Holocaust survivor in NY tragedy

Fatally struck by car

He survived the Holocaust— but died crossing the street.

A 90-year-old man killed by a car in southeast Brooklyn Thursday night is a Holocaust survivor who went through the infamous Dachau concentration camp, according to the man’s friend, Rabbi Yisroel Hahn.

Nissen Krakinowski (inset) was leaving Congregation Beit Hillel, where he went daily to pray for his daughter who recently died, when he was struck by a 29year-old woman driving a Jaguar, according to police and Yeshiva World News.

The man’s wife and other daughter had also recently passed, Hahn said.

Krakinowski was crossing the street outside the crosswalk when he was fatally struck. He died shortly after at a nearby hospital. The driver stayed at the scene and was not charged.

In June, Krakinowski was invited to Spokane, Wash., by Hahn with the Chabad of Spokane to speak about how he survived various concentration camps before making it to the United States and starting a successful hat business.

Krakinowski detailed life growing up in a Jewish ghetto in Kaunas, Lithuania, and how he was separated from his mother when he was a teenager and sent to a concentration camp with his brother, The Spokesman-Review reported.

He recounted surviving off of moldy bread and being forced to carry paper bags of concrete, which would become sodden and heavier when it rained, leaving him with severe pain. He lost every member of his family, more than 100 relatives, except for his brother, who was able to escape with Krakinowski shortly before the camps were evacuated.

Hahn expected attendees to come to the event for the historical value but in a post-event survey, he got a difference response. “To lose his wife and his kids, the only people he knew, was just horrendous for it to happen. It was almost like he got a second holocaust,” Hahn said. “And he’s able to smile, crack a joke, believe in humanity and in God and that was very powerful and inspired people.

“The one line he kept repeating again and again . . . He said, ‘You know it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.’ ”

Hahn called Krakinowski’s death a tragedy.

“It’s just tragic. I was very sad,” Hahn said. “He missed his daughters so much, he missed his wife, now he’s back with them.”