rossler's mother in his family's home in Brussels. The duo had narrowly escaped the raids that destined millions of Jewish people to die in concentration camps during WWII.
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"People who protected Jews were simply risking their lives. You wouldn't end up in jail, but in Auschwitz — and in Auschwitz you didn't end up anywhere but in the crematoria," Rossler said in a video, which was translated into English.
Auschwitz, located in Poland, was the largest of the Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers where over 1.1 million men, women and children were killed.
George Bourlet's grandchildren sitting with David Rossler. (Back left to right: Bernard Moens, Anne Moens and Pascale Moens. Front left to right: Christine Moens, David Rossler and Xavier Dedoncker (MyHeritage.com )
Rossler, whose health has been declining, said that his wish before he died was to thank Bourlet's family for giving him a life that so many of his family and friends were deprived of, Marie Cappart, a Belgian genealogist and the country manager for the global family history site MyHeritage.com, told Fox News Digital.
"His last wish was to say thank you," Cappart said.
It had been 80 years since Rossler had set eyes on the home — which still belongs to the family.
Last spring, Rossler finally had the opportunity to do just that after Cappart tracked the family down and set up a reunion at the very home in which he was saved.
It had been 80 years since Rossler had set eyes on the home — which still belongs to the family.
For years, Lionel Rossler had tried everything they could think of, including putting ads in regular newspapers, to help his father track down Bourlet's relatives, according to Cappart.
He had almost given up hope. In his final effort, he turned to Facebook in January 2022, asking anyone if they had information about the Bourlet family.
David Rossler with Marie Cappart, a Belgian genealogist and the country manager for the global family history site MyHeritage.com. (MyHeritage.com)
Inspired by the post, Cappart started a quest to track down the family with the only piece of information David Rossler could remember, which was that family lived in a white house in a certain area of Brussels.
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"It was really a race against time to make somebody's wishes come true," Cappart said.
It took two months of browsing records, cross-referencing data and looking at every white house within a five-mile radius of where David Rossler remembered staying — but Cappart finally found Bourlet's grandchildren.
George Bourlet and his children are shown in this picture from decades ago. (MyHeritage.com )
"Finally, social networks — for once, one might say — served a purpose," Lionel Rossler said in the video.
As it turns out, the family knew very little about their estranged grandfather.
All they knew was that a Jewish family had been hidden in the home during the war.
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"All of a sudden, they learned that he's a war hero," Cappart said. "They were so happy, and they were like, ‘I feel like I discovered my grandfather for the first time’."
In 1944, Bourlet was living with his four young adult children, Paul, Jacques, Anne-Marie, and Christiane, at their home in Auderghem when he pulled young David Rossler and his mother to safety.
George Bourlet's home where he hid David Rossler and his mother during World War II. (MyHeritage.com )
Not only did Bourlet hide the family — but when he felt that it became a bit risky for him, he stopped going to work. He even skipped work for nearly a month — and instead waited out the days at a local café due to fears that he might be denounced for having Jews in his home, David Rossler recalled.
"They have a right to be proud," David Rossler said. "The fact that I am alive, the fact that I have a family that I am very, very proud of, very happy with — I would tell him that it is thanks to him."
"We hope and pray that this message will be heard, for the sake of all those still suffering from violence."
Lionel Rossler said there is a saying in Jewish tradition that "he who saves one life saves all of humanity."
Today, there are nine lives here today thanks to his actions, Lionel Rossler said.
"Georges Bourlet saved humanity nine times over," he said.
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Lionel Rossler said the family is working to get Bourlet recognized as Righteous Among The Nations, which is an honor bestowed upon non-Jewish individuals who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from being killed by the Nazis.
The medal given to such heroes bears the Jewish saying: "Whosoever saves a single life, saves an entire universe" (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5), according to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
An image of George Bourlet. He hid a young boy and his mother from the Nazis during World War II, at great risk to himself and his own family. (MyHeritage.com )
"The full meaning of this saying is demonstrated when survivors' families — with children, grandchildren and nowadays even great-grandchildren — come together for the honoring of a rescuer," according to the Yad Vashem website.
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Lionel Rossler said it was important to his father that younger generations heard his story — and more importantly, that they understood "that there must be no more hate and no more war."
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"The cost of war, as he experienced it, was too great," Lionel Rossler continued.
"We hope and pray that this message will be heard, for the sake of all those still suffering from violence."
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