‘Living history’: 100-year-old Holocaust survivors honored at Broward synagogue
One saw his entire family killed in a concentration camp and then wrote a memoir documenting his darkest moments.
Another ate snow to survive a week without food or water.
A third founded a globally recognized musical group for Holocaust survivors.
These are among the nine Holocaust survivors living in South Florida who were honored Wednesday marking an important milestone: At 100 years old or older, they’re among the oldest living Holocaust survivors in the world.
For Holocaust Survivor Day, which is observed globally on June 4, nearly 130 survivors gathered with friends and neighbors at Temple Beth Emet in Cooper City to celebrate their lives and important contributions in educating future generations about the atrocities of the Holocaust.
At the celebratory event organized by Goodman Jewish Family Services of Broward County, eight of the nine survivors were present to receive a medal of honor, enjoy catered lunch and watch a performance from a student choir.
Randy Colman, president and CEO of Goodman Jewish Family Services, thanked the survivors for being living examples of perseverance and strength.
“Your lives are living history. Your courage has shaped generations and your resilience continues to inspire all of us, so today, today we celebrate you,” Colman said during the ceremony.
The survivors are a part of a population that’s disappearing with each passing year. Less than 200,000 Holocaust survivors are alive today worldwide, according to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and just over 1 percent of survivors are 100 years or older.
Colman reminded the crowd how Goodman Jewish Family Services offers year-round support for survivors living in Broward County, which is home to one of the largest survivor populations in the country.
“Many people don’t realize the depth of support that is needed at a survivor’s age,” Colman said, adding that many need help with transportation, home care, food delivery services, or “simply companionship or someone to check in and say ‘how are you doing today?’”
At 101, Herman Haller still remembers his time at Auschwitz. He recalls the Death March to Breslau where he was put in open cattle cars with 110 other people in freezing cold temperatures. He survived for seven days without food or water. When American soldiers liberated the camp in April 1945, he weighed just 55 pounds.
“I was eating snow” in order to survive, Haller said, pulling up his sleeve to reveal a faded tattoo of a serial number — the identification system Nazis used to track prisoners selected for work in Auschwitz.
“I was very sick. They took us on stretchers,” he said.
Many of the survivors at the event still play a vital role in Holocaust education.
Susanna Moore said even though answering students’ questions about the most traumatic time in her life can be tough, it’s necessary to help keep alive the memory of the six million Jews and millions of others murdered by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.
“I want them to know what happened from somebody who’s been there,” Moore, 88, told the Miami Herald. “It’s very emotional, and there’s not that many of us left to teach them, and to make sure that they know this really happened.”
At 15, Leon Schagrin was deported from occupied Poland to multiple ghettos and concentration camps. He endured forced labor and witnessed the murder of his entire immediate family at Belzec.
“It’s not an easy thing. I was a boy, 15 years old,” he said.
Since that harrowing time, his life has been dedicated to survivor advocacy. For nearly four decades, Schagrin sought reparations from Germany and spoke to students and community groups about the importance of Holocaust education. He co-founded the Holocaust Survivors of South Florida in 1982 and even wrote a memoir, “The Horse Adjutant: A Boy’s Life during the Nazi Holocaust,” which tells the story of how the horsemanship taught by his veterinarian father became a means of survival during the Holocaust.
After lunch, the survivors danced joyfully with one another, laughing and singing songs. Some mingled with students from Temple Beth Emet, celebrating generations of Jewish life and history.
“You continue to teach us how to live. You teach us gratitude,” Colman said. “You teach us perspective, and you teach us even after darkness people can still choose light.”
This story was produced with financial support from Trish and Dan Bell and donors in South Florida’s Jewish and Muslim communities, including Khalid and Diana Mirza and the Mohsin and Fauzia Jaffer Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
This story was originally published June 3, 2026 at 5:05 PM.
