PARKLAND, Fla. – When the Coral Springs Fire Department arrived at the home on Northwest 107th Terrace, there was a 93-year-old woman, who was sitting down, bleeding from the head. Werner Munzer, 95, was slumped over in a wheelchair, moaning and also bleeding from the head.
A Smith & Wesson .22 caliber handgun was on the table. The holocaust survivor and his wife were living in Parkland, but the Broward Sheriff's Office said Wednesday that he was likely going to die of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Munzer was the one who hurt his wife, Anna Munzer, deputies said. She was released from North Broward Medical Center, BSO spokeswoman Keyla Concepcion said. He died Thursday, a relative said.
Their son, Martin Munzer, 63, told deputies he received an alert from his mom's medical emergency monitor. His father leaves behind a remarkable story of survival. For years, he worked on promoting and distributing his father's story as "The Significant 13," a self-published book and video.
Records show Werner Munzer was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1920, although there is an old identification that he shared on Facebook that was dated 1945, because that was the year that he was rescued from a concentration camp.
In 1943, the Gestapo, German's secret police, captured him at a farm in Holland, where he had been living with this first wife, according to his autobiography.
"We were living underground and were very much in love," he said with the help of his son on Facebook.
He said his son Peter was born in a camp and was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
"I think about him every day," he said on a social media post.
He was in 10 Nazi concentration camps. While at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, he said he remembers being under a pile of dead bodies. It was April 15, 1945, when allied soldiers spotted him and rescued him. He said he survived 757 days of hell.
"He spent over 18 months in hospitals recovering from severe malnutrition (weighing in at 77 lbs), and having tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid Fever and numerous broken bones," an IndieGogo fundraiser request said. "At one point he was close to being declared dead."
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