It was a breezy Thursday evening in Punta Gorda on Feb. 13, and we were waiting in the parking lot of Chabad of Charlotte County. It was a modest green building—not the kind of place you’d expect to find a rock star. But inside, a legend was waiting to perform.
Saul Dreier was 99 years old. Yes, you read that right—almost a full century. A Holocaust survivor, a musician, and, at that moment, napping in the car before his big set.
The band tuned their instruments as Dreier finally emerged, adjusting his black kepi hat and smirking at the audience. That night, he was on drums. His hands might not have moved as fast as they once did, but his spirit remained unshaken. So did his sense of humor.
“The advice to people that aging? stay an only medicine that you can pay over the counter!” Dreier said. “I didn’t take medicine since I had my cancer, and I’m still alive!”
Dreier was born in April 1925 in Kraków, Poland. He was only a teenager when Germany invaded Poland, but that didn’t stop him from getting sent to a concentration camp. He later survived Mauthausen and Linz before being liberated in 1945. After the war, he moved to Italy, before making his final stop to the United States in 1949.
For decades, Dreier led what many would call an “ordinary life” - But at 89, he had an idea that changed everything.
“One morning, I woke up and saw a woman on TV, a 106-year-old pianist [Alice Herz Sommer] who survived a concentration camp in Germany. It hit me right in my heart,” Dreier said. “I told my wife, Clara, ‘I have an idea.’ She said, ‘You’re crazy.’ I told my rabbi, and he said the same thing. So I said, ‘Because I’m crazy, I’m going to do it.’ And I did.”
That was how the Holocaust Survivor Band was born. What started as a personal mission to honor fellow survivors soon became an international sensation. Dreier went on to perform across numerous stages, including the white house.
That night, Dreier and his bandmates played a mix of folk and traditional Jewish music, blending nostalgia with heritage. Before he took the drums, he left with one final thought.
“Do I have memories of the Holocaust? Darling, I dream about it every day. But I try to forget. When I think of the 6 million who died—and the ones still here with me—I feel very, very attached.”
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