Man, Mother Split in WWII Are Reunited
An Austrian man who became separated from his mother 55 years ago during World War II has found her in Ukraine after a two-year search.
“I had not counted on finding her alive,” Michael Brandstetter said after the reunion with his 82-year-old mother in Lower Austria on Wednesday.
As a prisoner of war in 1942, Brandstetter’s mother was transported from Ukraine to Austria where she was forced to work as a laborer in a Lower Austrian inn.
Brandstetter, 56, was separated from his mother and younger sister when he was a toddler.
“I was taken to hospital suffering from scarlet fever and diphtheria . . . and they then told her I was dead,” he said. His mother returned to Ukraine in 1945, while Brandstetter was adopted.
The Austrian Red Cross tracing service found his mother and sister in a Ukrainian village last year.
The reunited family will spend the next two weeks together before mother and sister return to Ukraine.
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