Brooklyn Bonjour Unravels Mystery of Long Lost Jewish Orphan

As he speaks to Holocaust survivor Cherie Rosenstein by phone, Rabbi Levy Goldberg, left, coordinates a reunion with Monique Valbot, right, a French citizen whose passport provided Rosenstein with a new life in the United States. (Photo: Saadya Notik)

A chance encounter outside the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn, N.Y., led to a tearful reunion between a Holocaust survivor living in Dayton, Ohio, and the French woman whose family provided her shelter and a new life in the United States.

According to Rabbi Saadya Notik, who has traveled the globe as a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical student, the embrace last week between Cherie Rosenstein and Monique Valbot couldn’t have happened without some Internet savvy and a bit of Divine Providence. Notik’s French-speaking study partner, Rabbi Levy Goldberg, happened to be at the intersection of Kingston Avenue and Eastern Parkway – home to Lubavitch World Headquarters on the one side and the popular museum on the other – when he overheard Valbot and a friend conversing in French.

Goldberg walked over to say “Bonjour!”

Valbot revealed in the ensuing conversation that her family had adopted a Jewish orphan after World War II. In 1947, after finding an American Jewish family to take the five-year-old orphan in, Valbot’s mother accompanied the girl, whom they called Cherie, to the United States, bleaching the girl’s hair to match Valbot’s passport. But soon after, the families lost touch.

Two years ago, Valbot Googled Rosenstein’s name and came across an article Rosenstein had written about her wartime experiences in the Dayton Jewish Observer. Valbot, however, mistakenly told Goldberg that she lived in Daytona, Fla., and asked him for help in finding her long lost friend.

Article continued at Chabad.org – Goldberg related the story to Notik…