When Ben Hiller decided in 2010 that it was time to give up driving, the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor — who has lost more in his tumultuous life than most people can even fathom — found himself in still another potentially life-threatening dilemma.
He had no way to get to his gym for his daily workout, which he feels is essential to staying in good health.
Before he gave up his keys, he had befriended many people at his health club, LA Fitness, about a mile from his home in Toco Hills.
One was Donnie Golson, a 63-year-old financial advisor for Wells Fargo Advisors, who “couldn’t believe all Mr. Hiller had gone through in his life.”
Hiller soon asked Golson, who lives in Morningside, if he’d mind giving him a lift to the health club, which is a little too far to walk for a man his age, even one in seemingly great health.
Golson, a grandfather of three, immediately said he’d be happy to help and has been picking up Hiller and taking him home now almost daily.
“We work out together and talk a lot,” says Golson. “He’s had a remarkable life that’s been remarkably sad, but he’s in remarkable shape. It’s a mitzvah, which means ‘good deed’, but I just like helping him.”
Hiller calls Golson a “mensch,’’ Yiddish for a person of integrity and honor.
“Exercise does wonders for human beings,” says Hiller, who’s less than 5 feet tall. “He goes out of his way, and it gives me a wonderful feeling. He is very kind to do this. But he does other good things, too. He also does a magic act at Shepherd Spinal Center” every month.
Golson, a magician by hobby, says that “riding to and from the health club I sometimes ask Ben about his experiences with the Nazis. He was 14 when his family was captured” and the only survivor of a family of nine.
Hiller, a native of Grojec, Poland, escaped from the notorious Warsaw Ghetto in 1941, then was recaptured by Germans and spent four years in various concentration camps until he was liberated by the Russian army in May 1945.
He immigrated to the U.S. in 1948 and after the Korean War broke out and was drafted into the U.S. Army.
“Instead of Korea they sent me to England,” Hiller says, “but can you imagine how terrifying it was for me to have to have to go back to Europe? That was a very sad time.”
Hiller married an American who is now deceased. And now, when he’s not working out he’s often talking to school children about the horrors of the Holocaust.
Both of his sons are rabbis, Shmuel in New York and Moshe at the Torah Day School in Atlanta.
“Donnie treats my father with a lot of respect,” says Moshe Hiller, 52. “It’s much appreciated by my father and the entire family.”
Hiller’s only complaint is that sometimes Golson wants to stop exercising before he does.
One of 17 survivors of a city that once had a Jewish population of 6,000, Hiller says he works out every day except Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and is determined to stay in shape so that he can keep telling future generations about the Holocaust.
“People need to know,” he says. “It is important for the future of the world never to forget.”
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