A regular correspondent with this blog notes that Rivka Lichtenfeld was born Rivka Chwoles, to Chava-Leah and Moshe Chwoles. According to her testimony in Yad Va'Shem, her entire family -- both her parents and her three sisters -- were all murdered in 1942 near Vilno, Poland (both links partially in English and Partially in Hebrew). Such a life story was by no means unusual for holocaust survivors who arrived in Israel -- or anywhere else -- after the war; they were often the only remnant of their entire family.
In addition, Lichtenfeld (who is still alive, at 92) had recently been -- finally -- awarded her fair share of her late husband's property; i.e., the entire apartment she lives in now belongs officially to her, and not half to her and half to the state's general trustee. The mix-up was due to the fact that the Israeli ministry of the Interior decided she was divorced, when in fact she was not, as the link (from the Ynet web site, Feb. 2nd 2012, in Hebrew, by Yair Harush) notes.
Actually, she also had one sister (Sonja) who survived, as did her brother, the well-known artist Rafael Chvoles.
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