He sent the world a message about the Holocaust. Miami’s David Schaecter dead at 96
David Schaecter was 10 when his father was ripped away from his family by the Nazis. He never saw him again.
A year later, the rest of his family was rounded up and placed onto train cattle cars that crammed 80 into space tight for 50 human souls. A quarter of the people were dead or dying when they arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Schaecter was 11. He found hell over the next four years at two concentration camps, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. But he went on to live a life of peace and justice, and he spread that message to the world.
At age 96, on Thursday morning under hospice care at the UHealth Tower hospital in Miami, Schaecter died a warrior for those causes.
Six million Jews like him, including his protective older brother Yaakov and all 105 members of the large Schaecter family, died in the Holocaust during World War II in the 1940s. No one would blame the survivors had they descended into darkness after enduring the harshest hate mankind could muster.
Schaecter, born Aug. 4, 1929, in a small town in Slovakia, became a beacon.
Escaping the Nazis
In November 1944, Schaecter, then 14 and all of 83 pounds, was placed on another railroad car from Buchenwald.
“Along the route, near Passau in Bavaria, the U.S. Air Force bombed the train. I was alone, without my brother to protect me, but I jumped out of the train car and ran like hell to the forest. After eight days, I was found by Czech partisans,” Schaecter testified before Congress in April 2025.
An exchange program brought Schaecter to the United States in 1950. Three years later he graduated from UCLA with a degree in industrial engineering. While working in San Francisco, Schaecter married in June 1952 and, with his wife Marvis and their daughter Lisa, who was born in Seattle, the new family moved to Miami by 1956.
The couple were married for 53 years until Marvis’ death in 2005. They raised two children in a house near the Riviera golf course in Coral Gables. “The first Jews on the block,” his son Neal Schaecter said.
Anti-Semitism was not left behind in Nazi Germany. Its tentacles followed the Schaecters to the Gables, where their son was born. “It was vile back then,” Neal said.
For the rest of his life and as recently as months ago, Schaecter credited his wife Marvis for “making me a human being,” their son Neal shared.
“He would always say that when he came over here, he wasn’t a human being. And my mother helped him become a human being and helped him forge a path forward,” Neal said.
A life of resilience in Miami
Schaecter started a local business manufacturing and distributing hardware components for windows and doors. He later worked in real estate during his 70 years in South Florida. David and Marvis Schaecter lived in just two homes in all that time: the Gables house and an apartment in Coconut Grove, where he later lived with his second wife Sydney Carpel.
“He showed me the strength to follow your convictions and to do what’s right, to find the right partner that has the same goals that you do — and he loved my wife Amy. They were on the same wavelength,” Neal Schaecter said.
“The thing he taught me the most was resilience and never to give up. No one I knew had such adversity to overcome, and no matter how bad things would be in business or in the world, he’d always look for that nugget. And the way he found the nugget in his later life was talking to kids, just teaching kids. He was never Mr. Schaecter. Was always David. No matter how old he was or how young the kid was he said, ‘Just call me David, and this is where I’m from. Now I’m going to tell you my story.’ And that resilience runs through me and I feel it.”
Schaecter co-founded the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach on Meridian Avenue. He made pilgrimages to Israel. He was a teacher, speaking to thousands of children in South Florida and the world over to educate them about the horrors of the Holocaust.
On April 30, 2025, at 95, Schaecter addressed the adults in power in the United States, pushing past tears to testify before Congress at a Special Committee on Aging hearing where he detailed the anti-Semitism that persists more than 80 years after his experience.
Schaecter never forgot. And he persisted.
“I am here to remind everyone that there are still thousands of survivors alive today who are in desperate need, and who cannot be forgotten. Thank you for having this hearing on anti-Semitism. It has been a problem and is still a problem,” Schaecter closed his testimony before Congress 17 anguished minutes later.
“David Schaecter was a man of extraordinary courage, resilience, and grace. As a Holocaust survivor, his testimony before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging this past April left an indelible mark on us all,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida told the Miami Herald on Thursday.
