Holocaust survivor: 'For 82 years, I thought my best friend from Germany was dead'

• Date: 11 March 2021
• Published date: 11 March 2021
• Author: Cnaan Liphshiz

Betty Grebenschikoff from St. Petersburg, Florida, and Ana María Wahrenberg from Santiago, Chile, both 91, were reunited in November thanks to the work of a researcher at the USC Shoah Foundation — a nonprofit organization founded by Steven Spielberg, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. Both thought the other had perished.

The researcher, Ita Gordon, attended a webinar in which Wahrenberg recalled surviving the 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms in Germany and Austria. She searched for more information about Wahrenberg in the foundation's archives.

That search led Gordon to the life story of Grebenschikoff, who attended the same Jewish day school as Wahrenberg. Gordon watched a 1997 filmed testimony by Grebenschikoff in which Grebenschikoff mentioned her friend Wahrenberg, and added she often wonders whether Wahrenberg had survived the Holocaust.

The...