Survivor Anna Glatt, mother of rabbi

Born in Sighet, a town in northern Romania, in the early 1920s, Anna Lieberman Glatt, a”h, lived down the street from Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who died on July 2, and their neighborhood was not the only thing they shared. Similar to his experience during the Holocaust, her entire family was deported and she, too, spent time at Auschwitz as did Wiesel.

Glatt, a Flatbush native and mother of Dr. Aaron Glatt, died on July 12. She was 92.

Dr. Glatt of Woodmere is assistant rabbi at the Young Israel of Woodmere and chairman of the department of medicine at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside.

Anna Glatt was the oldest of six children; she had three sisters and two brothers. Every member of her family, except her sister, Ettel Lieberman, was killed at Auschwitz. After being at Auschwitz for a little less than a year, Glatt and Lieberman were taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, according to Rabbi Glatt.

A week after Bergen-Belsen was liberated by Allied troops, Glatt buried Ettel, who died of “malnutrition, typhus and the tortures she was subjected to from the Nazis,” Rabbi Glatt said.

“My mother was always very proud that she buried her sister by herself, with her own hands.”

After being liberated from Bergen-Belsen, Glatt went to a hospital in Sweden for a short time and then came to the U.S. in 1945 where, as her son said, “she built a beautiful life for herself.” 

She learned English, graduated from Brooklyn College and got a job as a bookkeeper. A decade after coming to the U.S., she married Joseph Glatt, who also survived the Holocaust. An accountant, he died in 2007 at 84. 

Both Anna and Joseph Glatt were active in their community, Rabbi Glatt said. Anna was the president of the PTA at various schools in Brooklyn, and was most active at the Prospect Park Yeshiva, where she spearheaded the construction of a library in the 1960s.

“She was the most amazing person I know,” Rabbi Glatt said. 

The levaya was held on July 13 at Shomrei Hadas Chapels in Boro Park and she was interred at Beth Moses Cemetery in Farmingdale.  

In addition to her son, Rabbi Glatt, and his wife, Margie, Glatt is survived by another son, Avi Glatt and his wife, Lorraine, her daughter, Leora Fenster and her husband, Jay, and more than 40 direct biological descendants in addition to the many in-law children and grandchildren who she treated as her own.

Diana Colapietro is a reporter for the Nassau Herald where a version of this story appeared.