There seems to be no shortage of these stories in the news archives. Would it be useful to start compiling a list of them? The consistent story beat is that they assumed their relatives were killed after they stopped receiving word, but they actually survived. Often the reunions are filmed.
To start things off, here is 102yo Eliahu Pietruszka meeting with the son of his brother Volf in 2017. Both Eliahu and Volf believed they were sole survivors. They may have been separated by the Iron Curtain. In 2005 Volf gave Yad Vashem pages of testimony for the deaths of Eliahu and his other family members. This sat in Yad Vashem's database from 2005 until 2017 when another relative discovered it, leading to the reunion.
https://www.yadvashem.org/events/20-november-2017.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-Gewy40Ej4
Holocaust survivors presumed dead, much later reunited with their loved ones
- borjastick
- Posts: 332
- Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2024 11:49 am
- Location: Europe
Re: Holocaust survivors presumed dead, much later reunited with their loved ones
Good topic Wetzelrad and one I have been commenting on for years here. There seem to be several reasons or excuses why the 'survivors' think their family were murdered, killed in the camp system.
Firstly there is the old chestnut 'we never saw them again' followed quickly by the 'they must have died because they never return to 22 Acacia Avenue after the war' routine and then the final one of 'I was told they were gassed at Auschwitz'.
As I mentioned the other week here there is a whole slew of facebook posts about jews 'murdered in Auschwitz etc blah blah blah but never any proof for these claims.
Building a list would not only be useful but also highly enteraining especially on these dark and cold winter days.
Firstly there is the old chestnut 'we never saw them again' followed quickly by the 'they must have died because they never return to 22 Acacia Avenue after the war' routine and then the final one of 'I was told they were gassed at Auschwitz'.
As I mentioned the other week here there is a whole slew of facebook posts about jews 'murdered in Auschwitz etc blah blah blah but never any proof for these claims.
Building a list would not only be useful but also highly enteraining especially on these dark and cold winter days.
Of the four million jews under German control, six million died and five million survived!
- HeiligeSturmV2
- Posts: 30
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Re: Holocaust survivors presumed dead, much later reunited with their loved ones
Josef Kleinmann was presumed dead and didn't know his original name for a long time.
"After the war he ended up in Russia and was given the name Peter Grünfeld. In 1979 he emigrated to Israel with his wife and daughter and went in search of his roots." - from the now partially defunct site vpro.nl/
"A Jew who passed by adopted him and gave him his name ̶ Peter Grünfeld. Some time passed before Pepíček discovered his true identity. Peter Josef Grünfeld Kleinmann."
https://www.yadvashem.org/remembrance/a ... /2017.html
Archivist: According to this card, you are dead.
You are listed under the deceased.
I have to cross you out.
Josef Kleinmann: It says that I am dead?
Archivist: Yes.
Josef Kleinmann: No, I am alive!
Archivist: Well...but...
Josef Kleinmann: I am alive!
Archivist: It was like that...
Josef Kleinmann: I am alive.
Archivist: ...very few documents have been preserved...
Josef Kleinmann: This has to be corrected, I am alive.
From De zoektocht van Josef Kleinmann (The Quest of Josef Kleinmann)
(KRO, 1993, 12min 30sec)
Kleinmann died in 2017 and apparently didn't find his sister.
"After the war he ended up in Russia and was given the name Peter Grünfeld. In 1979 he emigrated to Israel with his wife and daughter and went in search of his roots." - from the now partially defunct site vpro.nl/
"A Jew who passed by adopted him and gave him his name ̶ Peter Grünfeld. Some time passed before Pepíček discovered his true identity. Peter Josef Grünfeld Kleinmann."
https://www.yadvashem.org/remembrance/a ... /2017.html
- Kleinmann.jpg (164.02 KiB) Viewed 372 times
You are listed under the deceased.
I have to cross you out.
Josef Kleinmann: It says that I am dead?
