This dear old fellow makes me cry. I'm so happy for him.
Posted on 02/10/2018 1:09:47 PM PST by beaversmom
A 102-year-old Holocaust survivor had thought his entire family had been killed during World War II until he met he recently meet his nephew.
Eliahu Pietruszka had fled to the Soviet Union from Warsaw, Poland in 1939 as the war erupted. He was 24 at the time and left behind his parents and twin brothers Volf and Zelig, who were 15.
His parents and Zelig were later deported from the Warsaw Ghetto by Adolph Hiter's SS units and were murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. Somehow Volf managed to escape and stayed in touch with Eliahu before he was sent by the Russians to a Siberian work camp.
Pietruszka assumed his brother had died.
"In my heart, I thought he was no longer alive," he told The Associated Press.
He married in Russia and migrated to Israel in 1949 to start a new family since he thought he had no one left.
Then two weeks ago, Pietruszka's grandson received an email from a cousin working on the family tree. She informed him she had found a Yad Vashem page of testimony filled out in 2005 by Volf who thought his older brother Eliahu had died. Volf had survived the war and had settled in Magnitogorsk located in the Ural Mountains.
The grandson was able to track down an address for Volf but discovered he had died in 2011. However, Volf had a son named Alexandre who was still living. After a brief conversation, Alexandre agreed to come and visit the uncle he never knew about.
The family reunion took place at Pietruszka' retirement home in central Israel.
When they first met, they hugged each other tightly and began chatting in Russian as they examined each other's faces.
"You are a copy of your father," Pietruszka told his new-found nephew. "I haven't slept in two nights waiting for you."
Throughout his visit, Alexandre tried to hold back his tears, repeatedly shaking his head.
"It's a miracle. I never thought this would happen," Alexandre, himself a retired construction worker, kept saying.
Debbie Berman, a Yad Vashem official at the meeting, said it was incredibly moving to be there for "the end of an era."
"This is one of the last opportunities that we will have to witness something like this. I feel like we are kind of touching a piece of history," she told the AP.
For Pietruszka, a retired microbiologist and great-grandfather of 10, it was a reminder to keep looking.
"I am overjoyed," he said. "This shows it is never too late. People can always find what they are looking for if they try hard enough. I succeeded."
even a 20 year old would now be 95?
They are all going by the day. :( Important to remember the WWII generation.
Beautiful
His brother died in 2011? They probably could have found each other long ago. They must have both assumed the other was dead.
beautiful indeed - and wise to remember the totalitarian mode of thinking remains alive and well among us.
Far more died in the Ukraine at the hands of Stalin— over 10 million but no one remembers that.
Amazing story.
I’m sure there are articles and stories about it on the internet. Please share them. I’m interested in history, in general. FR and the internet is big enough for all.
Yep. Kinda sad it couldn’t have happened with the brother, but I’m glad it happened with the nephew.
I am happy for him, too. Many years ago I knew many, many Holocaust survivors, mostly elderly. Only a few spoke any English, and we’re from all over Europe. I was a teenager when I first met these folks, and over the years they won my heart.
The sad part is that at first I had no clue as to who these people were. I saw their camp tattoos, sometimes more than one, depending on which camps they came from. For some reason, I never asked about the tats. There was this inner voice saying that it was personal and none of my business.
It wasn’t till a few years later while working in a Jewish nursing home that I learned exactly who these people were. The movie Holocaust was on the TV and the whole place was errily quiet so I asked the head nurse why. She mentioned the movie...I had no clue. But every room with a TV was playing it. Finally I asked one of the residents why every body was crying. I’d never seen it before, and I was too busy to watch TV as I worked.
This very kind woman explained it to me, and she began to share some of the stories of her roommates. I felt like I had been clocked between the eyes by Hitler’s own hammer as it all began to fall into place.
When you are a teenager, you don’t think about what a short span of time 30 or 40 years really is. To a teenager, it’s a couple of lifetimes ago and doesn’t matter any more. It never occurred to me even at 22 years old by then, that a lot of these people were still alive, and here I stood among those who were mentioned in my Jr high school history books!!
That experience colored my life, for the rest of my life. I loved those people then..they were such wonderful folks! And I love them still, today. I just hope they found peace, and eternity is theirs. Our compassionate God, will see to it.
I was a goy, and they gave me precious gems as they showed me kindness, patience, strength to overcome, strong faith, and teaching me the value of their tradition. They blessed me.
So yes, It’s a joy beyond understanding that this 102 year old man connected with one of his own flesh!
Thanks for sharing your experiences. Very beautiful.
Very happy for Mr. Pietruszka and the family he didn’t think he had. Wonderful story.
A little joke about Polish names told to me by my neighbor, Dzbinski (Ski):
A guy goes to the eye doctor for an exam and the doctor puts some letters on the screen, something like P Z E B T R. Then the doctor asks his patient if he can read the letters. The guy answers, “Can I read them? I KNOW da guy!”
Lol. I like it. I was looking at this man’s name and wondering how to pronounce it.
wow
The pronunciation is something like Pee-uh-troosh-ka, with the "Pee-uh" part said very quickly. The accent is on the first syllable.
Thanks.
Me too.
Kind of bittersweet.
It is not a “reunion,” if they never met before. It is a wonderful event nonetheless.
Good point.
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