NORTH CHARLESTON, SC — Shalom Koray never knew his real name or date of birth. He was rescued from the streets of a burning Warsaw neighborhood when he was a toddler during World War II, when the rest of his family murdered 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 DNA — until Wednesday, when Koray stepped off a plane in South Carolina and fell into the arms of Ann Meddin Hellman. Her grandfather was the brother of Koray’s grandfather, making them cousins.
It’s a story that would have been impossible without the modern age. DNA science and without a genetic test that Koray received from a psychologist who studies orphans in the holocaust.
Hellman’s ancestors came to the United States, while Koray’s family remained in Poland to run a family business. They would, decades later, be among the 6 million Jewish men, women and children systematically murdered by the Germans in World War II.
“I feel like I’ve given someone a new life. He’s become my child. I have to protect him and take care of him,” Hellman said, though 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 to arrive so they could begin a few days of partying with dozens of other family members at Hellman’s Charleston home.
Koray, who speaks primarily Hebrew, couldn’t stop smiling, even though he couldn’t quite understand the bustle of camera crews and Southern hospitality around him. He and Hellman have spoken frequently since the DNA breakthrough, first in letters and later via video calls several times a week.
As Hellman waited at the end of the jetway, she spoke nervously to her siblings. “I can’t wait to put my arms around him,” she said.
What is known of Koray’s story began with him alone. He was on the streets of a burning Jewish ghetto in Warsaw in 1943 when a policeman picked him up and took him to a convent. Nuns baptized him and began raising him as a non-Jew with several other orphans.
Lena Küchler-Silberman, a jewish woman who was part of the resistance against the Nazis, heard about the children. She saved about 100 Jewish children, sometimes taking them in when she found them abandoned or alone, sometimes negotiating or paying to get them out of non-Jewish orphanages.
Koray was taken to a Jewish boarding school in Poland, then to France, and finally to Israel in 1949. He worked on trucks for 35 years. Koray had three children and eight grandchildren. And he forsook the idea that he would never know his real date of birth, the name he was given at birth, how his mother and father met, or what his grandfathers did for a living.
“You can’t start looking for something you don’t know anything about,” Koray told the website in Hebrew for MyHeritagethe company that was able to find his relatives thanks to DNA testing.
MyHeritage offered DNA testing to Koray and other Holocaust orphans in the summer of 2023. A few months later, Hellman got a ping from a DNA sample she had provided during her extensive family tree research. It was an unknown second cousin.
The name and other information were unknown. On a hunch, she asked another cousin to test her DNA. It also matched. Hellman contacted MyHeritage and asked for a photo and other information. She remembers gasping when she saw Koray. He looked just like her brother.
“The photo gave it away,” Hellman said.
The connection immediately clicked. Kellman knew that a branch of her family connected to her great-uncle had been murdered in the Holocaust. Now she knew that there a survivor.
Hellman wasn’t looking for anyone in particular when she took her DNA test, but sometimes beautiful surprises happen, said Daniel Horowitz, an expert genealogist at MyHeritage.
“All that family that he had always prayed for just came to him,” Horowitz said.
Some mysteries remain, thanks to the Nazis’ destruction of people and the many accounts of their existence. Hellman knows the name of Koray’s aunt. “But I haven’t been able to find the names of his parents. That’s what bothers me the most,” she said.
Hellman has learned a lot about her cousin. He is shy and quiet. When Koray stepped off the plane Wednesday with his traveling companion and translator, Arie Bauer, he jokingly asked if he could stand behind Bauer. His friend told him to hug his family.
“It’s slowly starting to sink in. He’s slowly getting used to a whole new family that he didn’t know about,” Bauer said.
It wasn’t just Hellman at the airport. More than a dozen other family members — Hellman’s brother and sister, her husband and sons, a niece, sister-in-law, and nephews and nieces — were there to celebrate. Dozens more gathered at Hellman’s home for more parties and gatherings.
Koray smiled as each of his family members hugged him. In quieter moments, when they talked to each other, he watched them.
“He’ll see himself in it in a way he’s never seen himself before,” Hellman said. “And we can give a family to someone who never thought one existed.”