Archivist: Yes.
Josef Kleinmann: No, I am alive!
Archivist: Well...but...
Josef Kleinmann: I am alive!
Archivist: It was like that...
Josef Kleinmann: I am alive.
Archivist: ...very few documents have been preserved...
Josef Kleinmann: This has to be corrected, I am alive.
From De zoektocht van Josef Kleinmann (The Quest of Josef Kleinmann)
(KRO, 1993, 12min 30sec)
Kleinmann died in 2017 and apparently didn't find his sister.
- borjastick
- Posts: 332
- Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2024 11:49 am
- Location: Europe
Re: Holocaust survivors presumed dead, much later reunited with their loved ones
First of all I would want to know about the list he was reading. What list, where was it from and how was it compiled?
It's an old chestnut here as I have mentioned several times over the years but it fits this topic perfectly. That is the story of my ex mother in law's brother in law, a very lovely guy from Canada. A jew who was born early thirties if memory serves, in Munich. Before the war he and his parents and some other family members fled to the UK. After the war he and his parents went to Canada. Many years later they went back to Munich and into a holocaust museum or records office and found that they were all listed as killed in or victims of the holocaust. Of course this was not true and they told the official there their story.
It was a case of there before the war, not there after the war, jewish thus must have died in the holocaust and were recorded as such.
On this first page alone we have accounted for this massive anomally in recorded jewish holocaust deaths.
It's an old chestnut here as I have mentioned several times over the years but it fits this topic perfectly. That is the story of my ex mother in law's brother in law, a very lovely guy from Canada. A jew who was born early thirties if memory serves, in Munich. Before the war he and his parents and some other family members fled to the UK. After the war he and his parents went to Canada. Many years later they went back to Munich and into a holocaust museum or records office and found that they were all listed as killed in or victims of the holocaust. Of course this was not true and they told the official there their story.
It was a case of there before the war, not there after the war, jewish thus must have died in the holocaust and were recorded as such.
On this first page alone we have accounted for this massive anomally in recorded jewish holocaust deaths.
Last edited by borjastick on Sat Jan 10, 2026 4:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Of the four million jews under German control, six million died and five million survived!
- HeiligeSturmV2
- Posts: 30
- Joined: Mon Jan 27, 2025 6:32 pm
Re: Holocaust survivors presumed dead, much later reunited with their loved ones
Benjamin Steiner
(1935-2017)
“I was one of the children who were selected by this nice smiling officer, Karl Hoecker. We were escorted away from the rail yard to a building that looked like a hospital ward.
Benjamin Steiner had survived 10 months in Auschwitz when it was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.
The Red Cross organised for Benjamin to be sent to a refugee camp in Denmark and later he found his parents who, miraculously, were still alive.
It took a year for then to reunite, during which time he didn’t know if he still had a living parent, and his parents didn’t know if their only child had survived."
The man who survived Dr Mengele - Newsroom (09/04/2017)
https://newsroom.co.nz/2017/04/09/surviving-dr-mengele/
One explanation why people did not find their relatives after the war:
"During the war, Ben’s father had been taken by the Germans to work as an engineer, assembling V1 and V2 rockets and ammunition. When D-Day came his father was caught by the British and taken to a prisoner of war camp in England. It took months for them to determine he was a genuine prisoner. Ben’s mother had been seconded to the Eastern Front where she worked in a camp as a doctor for German soldiers. It was the middle of 1946 before he was reunited with his parents."
Benjamin Steiner - Jewish Lives
https://www.jewishlives.nz/our-people/benjamin-steiner
(1935-2017)
“I was one of the children who were selected by this nice smiling officer, Karl Hoecker. We were escorted away from the rail yard to a building that looked like a hospital ward.
Benjamin Steiner had survived 10 months in Auschwitz when it was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.
The Red Cross organised for Benjamin to be sent to a refugee camp in Denmark and later he found his parents who, miraculously, were still alive.
