SISTERS SEPARATED BY SHOAH REUNITE AFTER 61 YEARS

Sisters, Separated by the Holocaust, Reunite After 61 Years By STEVEN ERLANGER

RISHON LEZION, Israel, Feb. 4 - Klara Bleier and Hana Katz thought each other dead, swallowed 61 years ago, like the rest of their family, in the maw of Auschwitz. The sisters were separated in October 1944 in the Budapest ghetto when Hana left one day to find work and food. She never returned.

But both came through the chaos of the end of the war against the Nazis, the death marches and the refugee camps; both came to Israel in 1948 and raised families, 45 miles apart. Both thought they were sole survivors.

In the years since, Ms. Bleier's son-in-law became obsessed with the missing family history. Ms. Katz's granddaughter did, too. Six years apart, they filed survivor testimonies with Yad Vashem, Israel's center for Holocaust studies and commemoration. A new computerized archive matched the two testimonies, and on Thursday - a week after heads of state bowed their heads at Auschwitz on the 60th anniversary of its liberation - the two women were restored to each other, astounded, slightly frightened and unrecognizable, at least at first.

Ms. Bleier, 83, her hair wavy and red, said she still thought she was dreaming. When she first spoke to Ms. Katz, 79, "I suddenly felt faint and couldn't catch my breath," she said in her living room here. "I couldn't get up and stand." "But then I began to get used to the idea," she said, grabbing her sister's hand. "After 61 years, that such a thing could happen," she said. "I never would believe it."

Ms. Katz, who has a shock of straight white hair, is a practical woman who made her life in Israel on a moshav, or semi-cooperative farm, near Haifa. "The way you call Mom, Mom, I call God, God," she said. "But this just shows you that God doesn't close all the doors."