Cousins reunite 75 years after being separated during the Holocaust

Morris Sana and Simon Mairowitz both spent 75 years believing they would never see each other ever again.

Sana, 87, and Mairowitz, 85, are cousins, and were best friends while growing up in Romania. After the Nazis invaded, their families escaped separately, and Sana's daughter, Carmela Ofer, told ABC News her dad was always searching for information on his relatives, but "they were listed as perished in the Holocaust."

Ofer's cousin put an ad up on Facebook nearly a decade ago, saying she was looking for people with certain last names, and Mairowitz's granddaughter finally saw it this year and got in touch. In late September, Mairowitz, who lives in England, flew to Israel, where Sana resides, for a reunion decades in the making. "Seventy five years you waited," Mairowitz told his cousin. "I know, it's a long time. We've got each other now. And we can see each other." Ofer hopes that other families with similar backgrounds can one day have the same experience. "If it can happen to us, it might happen to someone else," she said. "This is a beautiful story." Catherine Garcia

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.