Lithuanian Holocaust survivor reunites with family who sheltered her

[Behind the Aegis]

NEW YORK - A woman who was among the few thousand Lithuanian Jews to have survived the World War II Nazi Holocaust was reunited for the first time after more than 60 years with a member of the Roman Catholic family who helped keep her alive.

Lea Ingel and Giedrute Ramanauskiene embraced and held each other during their emotional reunion at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Friday. They cried, acknowledging it might be the last time they would see each other, given their faltering health.

Ingel, now 84, said earlier that she had no idea what she would say to the 77-year-old Ramanauskiene, whom she has not seen since she was sheltered at the farm owned by Ramanauskiene's family for a year.

"I'm not so good with the talking, with the language, because I haven't been there for so long," she said, referring to Lithuania, which she left in 1945. She has not returned since.


more...

[Skittles]

1. I would be one of those folks

the ones who shelter the persecuted - that's me, that is my personality - yes indeed. I'd do it because in my mind, life would not be worth living knowing I did not try. Strange how I have thought this all my life, since reading Anne Frank's Diary as a child; only with bush in office did I come to consider I could one day BE one of the oppressed.

[Ecumenist]

2. Me too, Skittles...

I could not and cannot stand by and watch others hunted and murdered... I have to be able to look at myself in a mirror.