He believed he had lost his whole family during the Holocaust, but at the age of 102 this man is able to embrace his nephew
When Eliahu Pietruszka fled Poland at the breakout of WWII in 1939 to take refuge in Russia, he was 24 years old.
He had to leave behind him in Poland, his mother, father, and his two younger twin brothers, Zelig and Volf who had been deported from the Warsaw ghetto. Eliahu thought they had all been killed in a concentration camp by the Nazi regime.
However, Volf, one of Eliahu's younger twin brothers had managed to escape from the concentration camp and was able to get in touch with his escaped older brother, Eliahu.
Nevertheless, the dark and dangerous everyday life of that period and the troubling historical events, unfortunately, meant that Volf ended up a prisoner again, this time in a Siberian labor camp.
From that moment, Eliahu was practically sure that he would never see or hear of his brother Volf again. But, this was not to be the case, as the incredible story we are about to tell you bears witness.
via Independent
At the end of the war, Eliahu married and moved to Israel to form a family of his own.
And fortunately, although Eliahu did not know this—Volf, was not dead at all. He too, after the war, had formed a family and found a job as a construction worker in Russia settling in Magnitogorsk, an industrial city in the Ural Mountains.
Providentially, Volf, before his death in 2011, decided that he would leave a written testimony specifically for Eliahu, his older brother whom he had not seen for decades, on the online database Yad Vashem dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust.
Consequently, one of Volf's grandsons, Shakhar Smorodinsky, received an email from a cousin in Canada who while working on their family tree had discovered a Yad Vashem page of testimony filled out in 2005 by Volf Pietruszka for his older brother Eliahu, who he thought had died.
Therefore, with this information, they were able to get Volf's last address and find his son, Alexandre!
Miraculously, even if both of Eliahu's younger twin brothers, Volf and Zelig had by now passed away, Volf's son Alexandre, at 66, was alive and well in Russia.
Naturally, Alexandre decided, with the help of the cousin who had done the research, to meet his uncle, the elderly Eliahu.
In a few days, the two managed to organize their historic meeting.
At the venerable age of 102, Eliahu, one of the few survivors of the Holocaust, still living, was able to embrace a direct member of his family that he did not even know existed.
It is useless to try to describe the strong emotions they felt when they finally met! This incredible meeting of an elderly uncle and his nephew has certainly moved the whole world!
Especially, since the odds of them finding each other were practically zero, after 80 years in which the contacts between the two brothers and their subsequent families had been lost.
This is both a powerful and moving story, which shows us once again how much the human spirit is able, at times, to endure even the greatest distances and difficulties—always finding new reasons not only to survive but also to thrive and move forward.
