Saul Blau

Saul Blau was born in Tarpa, Hungary in 1930 to an observant Jewish family with seven children. At age 13, he and his family were removed from their home and sent to Auschwitz, where his parents and younger sister perished. Blau was sent to work in a coal mine camp and months later was forced on a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp where he was liberated in 1945 by the US Armed Forces. He returned to Hungary in search of surviving relatives and quickly decided to join the aliyat noar, youth immigration to Israel. Upon arriving in the Jewish homeland, he joined the fledgling Israeli Air Force. Blau remained in the country for seven years before traveling to the United States to reunite with his surviving siblings. There he met his future wife, Viola Schlesinger. They have two sons, Robert and Andrew. Blau now resides in Bal Harbour and serves as a docent at the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach.