A nursing home in New Jersey pulled out the red carpet for a Holocaust survivor last week when he was released from quarantine after overcoming COVID-19.
The staff of CareOne at Hanover cheered for 94-year-old Jack Holzberg when he was discharged from their care, applauding his release, and holding balloons and a poster that read “We love you.”
Holzberg was diagnosed with COVID-19 in mid-April, said his granddaughter, Erica Wasserman. After about a week at New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine hospital, he was transferred to the New Jersey nursing home and quarantined until doctors said he was well enough to go back to his home in Queens, N.Y., where he lives with his wife of 68 years, Betty.
“When we heard about the diagnosis, we were all scared, but this was a miracle,” said Wasserman. “The fact that he’s still here [after] all that he’s been through, and that he was able to survive this, it’s amazing.”
“We’re just so grateful that he’s on his way home,” she added. “It was an emotional day for everyone.”
Holzberg, a teenager in Poland when World War II started, spent much of the Holocaust in different concentration camps, reported the New York Post.
Most of his family died in the Holocaust. After the war, he immigrated with his brother, who also survived, to New York, where he built a successful clothing business.
