Saul Dreier, right, is reunited with his cousin Lucy Weinberg after being separated more than 60 years ago during World War II and the Holocaust. Weinberg traveled from Canada and arrived at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Thursday night. Dreier had been looking for Weinberg since the end of the war and was finally able to get in touch with her this year thanks to the help of the American Red Cross and its Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center, which scoured records from more than 180 Red Cross societies for clues about her. (Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel / December 2, 2010)
They learned English, married, had children, and led happy lives in new countries. And for many years two cousins thought: I survived the Nazis, but my cousin didn't.
That changed after Saul Dreier, 85, of Coconut Creek, asked the American Red Cross to help him find his cousin Lucy Weinberg, 82, early this year.
The Red Cross' Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center scoured records from more than 180 Red Cross societies for clues.
The ones that came through were the societies in Poland and the Czech Republic. And finally, after Weinberg was located in Montreal, the reunion took place Thursday night at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
As Weinberg approached him, Dreier cried, "Is this Lucy? Is this Lucy?." She smiled at him, then he swept her into a long embrace that brought him to tears.
"It's been 65 years," Dreier said. "There are no words …"
"We saw each other when we were children," Weinberg said. "Now we see each other when we are old."
The two grew up together in Krakow, Poland, though they were not close as children.
But having lost the rest of his family in the Holocaust, Dreier became determined to find Weinberg. He suspected she was alive, having heard that from a mutual friend in the 1960s, but he didn't know where she was.
The last time he saw her was during World War II, when the two cousins were working in a Nazi labor camp in Poland. Their families had been forced into a ghetto in Krakow before being deported to the concentration camps. Dreier said he watched his mother board a train that took her "to a crematorium." Weinberg's two brothers and sister perished one by one.
Eventually Dreier was sent to the concentration camp at Plaszow. His cousin and her mother were sent to the same camp, where they worked making pots and pans at the famous Oscar Schindler's factory. Dreier worked at a different factory near Schindler's, repairing airplane radiators.
In 1944, Dreier was sent to a concentration camp in Austria that was liberated by U.S. troops. He was a refugee in Italy until he came to America in 1949. He first settled in Coney Island, married, began a career in construction, and raised a family.
After the mutual friend told him his cousin survived the camps, Dreier contacted Holocaust assistance groups, Israel's leading Holocaust museum, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, for assistance. The searches came up empty.
In January, Dreier saw an Internet ad about how the American Red Cross reunites war victims.
He applied. In June, the agency let him know it was on the case.
The center uses "meticulous" records the Germans kept to find names and birthdates now stored in depositories in Poland and the United States, said Chrystian Tejedor, American Red Cross spokesman. They also use museum and other archive records.
The search was complicated in that Weinberg had married and changed her name, and moved from Germany to Israel to Canada.
Last month the Red Cross made the connection and Weinberg scrambled to renew her passport.
It turns out the cousins were closer all along than Dreier imagined: Weinberg's son owns a condo in Hollywood that she has visited.
Weinberg said she was stunned to know there was going to be a reunion.
"I couldn't believe it," she said before heading to the airport. "I couldn't talk, my throat got stuck. I never thought he was alive so I never looked for him."
When asked what they planned to do now that they're together again, Dreier said: "Talk, talk, talk."
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com or 954-572-2008.
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