Chawka Folman-Raban

Chawka Folman-Raban was born in 1924 in Kielce

Chawka Folman was born on April 19, 1924, in Kielce, Poland, to Rozalia and Avraham-Binyamin Folman. She was the youngest of 3 children, and her brothers Wolf and Marek shaped her ideas. The family moved to Warsaw when she was a baby.

In Warsaw the family lived across from the center of the HeHalutz movement. She studied at the Yehudia gymnasium, where Emanuel Ringelblum was among the teachers. In 1939 she joined a youth group of the Dror movement, following her brother Marek.

During the Warsaw Ghetto period she took part in Dror activities and moved into the Dror house in 1941. Zivia Lubetkin and Yitzhak Zuckerman, who were counselors there, shaped her path. After a Dror seminar in July 1940 she was assigned to courier work outside the ghetto.

In 1941 she was sent to work on a farm in Czernow, where Jewish workers faced harsh conditions. She later returned to Warsaw on a mission for the movement and served as a courier of the Jewish Combat Organization.

In Israel she was among the founders of Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot. She worked as an educator at the Ghetto Fighters' House and was active in Holocaust remembrance. She died on January 9, 2014, at the kibbutz.