“David turned unimaginable tragedy into a lifelong mission to educate, advocate and uplift others. His voice was powerful, his presence humbling, and his legacy will continue to inspire future generations to remember the atrocities of the Holocaust — and to understand the true meaning of the words, ‘Never Again,’ ” Scott said.
“There are a number of people in the world who deny the reality of the Holocaust or who want to diminish the horrific nature and the unprecedented evil that it represented. And there are others who want to use it as a cudgel against history, against the Jewish people, against the State of Israel. David Schaecter, over the course of his entire life, stood as a visible, courageous, articulate, indefatigable signpost that says, ‘Not on my watch,’” said Jacob Solomon, president and chief executive officer emeritus of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.
Miami attorney Sam Dubbin, a long-time friend and counsel to the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA, the grassroots organization Schaecter helped form, honored him Thursday morning.
“I had the privilege of standing shoulder to shoulder with David for nearly 30 years, fighting for the rights, interests and needs of Holocaust survivors,” Dubbin said. “It saddened and infuriated David to know that so many survivors were living in poverty without the help they needed, while governments and multinational businesses and organizations were holding billions of dollars that had been stolen from these very victims.
“David was a true national leader, a dynamo of conscience and courage, who never backed down,” Dubbin said. “He demanded truth and fairness from public officials and institutions who refused to do justice for Holocaust survivors and their families. At the same time, David showed remarkable tenderness and love throughout his life, touching and educating tens of thousands of children and adults about the realities of the Holocaust and the need to embrace our common humanity.”
Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach
Schaecter helped found the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach with other Holocaust survivors, his wife Marvis, and philanthropist Norman Braman from an idea in 1985. Schaecter didn’t walk away after it opened in 1989.
Along with Sydney, whom he met in 2006 and married in 2012, Schaecter visited the monument regularly to share his story and the stories of his peers the world over. You’d find him there on Holocaust Remembrance Day on so many Aprils since its installation, including 2025 when he was 95.
“Because of what he experienced and what he saw. He saw what hate could do. That’s what David was all about,” Braman told the Miami Herald on Wednesday hours before his friend died.
“What he went through as a boy, and what he saw in the camps, what he experienced and what he and everyone understood, was what hate could do — the evil of hate. That’s his contribution to make. And it wasn’t easy to live through the experience that he did, and to dedicate his life to try to impress on young people what hate is,” Braman said.
Schaecter and his wife Marvis made their first mission trip to Israel in 1972, his daughter Lisa said. Schaecter returned again and again.
Schaecter marked Israel’s 70th anniversary on a 2018 trip to the Jewish state sponsored by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. Nineteen buses helped transport more than 820 people through Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
“David also put his money where his mouth was. He spent so much on the trips to Israel, which I think he did four or five times, taking him over to Poland and then to Israel. He dedicated his life,” Braman said.
“I don’t think that the term ‘survivor’ is really an apt one because none of them really survived their experiences at the hands of the Nazis,” the Greater Miami Jewish Federation’s Solomon said. “None of them came out unscathed; they were permanently scarred. Some of them were crushed by it. Others ... live lives of desperation. Some ... were able to rise and to use their lives in a constructive response to that horrific evil that they experienced. And David was certainly one of those men. Journalists like to say, ‘Show, don’t tell.’ David Schaecter lived that adage every day of his life. He showed and he told.”
On that 2018 mission to Israel, Schaecter told the Miami Herald the message he had there and that he always relayed to his youngest audiences.
“I want you to hear my story,’‘ Schaecter would say. “I want you to understand and remember my story. But most of all, most of all, I want you to be my mouthpiece when I am no longer.”
Survivors, services
Schaecter’s survivors include his wife Sydney; his daughter Lisa and son Neal and his wife Amy; five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Services will be at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7, at Temple Judea, 5500 Granada Blvd. in Coral Gables. Gravesite service and shiva will follow.
This story was originally published September 4, 2025 at 10:10 AM.
