NEAR TEL AVIV, Israel (WSVN) — Some South Floridians who were among hundreds who traveled to Israel to celebrate its 75th Independence Day took the opportunity to honor the heroes who showed up during one of her community’s darkest hours.
7News cameras captured the moment Élise Scheck Bonwitt reunited with Israeli Defense Forces Cmdr. Golan Vach with near Tel Aviv, Thursday. It’s the first time they had seen each other in two years.
Vach, with IDF’s Search and Rescue unit, helped find Scheck Bonwitt’s loved ones in the Surfside collapse.
“Surfside was different. We played a role as a bridge between life and death,” said Vach.
“She was my aunt’s sister,” said Scheck Bonwitt as she showed 7News pictures of the victims.
Frank Kleiman and Ana Ortiz-Kleiman, Nancy Kleiman, Deborah Berezdivin, Ilan Naibryf and Jay Kleiman all died on June 24, 2021, when part of the Champlain Towers South condominium collapsed.
It took days for crews to find them.
“It was a very sad, agonizing, terrifying time,” said Scheck Bonwitt.
IDF’s Search and Rescue team joined in the search.
“The best feeling that I had is that I want to find someone alive,” said Vach.
But that was not meant to be.
“You know that the dead people do not scream, the live do scream, and to be with the families is the most difficult thing,” said Vach.
Still, because of those families, Vach said, even without meeting the victims, without ever hearing their voices, he still knew them.
“We saw that I thought was smoke that was going up and down,” said Ofi Osin Cohen with the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.
Osin Cohen lived at Champlain Towers South and survived the collapse.
“I’ve had training, because I work at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, in active shooter situations and situational awareness,” she said. “I’ve been in Israel when the bombs go off, and you have to run to shelter. It was kind of like a muscle memory.”
But for those who survived, like Osin Cohen, and those left behind, like Scheck Bonwitt, the connection with the Israeli team eases what is still so painful.
Scheck Bonwitt and Vach still keep in touch.
“Just the respect, and the way they handled things with such dignity, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Scheck Bonwitt.
Voch has invited Scheck Bonwitt and her family to come back to Israel to visit with him once again.
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