Paying homage to a firm grip on life (Warsaw Ghetto survivor passes away at 101)
By Kurt Streeter, latimes.com
His hands. I won’t forget them, the way they wrapped tightly around mine last summer, the first time we met.
I remember thinking: “These are the hands of a man who has lived longer than a century?”
They were old hands, but also firm, sure, strong hands. The hands of a man who endured the very worst a human being can endure and then lived on … and on … and on, making the most of every decade, every day.
Until last week.
On Dec. 28, in the early morning, Leon Weinstein died. He was 101, the oldest survivor of World War II’s Warsaw ghetto uprising, according to Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust expert at the American Jewish University.
Weinstein passed away where he wanted to: In his house, in his bedroom, on his own terms. How fitting. These facts can be seen as his final rebuke to the Nazis who terrorized him and wiped most of his family from the Earth.
They tried their best to kill him. But he had a life to live and a little girl to save.