Two Brothers Were Separated By The Holocaust, 77 Years Later Their Families Finally Reunite

Proverbs‬ ‭chapter 17 verse 17‬ says, “a friend loves you all the time, but a brother was born to help in times of trouble.” No one understood this quote from the Old Testament better than Abram Belz who helped his beloved brother Chaim Belhitzky successfully flee to safety during the Holocaust.

In 1939, the boys’ mother desperately begged her two sons to escape and save themselves during the Nazi invasion of Poland, says Jess Katz, Abram’s granddaughter. Abram, the eldest, decided to stay in Poland with his family who had been forced into a ghetto called Piotrków Trybunalski along with thousands of other Polish Jews.

According to The Washington Post, only Abram and one cousin, out of 60 relatives captured, survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp. Chaim, who had run away with the help of his brother, found respite in Sakhalin Island, Russia. The brothers never stopped looking for each. They never stopped hoping to reconnect. They died without seeing each other again.

On April 20, 2016, the two families anxiously reunited via Skype. Katz, who lives in New Jersey, did research online using the genealogy site JewishGen.org. She found her family overseas in Russia. Chaim, who had changed his name to Nikolai died in 1970 at the age of 51. But Chaim has a son, Evgeny Belzhitsky, and a family of his own.

Although separated by distance, the two brothers experienced some striking similarities. According to the DailyMail, both were successful tailors after the war, (Abram who had lived in Brooklyn owned and operated a cleaning and tailoring establishment there) both became doting fathers, both had changed their names, and neither stopped looking for the other.

This year, the internationally recognized Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on Cinco de Mayo – a day symbolizing unity, freedom and Mexican patriotism. Let us commit today to work together toward world peace, freedom, and justice for all.