Auschwitz Survivor Celebrated Her 104th Birthday With 400 Of Her Descendants
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Four hundred relatives traveled from all over the world to celebrate Shoshana Ovitz’s 104th birthday.
In an incredible story of strength, resilience, and hope, Auschwitz survivor Shoshana Ovitz celebrated her 104th birthday in August of this year. Not only did the survivor mark the special occasion at the Wailing Wall site in Jerusalem, she asked 400 of her living descendants to join her there.
The milestone birthday bash quickly turned into a massive family reunion, which included her grandchildren and others who came from her family line.
“We do not have an exact number, but there are probably 400 grandchildren and descendants,” said Ovitz’s eldest granddaughter Panini Friedman, who lives in Belgium. “It wasn’t a simple thing to organize this rare event.”
Plenty of tears were shed as Ovitz greeted her young relatives. Toward the end, they had the entire family pose together in front of the Wailing Wall. The Auschwitz Museum called the resultant photograph a “moving image.”
As a young girl, Ovitz was forcefully separated from her mother at Auschwitz. The last time the girl saw her mother was when she was being handed to infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death.
After losing her mother and finally being liberated from the camp, Ovitz met another survivor, Don Ovitz, who she later married. The couple settled down in Haifa, Israel, and had two sons and two daughters.
Remarkably, according to her granddaughter Panini Friedman, not all of the relatives made it to the Wailing Wall for Ovitz’s special birthday. There was another 10 percent unable to make it, she said.
Even without some of her family members present, it looks like Ovitz had plenty of loved ones to celebrate with.
