The Life and Early Years of Yakov Romas Yakov Romas enters the world on February 11, 1902, in Sokolka, Białystok, Poland. He is born into the family of a railway worker. The stability of this early life is short-lived. In his early childhood, he loses his mother, a loss that precedes a much more chaotic upheaval. By 1914, the movement of the German army forces a desperate flight. Amidst this chaos, Yakov Romas becomes a homeless child…