Helen has just met Elhanan Rubin for the first time.

He is the little brother of Reva, the friend she lost 75 years ago at Stutohof concentration camp.

Elhanan was just six when his mother and sister left him with a Polish family before being deported to the camp.

In 1945 the war is over and all the people have to come back.

So nobody come to me.

Yeah.

Nobody come to claim you.

I worried about that.

I always thought my goodness I hope the father survived or relatives for for my family.

Nobody survived.

When when your sister died after after after the liberation.

Yes.

The very And my mother Your mother died after her.

After her.

Yes.

Your sister died before your mother.

Yes.

Helen tells Elhanan about the lethal injections given by the Nazis.

I got a needle here.

and the lack of medical attention for weeks after they were liberated by the Russians.

No doctor or something that can help them? Nobody.

You You were near a river when she died.

Yes.

Yes, I was.

And I watched her.

There was a You know, this is the painful thing.

This is the painful.

And I understand how they came to pick up the body of Reva.

She she was put into the horse and buggy.

My mind is I’m sorry.

No, they moved her away to a cemetery somewhere.

And where she is buried, I don’t know.

I’m sorry.

[Music] Helen’s grandson, Andrew, has driven to a small town 2 hours south of Strutof.

He is looking for the place where Russian soldiers housed Helen and Reva after their liberation.

My grandmother described it as a school building.

The archivist at Stutoff told me about this town and this building fits the description of the school that my grandmother has told me about.

So this really could be it.

This could be the school that my grandmother and Reva were laying down next to each other for maybe a month talking to each other about their little brothers and their stories and ultimately where Reva passed away right next to my grandmother.

And I know that my grandmother has mentioned that there’s a horse and buggy that picks up Reva’s dead body and brings her to a cemetery.

And just across the street there is a cemetery.

And it’s very possible that this could be the place where Reva was brought to.

I don’t think that they would have given a marker to a Jewish girl in 1945 in a cemetery like this.

But I mean, if this is her resting place, I think my grandmother will take comfort in knowing that I’ve come here and I’m paying respect for her on her behalf.

[Music] [Music] The baby is important because the baby carries a guilt in me.

Carries a terrible guilt that Yanuk died because of me pulling him into that water and for nothing.

And if this baby is alive, it would just clear my conscience that he didn’t die for nothing.

He died for something.

He’s a hero.

So this is the place that you mentioned in your testimony.

Where is Buch? BH is Maxwell is meeting with Holocaust investigator Natasha Nielska.

She has spent weeks scouring maps, uncovering documents, and chasing testimonies in search of the baby that Maxwell and Yannik saved in 1943.

That was a quite a challenging uh task because we didn’t know at all the identity of people who were in hiding.

We didn’t know the name of the baby.

We didn’t even know whether there is a chance that this girl survived the war.

We had only question marks.

I tried to reconstruct what was going on in the area and try to identify the group.

I found two girls that survived the war.

So, they were hiding also somewhere on a river bank.

One of them wrote a book with her own memories uh because she was six at the time.

She recalled the description of the death of her mother.

She managed to escape and cross the river.

Yet her mother stayed in the river with her sister.

You mean you mean it’s a possibility? I think there is a possibility.

There are some details that are really similar in your story and really match your description that sister’s testimony.

I’m telling you, I have a feeling.

I have a feeling she’s the girl.

She’s the girl.

I feel she is the girl for sure.

She was in the same time in the same forest and her story is very similar to the story that you have.

Would you possibly like to meet her? I don’t know if I can.

She has a memory loss and she it’s impossible to communicate with her.

But her family knows they heard that you’re arriving to Israel.

It is the best news in the world that you you know what it means to me that the baby is alive.

It means everything to me.

It means it means freedom.

It means I’m not guilty.

I did save a life.

I just imagine seeing her.

Will I break down and walk away or will I break down and stay there? My little brother, his name was Hik and he was such a lovely, beautiful young boy.

And I loved him with all my heart and soul.

My brother was six when he was taken to [Music] Sovior.

Deep in the forest of Poland on the border of modern Bellarus, Siibore was one of the most remote and secretive of all Holocaust killing sites.

It was raised to the ground by the Nazis in late 1943 to destroy any evidence, but there are remnants of the horrific war crimes committed here.

[Music] A rare photograph exists of Soior Boore when it was operational, dating from 1942.

It shows the station where Rose’s mother and younger brother disembarked from the box car.

Anything that was of value, he told them to put it away.

So I guess they can ticket that that the goods that they put away.

They’re giving them they’re saying you’re going to get back.

Yeah, you’re going to get it back.

The Nazis had no intention of giving any of it back.

Instead, jewelry was melted down and clothing redistributed to Germans.

The Holocaust was entirely self- financed.

So here they told them to undress and they told them to walk there.

77 years after her mother and younger brother walked this path, Rose, who is in search of what happened to them, must now do the same.

I took it upon myself to tell River’s story because it could have been me in reverse.

This is River.

This is River.

