100-year-old Holocaust survivor honored for living legend status on Long Island
MERRICK, Long Island (WABC) -- A 100-year-old Holocaust survivor on Long Island was honored Monday for her birthday ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Sen. Charles Schumer bestowed Pina Frassineti Wax with a U.S. Capitol flag flown in her honor and announced that she will also receive special U.S. Senate Floor recognition commemorating her living legend status on Long Island.
Wax was born in Italy but she has called Long Island home for decades. She has dedicated her life to teaching, loving and learning after surviving the horrors of the Holocaust.
The great-grandmother from Baldwin said she still remembers when the Nazis took her grandfather and other Jews to concentration camps.
"We have to remember, first of all there were people, real people that were taken," she said.
Wax was almost one of them. At just 19 years old, she hid in the basement of a Catholic convent in Rome, which still stands today.
For nearly two years, she clung to hope with her mother and only sibling, her younger brother, to escape the Nazis.
"There were a lot of random raids by the Nazis so even to this day, she doesn't like the dark, she doesn't like sounds of trucks because it reminds her of the raid," said her daughter Orian Wax.
Her grandfather, a prominent rabbi in Rome, wasn't as lucky.
"He was gassed in Auschwitz, he was maybe 56 years old and one of her girlfriends too," Orian said. "She was tortured and then she died. I don't know where but she also perished."
The painful and powerful memories have been passed down to Wax's children and her grandson, Gavin, who she helped raise.
"Obviously it's a very traumatic experience for her, I'll probably never learn all of the details," he said.
Wax met her late husband, Mario Max, an Italian serving in the U.S. Army, in Rome after World War II. They moved to New York City and raised their three children on Long Island.
At the ceremony, a resolution was handed to her to be read in Congress on the Senate floor Schumer.
"She's still going, she has triumphed in the game of life like few others had," Schumer said.
For 80 years, her mission has remained the same.
"We have to remember them," she said.
Wax's 100th birthday was Oct. 24, but she was recognized Monday ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day next week.
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