CTV.ca News Staff

A brother and sister have been reunited six decades after the Holocaust — thanks to a website set up in Israel.

Simon Glasberg, who lives in Canada, and Hilda Schilk, who lives in Israel, long thought each other dead, but finally found each other following the efforts of Schilk’s grandchildren.

The grandchildren had been searching the ‘Central Database of Victims’ Names’ website in Israel and discovered a page of testimony filled out in memory of their grandmother.

The page had been submitted by Schilk’s brother, who believed she had been killed during the Holocaust.

Using the website, the grandchildren were then able to trace their grandmother’s remaining siblings.

After flying into Israel from Canada, Glasberg spoke to reporters Monday about the tearful reunion with his sister.

Flanked by family members at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, an emotional Glasberg said he “didn’t even know she was alive.”

“I looked and looked and I couldn’t find her,” he tearfully told reporters. “My parents also used to cry whenever they remembered her.”

An equally emotional Schilk said she was “very happy to see him. I am excited.”

Schilk’s grandson David described the reunion as “very emotional, and there were a lot of tears.”

Speaking to Israel International News, David said “Simon landed in the airport, came out, and then stood there, not knowing where to continue. We then went in and his nephew said, ‘Simon, this is your sister’ and he burst out crying. They haven’t left each other since then; they talk in Yiddish, laugh, cry, and tell a lot of stories.”

The testimony on the Victims’ Names website says Schilk was born in 1934 and the family lived in Romania during the Holocaust years, before travelling onto Poland and Ukraine.

Some of the family spent some time in a work-camp and after the War, some of the siblings moved to Israel.

Simon served in the IDF during the War of Independence, but moved afterwards to Canada, in the footsteps of his older brother, INN reported on its website.