Separated in Holocaust, siblings reunited after 59 yrs. November 30, 2003 SEATTLE -- George Gordon spent most of his life thinking he had lost his entire family in the Holocaust. But he couldn't shake a lingering sense of uncertainty -- or the haunting dreams. ''I'd see my mother and sister in my sleep and wake up thinking, 'No, I can't believe they are dead,''' the 77-year-old Polish immigrant said. Then a volunteer for the American Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Service stepped in and discovered something Gordon never expected to find: His sister. The center in Baltimore has handled requests from some 40,000 Americans, combing through Soviet war records. It forwarded Gordon's to the agency's International Tracing Service in Arrolsen, Germany. The Polish Red Cross got involved, and American Red Cross volunteer Tammy Kaiser, on her own trip to Poland with a Jewish student group, made a detour to Gordon's former hometown, Wroclaw, searching for his family graves. She found nothing. After 18 months, Polish researchers finally discovered a simple newspaper obituary. It described Gordon's mother, Janina. It was dated 1979, and it mentioned only one survivor, a daughter, Krystyna. ''I couldn't believe it when I heard,'' Kaiser told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. ''I cried for like 10 minutes. Then we called George.'' Born Jerzy Budzynski, Gordon was sent at age 14 on a boxcar to Stuthoff, a Polish-only work camp, and then to Buchenwald, where he spent the rest of the war. His father and younger brother were shot dead by SS soldiers. Only when speaking of the night he heard his sister's voice for the first time in 59 years did his voice waver. ''Krystyna, this is Jerik,'' he said, using his childhood nickname in a phone call to Poland. There was a long silence. Neither knew quite what to say. On Sept. 26, they were reunited in a hotel in Wroclaw. ''These two women walked in, my sister and her daughter,'' Gordon said. ''I wouldn't have recognized her if we'd passed each other on the street -- to me she was always a 12-year-old girl -- but when I heard her voice, I knew it was her.'' AP Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
