NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Shalom Koray never knew his real name or his birthday.
He was saved from the streets of a burning Warsaw neighborhood while he was a toddler during World War II, when the rest of his family was killed by Nazis in Poland. He grew up and lived in Israel with no idea of his past. He never knew a hug from someone who shared his blood or his DNA — until Wednesday, when Koray walked off an airplane in South Carolina and into the arms of Ann Meddin Hellman.
Her grandfather was the brother of Koray’s grandfather, making them second cousins. It’s a story that would have been impossible without modern DNA science and without a genetic test that Koray was given by a psychologist who studies children orphaned in the Holocaust . Hellman’s ancestors came to the U.
S. while Koray’s family stayed behind in Poland to run a family business. They would decades later be among the 6 million Jewish men, women and children systematically killed by the Germans in World War II.
“I feel like I’ve given somebody a new life. He’s become my child. I have to protect him and take care of him,” Hellman said, although she is a few years younger than Koray, who is about 83.
She beamed and gave Koray another hug as they waited for his luggage so they could start several days of parties with dozens of other relatives at Hellman’s Charleston home. Koray, who speaks mostly Hebrew, couldn’t stop smiling even if he didn’t quite understand the hubbub of camera c.
