More than 70 years had passed since Ruth Brandspiegel last saw her friend Israel “Sasha” Eisenberg at an Austrian displaced persons camp. Then she heard a familiar name being called out in a Yom Kippur service held this year on Zoom.

Holocaust survivors Ruth Brandspiegel and Sasha Eisenberg call their reunion a miracle that began on the holiest day in Judaism. Decades ago, their families, who came from the same city in Poland, escaped the Nazis, crossed into the Soviet Union, and were sent to different labor camps in Siberia. They later met at a displaced persons camp in Austria, where they became close friends. They last saw each other there, in 1949.

Brandspiegel, now a Philadelphia resident, heard a familiar name being called out in a Yom Kippur service on Zoom at her son’s synagogue in East Brunswick, NJ. Could it be the same Sasha Eisenberg? She called her son Larry Brandspiegel, a cantor at the East Brunswick Jewish Center, and asked him to help her check.

After some back-and-forth on the phone with the Eisenberg family, Larry called his mother with the news: it was indeed her beloved childhood friend. His wife had called out his name at an appropriate time during the service in honor of their 53 years of marriage.

Larry Brandspiegel hosted a socially-distanced gathering at his home in East Brunswick under a Sukkah, where both families cried joyful tears, according to Religion News Service.

[Photo provided by Ruth Brandspiegel. Sasha is on the left, and her son Larry on the right.]