HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR SIBLINGS REUNITE 65 YEARS LATER

Holocaust survivor siblings reunite 65 years later
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - "This is my sister, my darling baby sister," said Simon Glasberg through tears as he hugged Hilda Shlick, 75, who he had not seen for 65 years since their family split up in a bid to flee the Nazi Holocaust.

The two were hosted on Monday by Israel's Yad Vashem, a national memorial in Jerusalem to the six million Jews slain in World War II, just days after Glasberg, 81, flew in from Canada to meet a sister he was sure had died during the war.

Shlick's Israeli grandchildren had tracked Glasberg down through the Internet, after coming across their grandmother's name in Yad Vashem's database of Holocaust victims in mid-June.

Besides finding each other, brother and sister were also surprised to learn as a result that two other brothers and a sister survived the Holocaust, more than each had thought, though one sister and a niece had apparently perished.

"My sister, I've waited 65 years for this kiss," Glasberg, a retired furrier said, meeting Shlick, a former hairdresser, at Yad Vashem's Hall of Names, whose walls are lined with black files listing the details of millions of Holocaust victims.

"I am very happy to see you," the delicate-framed Shlick said, her words translated from Russian by a grandson.

While it is rare for sibling survivors to take so long to find each other, many Holocaust survivors take years to locate relatives scattered around the globe since fleeing Nazi Europe.

Many couldn't even begin to search for relatives until the Soviet bloc began to crumble in 1989.