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Siblings Separated During Holocaust Reunited


Each thought the other was killed by the Nazis during World War II. But the siblings survived and were reunited in Israel.

GLASBERG: "Sixty-five years! Sixty-five years!"

It took 65 years, but a brother and sister separated during the Holocaust were finally reunited in Jerusalem.

Israeli Hilda Shlick thought she lost nearly all her family, which was separated when the Nazis invaded Romania in 1941. Shlick, who was only 10 years old, escaped to Uzbekistan with her older sister. Her parents and brothers stayed in Romania, finding refuge in a basement.

Ms. Shlick, 75, and her sister survived the war, but they assumed the rest of the family perished in the Holocaust.

But everything changed when Shlick's two grandsons became curious about the fate of her family. They began searching the archives at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. With improved technology and the help of the Internet, they began unraveling a mystery spanning six decades.

The grandsons, both in their 20s, questioned their grandmother again and again, and with the story she told, the trail got warmer. Eventually, they tracked down her brother, Simon Glasberg, in Canada, and he flew to Israel for the reunion.

"We were so happy to see her," said Mr. Glasberg.

The reunion was bittersweet. Shlick's parents and another brother also survived the Holocaust, but she never got to see them before they died a few years ago.

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