Sol Laufer, 82-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor, Gets Bar Mitzvah 70 Years Late

Sol Laufer's bar mitzvah came a little later than usual.

The 82-year-old Holocaust survivor finally received the Jewish right of passage on Saturday, according to the Herald-Tribune. Laufer, a Sarasota, Fla. resident and German native, is completing the ritual now, since he wasn't able to have it performed as a boy during the Holocaust.

From Fox News:

Sol Laufer never had his bar mitzvah when he was a teen in 1941 because the Nazis placed Laufer and his family into a Jewish ghetto during World War II. He was later sent to a concentration camp, where he subsisted on flour and sawdust bread rations and watery soup and became ill before the Soviets liberated his camp in 1945.

The German native lost his entire family during that time.

Laufer is a father of three and grandfather of six, all of which, in addition to his wife, were in attendance on Saturday for the bar mitzvah, according to the Herald-Tribune. He will be the oldest person to have ever been bar mitzvahed by the rabbi of Chabad of Sarasota.

However, he's certainly not the oldest person to be bar mitzvahed. As recently as November 2010, Hans De Leeuw, a 91-year-old Dutch World War II veteran was bar mitzvahed in Jerusalem. He too went through the entire ceremony, typically intended for 13-year-olds, filling a void created by the horrors of the second World War.

WATCH an explanation of the Jewish bar mitzvah ritual: