David Miller, who bore numbers tattooed into his arms at Auschwitz concentration camp and was one of the last Holocaust survivors living in the Columbia area, died Monday.
He was 90.
Miller was one of the first survivors to share his story with the Midlands community.
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“They can’t deny it happened when you have a survivor like my father who had the numbers on his arms from Auschwitz,” said his son, Henry Miller.
Miller’s funeral will be at 1 p.m. this afternoon at Beth Shalom Synagogue, with burial in the Beth Shalom Cemetery in Arcadia Lakes. He is survived by his son of Columbia, daughter Rita Blank of Tallahassee, Fla., and grandchildren.
Miller participated in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, where Jews fought German soldiers with homemade weapons, his son said, and he lived through slave labor in coal mines, concentration camps and death marches. Miller was the only Holocaust survivor in his immediate family, losing his father, mother and three sisters.
After the war, he was sent to a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. There, he and his best friend, Felix Goldberg, met and married sisters, who also were from Poland.
Miller and his wife, Cela Miller, arrived in Columbia in 1949 after Beth Shalom Synagogue sponsored their relocation as refugees. They soon were joined by the Goldbergs. The four remained lifelong friends and shared their stories with thousands of Midlands residents. Their lives also have been documented by the Steven Spielberg Shoah Foundation and in the ETV film “Seared Soles.”
Of the four, Bluma Goldberg is the lone survivor.
“All of the survivors were one big extended family,” Henry Miller said.
Miller owned several package stores until his retirement in 1984. In 1991, Miller suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak, his son said.
But Miller’s wife and sister-in-law continued telling the Holocaust story in schools and churches. Cela Miller died in 2000.
Rabbi Hesh Epstein, who first met Miller 25 years ago, remembered a man who was optimistic and warm despite the hardships he had suffered.
“He was a person who took the pain of the Holocaust and turned it into a love for his family, his children, his grandchildren, his synagogues and his community,” said Epstein, who is rabbi at Chabad-Aleph Synagogue in Columbia.
The lives of Miller and other Holocaust survivors are well-documented, Esptein said. But there was something special to be learned from their first-hand accounts.
“Knowing someone personally who went through that and talking to them and learning that story was an inspiration,” Epstein said. “It’s certainly something that cannot be replaced.”
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