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Manny Weizman

Manny Weizman

Manny Weizman

Manny Weizman (Manys Wajcman), a Holocaust survivor, husband of Marcia Slutz Weizman and father of Hal M. Weizman and Bonnie S. Weizman, passed away May 22, 2019. Rabbi Yaakov Chaitovsky and Cantor Joel Lichterman officiated at the May 26 graveside service at Rose Hill Cemetery. Feldman Mortuary made the arrangements.

“My dad worked hard his entire life — physical labor, and he was not afraid of it,” his daughter Bonnie eulogized at the service. “I remember him leaving the house early in the morning and coming home late at night in the dark winter months.

“He would wash his hands with Borax soap to remove the deep ingrained grime and dirt of the day’s toils from underneath his fingernails and in crevasses, only to be replaced by the next day’s labors.”

Mr. Weizman was born March 25, 1926, in the small village of Pionki, Poland to Rivkah and Herschel Weizman. The youngest of four children, he was just 13 when his family was transferred to a forced labor camp.

From 1939-1945, he experienced the horrors of the Holocaust in several forced labor and concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Mr. Weizman was liberated from Buchenwald in 1945 and reunited with his mother and siblings in a DP camp in Germany. His father did not survive.

The family, who left Germany on the SS Marine Marlin, arrived in New York and settled on Denver’s West Side in 1949.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Weizman was conscripted into the US Army, even though he was not yet a US citizen, and served in the Korean War, 1950-1952. He was in the reserves until his honorable discharge in 1957.

A student at the Emily Griffith Opportunity School, Mr. Weizman studied English in order to pass his citizenship test. Judge Sherman Finesilver was his teacher.

He married Marcia Slutz in New York on Aug. 17, 1957. The couple returned to Denver in 1961.

Mr. Weizman started and ran Continental Construction, Inc., building dozens of large-scale commercial projects around the Denver metro area including nursing homes, a car dealership and a HUD apartment building.

He remodeled Monaco Lanes bowling alley and volunteered his carpentry skills to Rodef Shalom and other synagogue projects.

“Many persons and entities were generous to my dad and his family,” Bonnie said at the service. “Jewish Family Service and many rabbis and synagogues provided for him . . . Mr. Laizer Rosen opened his arms to my father to build a business and stellar reputation in the community.”

There were many others: Bob Tynan and the Tynan family; Jim France; John Milan and the Milan family; and Dr. Jeff Wallace, “who showed my dad the deepest compassion in his most difficult, declining and later years.”

Their generosity instilled Mr. Weizman with the desire to be generous in return.

But most importantly, Bonnie said, his immediate family decided they must be “ ‘generous and kind and compassionate with each other, and together we will heal our wounds of war, torture, tragedy, injury and loss in each of us. And together we will be stronger.’

“And they were.”

Manny Weizman is survived by his wife Marcia Weizman; children Hal and Bonnie; and an extended family encompassing generations of nieces, nephews and cousins.

Contributions may be made in Mr.  Weizman’s name to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles or US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News




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