More than 80 years ago, two young women in Germany were separated by the Holocaust. Friends said goodbye and fled the Nazis. Betty Grebenschikoff and her family moved to Shanghai, China and then the United States. Her friend Annemarie Wahrenberg moved to Chile. The two friends never saw each other again, until a recent and emotional meeting.
Annemarie’s name was changed to Ana Maria after her family arrived in South America, and it was with this name that she told her story during a webinar on The Latin American Network for the Teaching of the Shoah. according to the USC Shoah Foundation.
One person at the webinar couldn’t help but take notes. It was Ita Gordon, who has worked at the USC Shoah Foundation for almost 25 years. The foundation collects testimonies from survivors of the genocide, with the mission of helping to “develop empathy, understanding and respect.”
Gordon is used to cataloging and indexing testimonies, but for some reason he couldn’t help but think of Wahrenberg’s story.
He searched the Foundations’ Visual History Archive to mention any previous references to Wahrenberg and found it in another person’s testimony.
Holocaust survivor Betty Grebenschikoff mentioned a friend, Annemarie Wahrenberg, whom she had not seen since she was a child.
“I had a girlfriend in particular whose name I always mention, can I mention her here?” Betty said in her testimony. “Her name was Annemarie Wahrenberg and I never knew what happened to her and I always wonder if maybe she’s somewhere and can hear it.”
“She was my girlfriend when I was very young and we went to school together, we played together and all that, and when we left for China in 1939 we said goodbye to each other and it was very difficult then because we were best friends.” , continued Grebenschikoff. “And we were going to write to each other, but we never did and I never heard from her again and I don’t know what ever happened to her … She probably died in the war, but I’m not sure.”
Gorgon wasn’t entirely sure if Grebenschikoff was talking about Wahrenberg himself. Thus, he contacted the Jewish Interactive Museum of Chile, which organized the event where he heard Wahrenberg speak.
Both women are now 91 years old had changed their name, but also shared many other similarities. They have spoken publicly about their experiences of the Holocaust, visited classrooms, and written books. They both had unique stories about how their nuclear families remained intact throughout the war.
Another resemblance: none of the women knew the other had survived.
Once Gordon confirmed the women’s identity, he realized that something fantastic could happen. They could meet.
“I was very excited,” Gordon told the USC Shoah Foundation. “I mean, I didn’t cry or anything, [but] what I did was be very quiet and say to myself, “Maybe you should act, but right now, feel it.” Because there would be the possibility that two dear friends would be together [again]. “
Rachael Cerrotti / USC Shoah Foundation
Last November, the foundation coordinated a meeting. The two women, along with some members of their family, sat down in front of their computers and joined in a virtual meeting. First, only the two had the cameras turned on, so old friends could have a proper meeting between them.
Grebenschikoff said he had looked for his friend before. “I could never find her,” he said. “I looked it up at the Holocaust Museum in Washington and I looked it up in the database.”
“And I mention his name every time I give a talk, because I talk about the Holocaust. And nothing has ever happened, you know? And I can’t believe he’s there. It’s so exciting,” he continued.
Friends talked for two hours, introduced their relatives and raised glasses of champagne: “L’chaim,” a toast to life, the foundation said.
“It was so natural for them,” Grebenschikoff’s grandson Lucas Kirschman told the foundation. “They recovered and were talking about random things like it wasn’t a big deal … And it’s almost as if language could have been a barrier, but it wasn’t at all. I had never heard my grandmother speak German . “
“Seeing Ana Maria and Betty on the so-called Zoom, along with their prosperous, healthy and happy families, this was the ultimate triumph over hatred,” said another family member.