Livia Shachter celebrated her 100th birthday right before Passover. Being born in Czechoslovakia in 1917 and living through both world wars you can say her life was challenging. She lost her parents, two brothers and her fiancé in the Holocaust and she picked up the pieces going on to build her own illustrious family.
Livia survived the horrors of the Nazis and was in various extermination camps including Auschwitz. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1947 and in 2010, with the assistance of Nefesh B’Nefesh made aliya to Israel.
Her family standing beside her is living testimony of the victory of the Jewish nation against Hitler. Livia has 2 daughters, 11 grandchildren, 55 great grandchildren and even 2 great great grandchildren. “Every child born to the Jewish Nation is a victory over Hitler and a proof that the Jewish Nation survived despite what it went through” Livia told Israel Hayom optimistically. “I used to volunteer in the states in the Simon Wiesenthal Center and in the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and I would lecture on what I went through in the Holocaust. It’s important to me that people should remember the horrors Hitler perpetrated upon the Jewish nation and I wish only good for the Jewish nation.”
Livia visited Israel 26 times before coming on aliya to live in Israel. She presently lives in Ramat Bet Shemesh and happily says that “Israel is my true home”. She has a rather active daily routine volunteering in Melabev a senior day center in Bet Shemesh where she enjoys varied activities.
Rabbi Yehoshua Fass the founder of Nefesh B’Nefesh says “Livia is an inspiration. Despite the horrors she endured she never gave up her dream and established a large family to glorify the Jewish nation. We wish her many more years of satisfaction with her family here in Israel.”