‘You are my brother.’ Holocaust survivors reunite 79 years later
THESE TWO MEN HAVE DEDICATED THEIR LIVES TO TELLING THEIR STORIES TO THE NEXT GENERATION IN THE HOPES THEY WILL TRULY LEARN THE LESSONS AND CREATE A BETTER WORLD.
Yitzhak “Jack” Waksal knew he had seen that face before.
The 97-year-old from Bal Harbour, Florida, focused on the man leaning against the wall, but couldn’t place how he knew him.
But then the man spoke.
All Sam Ron had to do was say one word – “Pionki” – and Waksal knew the connection right away.
“We worked together on a daily basis,” he said of the labor camp in occupied Poland where they spent about a year together.
Ron was an honorary chair of the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s South Florida dinner on March 20 in Boca Raton. And Waksal could barely wait until the prayer before dinner was finished.
He popped out of his seat and headed straight to Ron, who is also 97.
“You are my brother,” he told him as they embraced. “We were together in Pionki.”
The unlikely reunion of the two Polish men after 79 years happened only a month before the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, also known as Yom HaShoah.
Robert Tanen, southeast regional director for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, said the story of Ron and Waksal “is compelling because we know there will come a day when Holocaust survivors won’t be here to stand up and tell us their stories.”
Robert Tanen, southeast regional director for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
“These two men who had to endure unspeakable hardships to make it through the Holocaust are living witnesses who have dedicated their lives to telling their stories to the next generation in the hopes they will truly learn the lessons and create a better world,” he said.
After the war, both started new lives in two different Ohio cities – about 200 miles apart. Then, unknown to one another
again, both retired to Florida, one in Boca Raton, the other in Bal Harbour.
Neither thought the other had survived.
“When I saw you, I said, ‘For goodness sake, I know him,’ ” Waksal told Ron during a recent Zoom conversation. The two have kept in touch since they first reunited at the dinner.
Tanen said reunions like those of Ron and Waksal are “so
incredibly rare today” and serve an important purpose for the Holocaust museum.
“We understand the stories of the Holocaust through one individual story because we can relate to a human,” Tanen said. “We can understand that this happened to other people. This wasn’t in some alternate universe. This wasn’t somewhere in ancient history. This happened to humans just like you and me in the modern world.”
Waksal, who still has dreams about his time in the Holocaust, said it is “unbelievable” being able to reminisce with someone who truly understands what he went trough.
And while they haven’t spoken in eight decades, they have a lot in common – including geography and their dedication to educating younger generations about the atrocities of the time against the Jewish people of Eastern Europe.
“It’s a beautiful thing that all these years later that they can find someone that had this very, very intense, horrific shared experience that none of us can truly understand,” Tanen said.
“I think it’s amazing that at the young ages of 97 they have friends again. It’s almost like no time has passed. It’s never too late to gain an old friend.”