Malka “Mollie” Horwitz plans to celebrate her 110th birthday on Monday.
Researchers believe she may actually be turning 113, which would make her one of the oldest living people in the world and almost certainly the oldest Holocaust survivor.
The Gerontology Research Group examined documents from Horwitz’s early and middle years in January and found records pointing to a birth year of 1913, not 1916.
The group says the earlier date is “much more likely” to be correct. Horwitz, who lives in Miami Beach, appears not to have known.
Four years in a ghetto, then three countries in two decades
Horwitz was born Malka Godur in Vilkomir, in what was then the Russian Empire and is now Ukmergė, Lithuania. She married in 1935 and had a son three years later. She was in her mid-twenties when Nazi troops invaded Lithuania.
What followed was four years of captivity in a ghetto. Her husband died. She separated from her young son to protect him. After the war ended, she found him again and the two fled to Cuba in 1947.
They stayed for 15 years. Then, in 1962, a year after Cuba declared itself communist, Horwitz left for the United States with her son and a second child. She had $20. She started over for the third time.
She remarried twice, taking the surname of her third husband, who has since died. Today she has two children, seven grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
What the research means
If the GRG’s findings are correct, Monday would not mark Horwitz becoming a supercentenarian, the term for anyone over 110. She would have passed that milestone three years ago without realising it.
There are just over 200 verified supercentenarians alive worldwide, making it one of the most exclusive categories in human demographics.
At 113, Horwitz would rank among the very oldest people on the planet. The oldest verified living person as of early 2025 was 117.
Still receiving care in Miami Beach
Horwitz has been a client of Jewish Community Services of South Florida for over 12 years.
The organisation’s Holocaust Survivor Assistance Program provides in-home care, food assistance and case management to more than 400 survivors in Miami-Dade County. The average age of those clients is 94.5. Fifteen are over 100.
“The program ensures that survivors like Malka receive the dignity, care, and companionship they need in their final years,” a spokesperson said.
Why it matters
Holocaust survivors are, by the simplest arithmetic, running out of time. Every year the number gets smaller and the average age climbs higher.
Stories like Horwitz’s carry weight not just because of the age record but because of what the life behind it contains: displacement, loss, reinvention, and a refusal to stop.
Programmes like the one supporting her in Miami are no longer about long-term care plans.
They are about making sure the final chapter is handled properly for people who have already survived more chapters than most of us could imagine.
Researchers are still working to verify Horwitz’s exact birth year. She turns either 110 or 113 on Monday. Either way, she has outlived almost everyone who tried to kill her by about 80 years.
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