Jakub Pomeranz had not looked back on his past after the day in 1944 day when German soldiers dragged his father away to Auschwitz, leaving the boy wandering the streets of the Polish town of Radom.

Moving from one orphanage to another across Europe, Jakub, then 8, lost touch with his known surviving relatives – two cousins and an aunt. His mother and sister had disappeared in 1939, and his three brothers were also were missing.

After the war, a prominent New York Jewish couple brought Jakub to the United States, adopted him and gave him their name – Gartenberg. If in the following six decades Jack Gartenberg wondered about his original family, he put it out of his mind.

Then on Dec. 31, his wife, Pinky, showed him an article in The Journal News about a Monsey couple who were making aliyah. Jehoshua Pomeranz, a native of Radom, and his wife, Miriam, were moving to Jerusalem to fulfill a longtime dream to live in Israel.

“It hit me,” said Jack Gartenberg, now 72. “I said, ‘How can there be two Pomeranzes from Radom and not be related?'”

The Gartenbergs had lived within two miles of the Pomeranzes in Monsey for 34 years. Their children had gone to the same school. The two women were on the same bowling league and had worked together briefly for the county Department of Social Services. The two men even had a nodding acquaintance with each other.

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