Benny and Malky Weiss
Benny and Malky Weiss

Benny Weisz, 32, and Malki Weisz, 27, of Lakewood, N.J., had just flown into Surfside, Fla., the night of the Champlain Tower collapse. The couple, married for five years, came to visit Malki’s father, Chaim Rosenberg, and spend Shabbat with him in his new apartment.

Benny Weisz was identified as a victim of the tragedy on July 9. He wife was idenitfied the following day. His father-in-law had been identified a few days earlier.

Benny, a native of Vienna, Austria, was one of two children born to Dyuri and Tina Weisz. Dyuri, who passed away several years ago, worked at Alvorada Wiener Coffee, a family-owned business.

A friend of the family, Chana Weiser, a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary with Chabad of Austria, said Benny, along with his older brother, Danny, were “very refined people who live their Jewish values.”

Shushy Bernholtz, a childhood classmate and life-long friend of Benny, described him as “a diverse person of many talents, with a huge heart.”

“Benny knows everything,” said Bernholtz. “He can quote the works of the great German playwrights and poets like Goethe and Schiller and explain the most complex debates in the Talmud with relevant commentaries,“ he said.

After studying at the Hebron Yeshivah in the Givat Mordechai neighborhood of Jerusalem where he and Bernholtz were roommates, Weisz went on to study computer science at King’s College in London. After his marriage to Malki Rosenberg, the couple moved to Lakewood, where he worked in finance and studied in a local kollel.

His wife, Malki, worked as an auditor at Farmingdale, N.J., branch of the Roth & Co. accounting firm. Shlomo Schorr, a colleague, described her as someone with an almost regal bearing “who brought an abundance of joy and life into the workplace.”

Benny Weisz was laid to rest on July 12 at the Har Hamenuchot Cemetery in Jerusalem. Malki Weisz was laid to rest on July 11 at the Wellwood Cemetery in West Babylon, N.Y.