It took a year for then to reunite, during which time he didn’t know if he still had a living parent, and his parents didn’t know if their only child had survived."
The man who survived Dr Mengele - Newsroom (09/04/2017)
https://newsroom.co.nz/2017/04/09/surviving-dr-mengele/
One explanation why people did not find their relatives after the war:
"During the war, Ben’s father had been taken by the Germans to work as an engineer, assembling V1 and V2 rockets and ammunition. When D-Day came his father was caught by the British and taken to a prisoner of war camp in England. It took months for them to determine he was a genuine prisoner. Ben’s mother had been seconded to the Eastern Front where she worked in a camp as a doctor for German soldiers. It was the middle of 1946 before he was reunited with his parents."
Benjamin Steiner - Jewish Lives
https://www.jewishlives.nz/our-people/benjamin-steiner
Re: Holocaust survivors presumed dead, much later reunited with their loved ones
Well, I question making a list because I'm not sure what purposes it would serve. If the purpose is merely to show that the Holocaust's presumed dead includes people who are in fact alive, then any single example serves to make that point. And other points. It's not worth my spending hours digging through news stories without a more definite goal. As I recall, ConfusedJew had once argued against me that the number of such reunions are few in number, but this seems like a pretty niche claim that no one else would endorse, else I would say we should disprove it.borjastick wrote: ↑Thu Jan 08, 2026 1:05 pm Building a list would not only be useful but also highly enteraining especially on these dark and cold winter days.
So out of respect for my own time, for the time being, I will merely pop in to this thread to add more stories as I come across them. Though it would not be unwelcome if someone who's good with AI wanted to send an AI on a deep dive to compile a comprehensive list. That would seem like an appropriate use case for AI.
That video is really remarkable. I titled this thread intending it to be for family reunions, but cases like Kleinmann's are definitely relevant for all the same reasons.HeiligeSturmV2 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 09, 2026 5:18 pm Josef Kleinmann was presumed dead and didn't know his original name for a long time. [...]
If I went through this experience, it would really shake my belief in the overall event.borjastick wrote: ↑Sat Jan 10, 2026 7:57 am It's an old chestnut here as I have mentioned several times over the years but it fits this topic perfectly. That is the story of my ex mother in law's brother in law, a very lovely guy from Canada. A jew who was born early thirties if memory serves, in Munich. Before the war he and his parents and some other family members fled to the UK. After the war he and his parents went to Canada. Many years later they went back to Munich and into a holocaust museum or records office and found that they were all listed as killed in or victims of the holocaust. Of course this was not true and they told the official there their story.
Reiner was 9 years old, so yet another child survivor. What's odd about his story is that it's left unsaid how he was reunited with his parents. Newsroom wrote that he "found" them, as if a child could wander around Europe and find their lost parents by chance encounter, but surely that's not how they meant it. Instead it must have been the Tracing Bureau or another agency for displaced persons. Still notable that it took a year and a half to locate and reunite them.HeiligeSturmV2 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 10, 2026 10:09 am "It took a year for then to reunite, during which time he didn’t know if he still had a living parent, and his parents didn’t know if their only child had survived."
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I have more to say about the example of Eliahu Pietruszka.
The entries for Eliahu's and Volf's father, mother, and brother each declare that they were "murdered" in Warsaw. This is based solely on Volf's attestations, despite his being not present. We can presume that Volf made exactly the same claim for Eliahu as well, but we're unable to see that page of testimony because it was removed after somone informed Yad Vashem that Eliahu was alive. This leaves me with a number of questions:
- How many other Holocaust persons, dead or alive, are there for which their death is attested to only by someone's "page of testimony"?
- How many more instances might there be of persons who were never fixed in Yad Vashem's database because no one bothered to verify their death?
- How many more instances might there be of pages of testimony hidden by Yad Vashem?
- In how many cases of presumed death were the families merely separated by the Iron Curtain?