A Florida Jewish community begins burying its dead after condo collapse
Leo Soto, who created this memorial, pauses in front of photos of some of the missing people near the site of an oceanfront condo building that partially collapsed in Surfside, Florida, on June 24. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
As the search for missing people trapped in the rubble of a Surfside, Florida, condo building continued in late June, the town’s large Jewish community began burying its first victims.
Leon Oliwkowicz, 81, and his wife, Christina Beatriz Elvira Oliwkowicz, 74, were among the first apartment dwellers identified after the 13-story Champlain Towers South collapsed in the middle of the night on June 24.
The couple immigrated to the United States from Venezuela and were members of the large Orthodox synagogue in Surfside known as the Shul of Bal Harbour. They were known for their generosity and once donated a Torah scroll to an Orthodox Jewish high school in Chicago.
