Another Holocaust survival story

Get your tissues ready. (This time, the Ha’aretz story is nowhere near as well-written as the AP’s. It’s usually the other way around.)

JERUSALEM (AP) – Hilda Shlick thought she lost nearly all her family in the Holocaust – until her Internet-savvy grandsons located her 81-year-old brother in Canada.

“After 65 years, I have found the sister who I love,” Simon Glasberg said Monday in heavily accented English, his eyes filling with tears. “I can’t stop kissing her.”

Using the database of Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, two of Shlick’s grandchildren, Benny and David, began unearthing a mystery spanning six decades and three continents.

While improved technology in recent years has made the task of tracking Holocaust survivors easier, fewer and fewer survivors remain as each year passes.

Scanning the database, the grandsons, both in their 20s, discovered an entry erroneously stating their grandmother had perished half a century earlier. That entry led them to other surviving relatives, who eventually brought about the siblings’ emotional reunion Friday.

When Glasberg, who lives near Ottawa, Canada, saw his gray-haired little sister for the first time, he recognized her immediately, he said.

“I felt I couldn’t talk. I just cried,” he said. “You don’t understand, 65 years …” His voice trailed off.

Shlick, 75, said she too was overwhelmed by the discovery.

“For 65 years, I lived thinking I had no family besides one sister,” she said.

Since Friday’s reunion, the family bond has clearly been re-established, with the two elderly siblings playfully joking and reminiscing in a hearty mixture of Russian and Yiddish. Their large families have quickly become close.

The family bond never goes away. Once a sibling, always a sibling, even if you deny it.

The last time the two saw each other was in 1941, when the Glasberg family of Chernowitz, Romania, was separated after the Nazis invaded.

Hilda, then 10, escaped to Uzbekistan with her older sister Bertha. The rest of the family – parents Henia and Benzion, and brothers Simon, Mark, Karol and Eddie – stayed in Romania, finding refuge in a basement. The fate of one sister, Pepi, remains unknown. She disappeared and is presumed to have been killed by the Nazis.

If I knew the right blessing to say over this reunion, I’d say it. Perhaps I’ll have my students ask the rabbi this afternoon.