• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 09 / 05 / 2010

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Palm Beach Post Staff Writer. Updated: 10:02 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. Two branches of a long-separated family met Saturday. The women cried; the men cried; the children looked on in bewilderment.

For 10 years, both sides of the family had searched for each other, through immigration records, consulates and embassies.

No luck.Then Allan Silberstein's daughter, Danielle, said, "Let's try Facebook." A day later, they were in touch.

The story began in 1938, when David Silberstein married Margarete Gerhardt. They had a daughter, Sonja, born in Germany.

Fleeing the Nazis, the little family moved to Cuba, and the couple divorced in 1940. Silberstein immigrated to New York and married Ethel Rettig in 1942.

Fast forward to the 1990s. By then, David and Ethel Silberstein had died . But their sons Stanley, of New York, and Allan, who lives near Lake Worth, knew of the first marriage by way of a poignant letter sent to their father in 1960 by Sonja.

In perfect penmanship and imperfect English, Sonja wrote to her father of her young twin daughters and a son on the way.

"I need so much to show you my home and the best my girls. You remember when I was little? My girls are the same. Please Pap.

Come to me. I only want two days and gone be happy so happy."

Sadly, Allan and Stanley missed their Cuban sister by three years. Sonja died in Cuba in 2007 at age 69.

But their niece Sonia Canteli, 51, and their nephew Felix Arteaga, 38, came to Allan Silberstein's home Saturday, with families in tow.

From their separate searches, the two branches of the family brought out photos, marriage and divorce papers and visas to compare.

That started a whole new tide of tears.

At that point, Allan Silberstein's wife, Deborah, did what had to be done.

"Eat, please!" she said, directing all her in-laws to pizza, salads and bagels.

Sonia Canteli, who speaks little English, had no trouble communicating the overwhelming emotion of the afternoon. After embracing her two uncles, she looked deeply into their faces, gauging their resemblance to her mother.

"It's incredibly weird," said Arteaga, watching the action swirling around him in the Silbersteins' family room.

Arteaga, a software consultant, lives in Raleigh, N.C., but one of the many oddities of the saga is that Sonia Canteli has lived in Miami, an hour from the Silbersteins, the whole 10 years they were searching for each other.

"It's been an amazing journey," said Allan Silberstein, who sometimes was so moved by the recovery of his hidden family that he had to stop speaking and take a breath.

"It was almost too much to absorb," Silberstein said of his family. "We're still trying to see who's on first."

By Lona O'Connor

source: www.palmbeachpost.com/