Thankful for reunion of divided family

It was a meeting our family had awaited for over 50 years. My wife,

Mimi, and her sister, Cherry, went to visit their first cousin, Gisella,

whom they had never met because the Weber family was separated and many

killed during the Holocaust. Gisella is the remaining daughter of Mimi’s

and Cherry’s father’s brother, Willie, who died in a concentration camp.

We drove the two hours to Joseph Wasserman’s home in the desert. Joseph

had brought Gisella here from Hamburg, Germany, in order to arrange a

meeting between the three first cousins. He felt a personal

responsibility as he was not only a friend of Leo Weber (Mimi’s and

Cherry’s father), but had been friends with Gisella’s father Willie in a

Polish concentration camp -- an almost unbelievable coincidence. Gisella

stood silently outside the house anxiously waiting to greet us. She

looked older than her 63 years, her hair gray and her figure plump.

Hugging each other warmly, we all commented, “We finally made it.”

Inside we were bursting to ask questions. We sat in the living room and

joyously kept starring at one another. Somewhere, how happy Leo and

Willie would be at this meeting of first cousins. If not for Hitler, all

three might have grown up together.

We perused albums of old pictures. Gisella said her mother had carried

her family pictures through all the horrifying experiences, hiding them

in the mattress in the concentration camp. We halted at a picture of

Gisella with her dad in the park when she was 3 years old -- a very happy

moment. This is her only remembrance of her father. Gisella did not dwell

on the past and was not angry or vengeful.

So, as much as Gisella remembered and would talk about, this is her

story: Her father was in the import-export business in the 1930s, and

traded with Egypt and Germany. Wilhelm, “Willie” was the oldest of five

children of a couple who had immigrated from Poland. When Willie was 39

and Gisella was 4, in the late 1930s, everyone of the Jewish faith had to

register with the government. Those who were Polish citizens were forced

to leave Germany and sent to a camp called Zbazyn (pronounced Spungeon)

in Poland. Gisella remembers stepping on the train at age 5 with 17

members of the Weber family.

Once in the camp they were all separated. Gisella went to a children’s

area and never saw her father again. Willie was placed in charge of mail

for the camp where he met Joe Wasserman who was in charge of food

rationing. They were later taken to Lemburg, also in Poland. Eventually

the men were taken out to the nearby woods in an area called Galitsia and

executed 500 at a time.

Toward the end of the war Russia invaded Poland, liberated the camps, and

Gisella was taken to a Polish orphanage. Her mother, Irmgard, after a

long unyielding search amazingly found Gisella when she was 9. Gisella

retired two years ago after working in the same bank for 43 years. She

never married as her mother was desperately afraid of losing her daughter

again.

The stories now told we were all emotionally spent. We spent the rest of

the afternoon walking and talking and then went to a nearby restaurant.

We then had to leave and drive back to Newport Beach. The hugs were long

and warm as we made plans for the next November. This time we hoped

Gisella would come to our homes for Thanksgiving and meet our families

and the new generation of cousins.

This Thanksgiving we are grateful to live in the Newport-Mesa area, for

family and friends, and for the incredible sequence of events that led to

a reunion of a divided family. We will never forget Gisella’s album.

MICHAEL A. GLUECK

Newport Beach