Red Cross Reunites Family After 50 Years

On November 10, 1997, after 50 years without contact, Eugenia Lauder was reunited at Mirabel airport with her brother, Leonid Ilyich Bekerman who lives in Siberia, Russia. She had been searching for Leonid, her only surviving relative from Russia for 35 years. 

Eugenia's search for her family was a long and difficult process. The Lauder family moved from Russia to China in 1925. Eugenia last saw her brother in 1947, before he left China and returned to Russia.

In 1971, she tried unsuccessfully to trace her brother through the Russian Red Cross. In June 1997, the Russian Red Cross contacted the Canadian Red Cross, because Eugenia's brother had instigated a search for his sister. He did not know in which country Eugenia lived and did not know her married name. A Red Cross worker had remembered the search from 1971 and recognized the first name "Eugenia".

About a month ago, Eugenia received the good news from the Canadian Red Cross and was able to write to and speak with her brother by phone. Leonid has nine children, 18 grandchildren and a few great grandchildren. Due to poor health, Eugenia will not make a trip to Russia, but her brother arrived visited her in Ottawa for a month.

Eugenia's case is but one of many reunions coordinated by the Canadian Red Cross and its 176 sister societies throughout the world. From April 1995 to April 1996, the Canadian Red Cross handled 4,090 international tracing and family reunion cases and coordinated the exchange of 1,766 family messages.