Helen has finally met the little boy she’s wondered about her entire life.

My father, the brother of her friend who died beside her after liberation from a concentration camp.

Yeah.

Rivera told me that she has a little brother that was given away to the Christians and and it made a big impression on me.

She told me that because I had a young brother that was taken away from the the kinder.

Your brother? My brother? Yes.

I had a little brother was taken away in the in the kinder.

My grandmother and Reeba probably thought that their brothers not have survived the Holocaust.

I think it’ll be closure for my grandmother to know that Reva’s little brother survived.

That’s going to make her incredibly grateful to have known that this boy existed because perhaps she can see her own brother in him.

[Music] Helen and Reva were the same age.

So were their little brothers.

These two kids from Cavno had never met before today, but their stories are forever intertwined.

[Music] the the Hebrew alpha ABC.

[Music] What it is to meet you? How can I describe it? I couldn’t picture it in my wildest dreams.

I can tell you that was what I feel for you.

I feel for you a piece from my way sister like I see my sister and I very happy that I met [Music] you.

Well, one thing I’m sure, the Jew of yesterday does not exist today.

Nobody is going to walk and let them kill us like that.

Never again.

This much I know.

77 years ago, Rose’s mother and younger brother, Henuk, walked along a narrow path through the woods at Soibore.

[Music] A road to heaven.

Who called it that? Germans.

The Germans.

The Germans crew called this road road to heaven.

Nothing now remains of the path walked by Rose’s mother.

It was designed deliberately to curve through the camp so she couldn’t have seen where it was leading.

It was made of gravel lined on either side with barbed wire and was camouflaged with pine branches hiding it from view.

At the end of this path were four gas chambers.

That’s a sort of a hard thing for me to think about and imagine, but I can just see her holding the child in her arms and thinking that she cheated them of one me.

You have to understand if Hitler had his way, I would have died right here.

And if my mother wasn’t the woman that she was with the wisdom and knowledge and love, if she wouldn’t have pushed me off the road, I would have been buried with everybody here and you would have never existed.

Oh my god.

I’m so glad that I brought you here just that my mother can know.

I don’t know how that we are alive and I have grandchildren and great grandchildren and that we live through all of that.

Oh my god.

If there is a god, maybe she’ll know.

Nine mass graves were discovered at Soibbor, which now are covered by a field of memorial stones.

My dear mom, dear Hik, a beautiful little boy that I love so much.

Am I the soul alive? Amen.

Rose has one last task to perform on her journey to say kadesh.

The Hebrew prayer of [Music] mourning.

Amen.

Can we say their names for me? Dora Hak and Easy Handlesman who died here.

laser handles who died in my don and all my other relatives including my grandmother TMA and all my uncles and aunts and all my little cousins that I loved so much.

They’re all gone.

Let’s hope the world has learned its lessons that it should never ever happen [Music] again.

It entered my mind like in a far dream.

Is it possible really that one day I’m going to meet her face to face the little baby? Maxwell is heading to Hifa in Israel to meet survivor Tova Barkai.

He hasn’t seen her in 76 years.

She was a tiny little girl when he and his friend Yannik saved her from her dead mother’s arms.

That’s good because Tova’s family doesn’t know the truth about how she survived the massacre by the river.

Hello.

Hello.

May I introduce to you Maxwell? This is this is the descendants.

Yeah, that’s nice to see.

A descendant of somebody that I saved.

I was always wondering what happened to your mother.

Yeah.

all all my life.

She wasn’t a good baby.

Your mother, she cried all the times.

She’s a survivor.

[Music] You recognize me? in Edish.

I saved you.

It was lucky.

It was very lucky.

Oh, she knows Edish, but uh but she can’t speak.

She can’t find the words.

Do you remember the river? How freezing the water was? How the two children, the two boys came and saved you? how they came went into the water and took you out from the arms of your mother.

You owe him your life.

in a clin baby.

She knows me.

She knows me.

[Music] She’s touching my hand.

She’s She’s Look, she said that it will be good.

Everything will be good.

[Music] say no more.

It’s okay.

She said it’s okay.

I feel better and I don’t feel as guilty.

It’s true.

Yanek died.

He’s a hero.

He saved you and you have children, a family.

They will have children and childrens and children.

A continuation of life forever.

[Music] Young children.

This is nice.

It’s better to hug them.

Sure.

Look at that.

We’ll be seeing you.

You want to give me a hug? Somehow we’ll be seeing you.

I’m an old man who wants to hug an old man.

Someone that was owes his life to to you.

Thank you very [Music] much.

Heat.

Heat.

[Music] [Laughter] [Music] Hey, Bubba.

I can’t believe that you’re using a cell phone.

How are you, sweetheart? I’m good.

How are you? I can barely make up what you’re saying.

That’s okay.

Just hold the phone like that.

And this way you can see that your face isn’t cut off.

Right.

Right.

My face is right there.

No, but your mouth is cut off anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, my chin is Yeah, my chin.

No, Bubba.

All you have to do is fix how your There we go.

[Music]

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