Ben, Miami Beach

I met Ben yesterday at the Beach. He was sitting on the fence like a little boy.
He asked me if I was looking for an interesting photo object while he was glancing at my camera. Than he said that he might be an interesting object. He grinned.

After some chatting he told me that he is a Polish Jew who had survived the Holocaust of World War 2. He was in the Concentration Camp in Mauthausen in Austria as a young boy and had been freed by the age 26.
He said he forgets what he did yesterday, but never forgets what had happened then at that time.

Ben is 86 years now and his mind seems to be fit and very vivid when it came to his past time. When he started talking it felt like reading some excerpts of a biography of a Jewish survivor who wants the people to know what cruelty happened to the Jewish folk during World War 2. He belongs to the very few contemporary witnesses of the Holocaust that are still alive.

In the middle of his monolog he stopped and waved happily to Raven the Runner ( I photographed him before in this blog ) who was jogging with his crew at the beach.
He used to run with him when he was younger.
Miami Beach is a small village I thought...

He gave me his number. He wants to show me some pictures of him when he was a boy....