It had been 58 years since Jack Silverman last saw the teenage girl who helped save him from the Nazis – but when the pair met again last night at Kennedy Airport, it was as if it was only yesterday.
“Do you remember that night when your mother put us in a warm place right by the stove?” Silverman, an 83-year-old retired factory worker from Queens, asked the now-gray-haired woman in front of him.
“Yes, I do,” Jadviga Konochowicz, 77, replied softly.
The touching, brief exchange came only minutes into the teary reunion of the unlikely pair – a Jew from the Jody Ghetto in Poland and a devout Catholic from a destitute farming family nearby.
The pair at first appeared not to recognize each other. But after a few moments, they quickly rushed to hug and began chatting about everything from Konochowicz’s two sisters, who now live with her in Latvia, to whether the local church is still standing in their town, what is now known as Miori, Belarus.
“I’m very glad with all my heart to see him,” said Konochowicz, a widower whose married name is Seledevskaya, carrying the bright bouquet of flowers that Silverman had brought her.
Silverman, dressed in a suit, said he was up all night waiting nervously for the reunion.
During their meeting, he leaned over to his 13-year-old granddaughter, Rebecca, and said, “This is the woman who saved our lives.”
The teen rushed to hug the woman.
Konochowicz’s family had risked their lives by hiding Silverman and his family from the Nazis for more than a year starting at the end of 1942.
“Had the Nazis discovered us, we would have been shot,” said Silverman’s brother, Peter, 79, of Ontario, Canada.
Peter Silverman, who was at last night’s reunion, last saw Konochowicz 12 years ago, when he returned to his birthplace to research a book.
Peter said her parents once told his family, “We’re either going to survive together or die together.”