Polish Radio states that a citation of the Czestochowa city council honors Rolat for his services for promoting a positive image of Czestochowa and describes him as a “singular example of a patriot of his small homeland”.
Mr Rolat is committed to the preservation of Jewish culture in Poland and the promotion of Polish-Jewish relations. He is the founder of the World Union of Częstochowa Jews and their Families, based in New York, and serves as Chairman of the North American Council of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.
He is also a key funder of the annual Krakow Jewish Culture Festival and has spearheaded efforts to restore Jewish heritage sites in Czestochowa. He is the president of the World Society of Czestochowa Jews and Their Descendants.
Rolat was born in Czestochowa in 1930. Most of his family was killed in the Holocaust. He survived, a child, in a German slave-labor munitions factory and emigrated to the U.S. in 1948. Read a December 2009 profile of him in The Forward.