David Isaac Dobnievski was born February 22, 1892, in Brest, in what was then the Russian Empire (and is now Belarus), as the youngest of five boys and three girls.Robert D. Parmet, The Master of Seventh Avenue: David Dubinsky and the American Labor Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2005; pg. 4. Dubinsky and his family moved to Łódź, Poland, shortly before he turned three. David's father, Bezalel Dobnievski, a religious Jew, owned a bakery, but limited himself to administrative tasks related to the enterprise. David's mother Shaina Wyshengrad died when he was eight, with his father remarrying a year and a half later. David worked from early childhood delivering bread from his father's bakery to local shops, while attending a Hebrew school, where he studied Polish, Russian, and Yiddish. He was later forced to leave a semi-private school he attended to take work in his father's bakery to replace a brother who had left abruptly.Parmet, The Master of Seventh Avenue, pp. 5-6.
