100-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Becomes U.S. Citizen — Just in Time To Vote
Image by CBS Miami
— A 100-year-old Holocaust survivor has officially become a U.S. citizen in order to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
Menia Perelman of South Florida, who arrived in the United States at the age of 84, told local media that she wanted to become a citizen so she could vote in the November election.
She took the oath of citizenship in Florida on Friday with more than 100 other new U.S. citizens.
“I am Jewish, my name is Perelman and I went through many difficult times for so many years,” Perelman said after the ceremony.
Perelman was born in Romania and survived the Holocaust, including four years in a concentration camp. After World War II she was not able to enter the United States due to restrictions on the number of refugees, and instead moved to Panama then Peru and later Venezuela. She came to the United States in 1993 to be closer to her daughter after the death of her husband.
Perelman was joined by four generations of her family at the swearing in: her two daughters and their husbands, her granddaughter and her husband, and her six-month old great-granddaughter.
Asked by the CBS local affiliate whom she would be voting for, Perelman replied that she preferred the Democratic nominee. “You know, it’s a personal secret, but I will tell you. Hillary. Hillary Clinton.”
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
