Snubbed by Mayor Mamdani, Holocaust survivor Sami Steigmann is “hoping” for an eleventh-hour Passover miracle akin to the redemption of the desperate Israelites.
After a canceled one on one meeting in January on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 86-year-old who was experimented on as a child at the hands of twisted Nazis, said he’s running out of time to find a solution for affordable housing.
“Politicians make promises and don’t keep them.
“I was hoping Mamdani would keep his promise,” Harlem-based Steigmann told The Post, adding he never heard from the mayor about scheduling “a private meeting and discuss things” with the cash-strapped survivor, who relies on modest reparations and social security.
“Even if he calls now, I’m not interested,” said the defiant octogenarian, blasting the empty promises of the socialist pol who prided himself on being a champion of affordable housing.
“He’s a champion in words — not affordable housing,” ripped Steigmann who’s desperate to leave his modest walk-up apartment due to his poor health.
“He’s not even a socialist, he’s a communist,” cried the Romanian native who’d seen the disastrous system up close.
“They want to destroy everything to create something new. And that’s not safe.”
A civil rights group is aiming to raise $132,000 for the ailing Steigmann to live comfortably, but the public speaker said he’s running out of time.
As he travels to schools, he describes his harrowing start in life, including years in a labor camp as a “backdrop” to discuss “how the Holocaust happened.”
As a New Yorker of nearly 40 years, the single Steigmann said he’s never seen this level of “normalized” antisemitism, and draws critical lessons from his painful past.
“Antisemitism is 4,000 years old. It will always be there,” he said, adding, “but what’s happening now is that it’s in the open” in NYC and around the world.
Steigmann blasted the “hypocrisy” that’s saw a Brooklyn middle school reject his appearance because of his support for Israel, but include “antisemitic” artwork from Rama Duwaji — the mayor’s wife — in the very same school.
As the survivor celebrates Passover – and the essential theme of “freedom” – Steigmann believes that under the new mayor “things will get worse before they get better.
“We survived many other things. We’ll survive another three years.”
The mayor is “working hard” to help Steigmann, “and has connected with several community organizations and housing providers over the past several months to help him with” his housing situation, a City Hall rep told Fox News.
Even if the mayor calls now, Steigmann insisted, “It’s too little, too late.”
As friends scramble against the clock to find suitable housing for the senior, he’s bracing for a future in a nursing home – a dismal fate that would preclude him from his “mission of educating the next generation.”
“If I go to nursing home, I wait for my time to say goodbye. That’s the end of life,” he said.
Given an audience with the mayor, Steigmann secretly harbored a shred of hope to turn around his dire situation.
“I would have hoped that he will keep his promise and do something about affordable housing,” he admitted.
Steigmann is eyeing a $3,500 one-bedroom accessible apartment that can accommodate his needs.
The crushing snub is yet another blow from the mayor who Steigmann is shocked garnered a supposed 30 percent of the Jewish vote.
“I do not understand the Jewish people,” blasted Steigmann, pointing the finger not at the anti-Israel mayor, but at his fellow brethren. “I am saying the enemy is us.”
The only platform that actually could help improve Steigmann’s life was the affordable housing platform, but even that’s come up woefully short.
“He hasn’t delivered, but I didn’t expect, I only hoped.”
Even a groveling apology by the mayor isn’t enough to convince Steigmann.
“It is over. He had his chance.
“I don’t buy it and even if he calls, I will say thank you, but I don’t need you. If you don’t want me, I don’t want you. I am not going to beg,” he said.
The “lifelong optimist” predicted a bleak tableau for NYC that will eventually turn itself around.
“Things will get worse,” he said, “but eventually things will get better.
“Things are bad and eventually people will wake up, but it has to be up to the people. I don’t know what happened to the Jewish people – they’re crazy” for voting for Mamdani.