Holocaust survivor gave kids the world
Henri Landwirth, who survived Nazi death camps to create the whimsical wonderland of Give Kids The World for critically ill children, died late Monday at age 91.
A self-made millionaire in Florida’s early hospitality industry, Landwirth became a passionate philanthropist whose work has touched more than 160,000 children from all 50 states and at least 75 foreign nations. At the Kissimmee resort village he opened in 1989, the kids and their families enjoy weeklong, all-expenses-paid fantasy vacations.
“Words cannot express the sense of loss we feel today,” said Pamela Landwirth, president and CEO of Give Kids The World and Henri’s former wife. “When people endure what he did — experiencing the worst of humanity — I think it can either make you bitter or lead you to think that you were spared for a reason. Henri recognized that he could move forward with compassion and love. He made a huge difference.”
Born in Belgium in 1927, he was imprisoned from age 13 to 18 by the Nazis, who separated him from his twin sister, killed his parents, stripped him of his name and tattooed him with a number — B4343 — etched inside his left forearm. He was shuttled between labor and death camps, starved, beaten and left for dead.
“I never had any control over my life as a child,” he would write in later years. “I think that is what inspired me to do what I’m doing today — to thank you for this life I have.”
After the war, Landwirth reunited with his sister and, with $20 to his name and speaking little English, he came to the U.S. as a crew member aboard a cargo ship.
Soon afterward, in January 1950, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and pressed into duty stateside before studying hotel management in New York on the G.I. Bill. Two years later, he moved to Florida.
He worked up from a bellhop to become a manager for a Cocoa Beach hotel that catered to the region’s fledgling space industry. The Starlite Lounge, a hot spot for off-duty personnel at the motel Landwirth ran, led him to friendships with Mercuryera astronauts, including John Glenn, and the journalists who covered them, including legendary TV anchorman Walter Cronkite.
“Since he seems to have embraced the whole human race, this largesse is beyond our ability to count, particularly since so much of his help goes unremarked by him,” Chronkite wrote in the foreword of Landwirth’s 1996 autobiography.
In 1969, Landwirth opened his first Holiday Inn franchise in Orlando, predicting the tourism boom that would follow the opening of Walt Disney World Resort in 1971.
And by the 1980s, he began offering free rooms to the Make-A-Wish Foundation for use by families of terminally ill children, many of whom wished to visit Disney. One of them, a 6-year-old named Amy, was scheduled to stay at Landwirth’s hotel, but other plans for her visit dragged — and she died before she could make the trip.
Henri Landwirth vowed that hers would be the last wish to go unfulfilled.
He started Give Kids The World in 1986 and opened its initial 35-acre village three years later. Since then, the resort has grown to 84 acres with 166 villa-style accommodations. Last year, the village renamed its ice-cream parlor “Henri’s Starlite Scoops” as a nod to that Cocoa Beach hotel. Although Landwirth was too frail to attend, his son Gary Landwirth attended in his place.
“He would have loved it,” said Gary Landwirth, who started his own charity in Orlando — A Gift for Teaching — and now lives in Asheville, N.C. “Even at the end, when his health was failing, it was amazing to me that people who didn’t know the big Henri were still inspired by him and responded to him in the same way that people who knew the larger-thanlife Henri did. Even in his last days, they could sense the warmth and compassion and generosity that were his essence.”
Henri Landwirth passed peacefully in his sleep at his home outside Jacksonville, Gary Landwirth said.
In addition to Give Kids The World, the elder Landwirth’s legacy includes The Fanny Landwirth Foundation, named after Henri’s mother, a grant-making foundation for charities in Orlando, Jacksonville and Asheville; the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, created in partnership with the Mercury Seven crew; and the Henri Landwirth Society, which helps members include Give Kids The World Village in their estate-planning efforts.
Landwirth is the subject of the 2007 biography, “Love & Hate: The Story of Henri Landwirth” and a documentary titled “Loving Henri.”
Henri Landwirth’s twin sister, Margot Glazer, died last year. He is survived by three children, including Gary Landwirth, Greg Landwirth and Lisa Landwirth Ullmann, and four grandchildren.
A private family funeral service will be held at Temple Israel Cemetery near Orlando. A celebration of Henri Landwirth’s life will be held 2-3 p.m. April 28 at the Give Kids the World Village.