Born in 1925 in Rokitno, Poland, Itzhak (now Isaac) Gendelman grew up in a traditional Jewish household in which the Sabbath and holidays were observed. He attended the Tarbut Hebrew Language School, and joined the "HaShomer HaTzair" zionist youth group.  

 He was  entering his last year of high school when the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939 and Rokitno fell under Soviet occupation a few weeks later. The Germans reoccupied the town in July 1941 and immediately began to persecute the Jewish community. All Jewish males over the age of 15 were taken for forced labor. Since Itzhak was then turning 16, he too, was compelled to work along with his father. They worked in the same labor detail, usually digging trenches, moving stones or fixing railroad tracks. In the following spring, a ghetto was established in one long street of Rokitno. 

In the last week of August 1942, the ghetto was liquidated. Isaac will retell the horrifying experience of the day when the Jewish community was ordered to assemble at the central market place early in the morning. Isaac managed to escape the massacre and for the next two years, he lived in the woods, forced to beg or steal food from local peasants. 

Liberation & Immigration

After the liberation of the Sarny district by the Soviet army in 1944, Itzhak returned to Rokitno. Realizing there was no future for him in Poland, he joined the family friends when they decided to leave for Germany. They arrived in Bytom in May or June 1945. There, Itzhak left his friends and joined a Bricha (literally "escape") group headed for Budapest. Soon after he arrived in the Hungarian capital, he was recruited by the Bricha, along with five others, to serve at the border station of Szengothard, where he would help smuggle groups of Jews over the border from Hungary to Austria. Itzhak remained there for six months until he was tipped off by the Russians that the British were coming to arrest his group. At that point, he crossed the border by himself and went to Linz, where he settled in the Bindermichl displaced persons camp.

Initially, Itzhak intended to make use of his Bricha connections to obtain an immigration certificate to Palestine, but after making contact with his mother's sister, Anne Sherman (originally Henia Pick), in Washington, D.C., he decided to go to America. After waiting several years to get a visa, Itzhak finally arrived in the US on January 17, 1949. He and Goldie were married in 1954, and raised children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.