Holocaust siblings meet after 66 years

DONETSK, Ukraine (CNN) -- A frail Irene Famulak clutched her brother on the airport tarmac, her arm wrapped around him in a tight embrace, tears streaming down their faces. It was the first time since 1942 they had seen each other, when she was 17 and he was just 7.

That was the night the invading Nazis came to take her away from her Ukrainian home.

"I remember it well because I kissed him good-bye, and he pushed me away," she said of her brother. "I asked, 'Why did you do that?' And he said that he doesn't like kisses."

"The Nazis told my mother that I was being taken to work in a German labor camp for six months. But it was, of course, much longer. I was there for years."

Both siblings survived the Holocaust and grew up on different sides of the Iron Curtain, not knowing the fate of the other.

But after 66 years apart, Famulak, 83, was reunited with her long lost 73-year-old brother, Wssewolod Galezkij. They held each other close this time, cherishing the moment.


Siblings Wssewolod Galezkij and Irene Famulak were separated in 1942 when Nazis took her to a labor camp.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/11/holocaust.reunion/index.html

I like to hear about stories like that.

"The past is always with us," wrote Faulkner. It's not even past."

Try reading Eva Schloss's story about her experiences at Auschwitz and tell me if "sweet" comes to mind when she and her mother find her dead brother's paintings.