Holocaust survivor also survives Hurricane Sandy

Image source: NYDN

We heard about this story on the NY Daily News – Morris Sorid, aged 102 and a Holocaust and cancer survivor, also made it through Hurricane Sandy in one piece. He was living in an assisted living facility in Atlantic Beach, just over the Atlantic Beach Bridge from Far Rockaway, Queens, and was evacuated as part of a “mass emergency exodus” as the storm approached. He is currently residing in the basement library of the New Hempstead retirement home in Kew Gardens, Queens.

He says, “I was nearly destroyed six or seven times in my life. To tell you the truth the hurricane doesn’t excite me too much.”

He has the utmost confidence in his caretaker, too – Archie Catacutan, a 26-year-old nurse. Of him, Sorid says, “I depend on him, so I have nothing to be afraid of.”

During the storm it was stressful, but Sorid was more concerned about his fellow roomies and even offered up his bed by the wall to a man who looked like he was going to fall off his bed.

Sorid survived the Nazi invasion of Pruzany, Poland (this is now Belarus) with his wife by hiding in a bunker for 18 days after hearing about the trains heading to the death camps. After they left the bunker, they lived in the forest, eventually escaping and emigrating to Brooklyn in 1948. They had left their daughter with grandparents, but learned later that she, along with the rest of their family, perished in Auschwitz. Sorid and his wife went on to have two sons, and he published his memoir, “One More Miracle,” at age 95.

Sorid says Sandy is just one more test to endure. It is unclear when the residents will be able to return to their home in Atlantic Beach.