Just Around the Corner

In the 20 months since she had come to the U.S., timid, troubled Ava Miller had tried almost every way she knew to find her one remaining relative, her brother-in-law's sister, who had been in New York City for 14 years. Ava knew that Anna Sobel had married an American doctor, but she did not know his name. Last week, 28-year-old Ava, a refugee from the Nazi invaders of Poland, visited the vast, murmurous city room of the New York Times, looking for help. It was her last hope.

Ava's story had a terrible and familiar ring. Her sister and her own husband were killed by the Nazis; her brother-in-law disappeared into the Russian army. Ava was sent to the concentration camp at Lemberg, put to sorting the clothing of surplus human beings eliminated by the Germans. Out of one heap came her mother's garments and Ava knew that she was dead. One morning Ava put on a dead man's suit, walked out of the camp with a construction gang and escaped.

Blonde, blue-eyed Ava was Jewish but she passed herself off as a Catholic. She was sent by the Germans to work in a Viennese shirt factory, where she precariously waited out the war. In July 1947, she was brought to the U.S. by the United Service for New Americans. She found work in a bank, lived in a lonely furnished room in Brooklyn, knocked on many doors in search of Anna Sobel.

Twenty-four hours after Ava Miller's story appeared in the Times, a Bellevue Hospital colleague handed the clipping to Dr. Jacob Remler, a prison-ward psychiatrist. If it was about a patient, said Dr. Remler, he didn't want to bother; he was too busy. No, no, said the other doctor, this might be a relative of Dr. Remler's wife. It was. While studying in Vienna in 1934, Dr. Remler had married another medical student--Anna Sobel.

A few hours later in United Service's offices on Lower Broadway, the Remlers and Ava Miller met at last. After the first flush of excitement, they sat down to exchange notes on the search. Then they found that until a month ago, Ava had lived less than 300 feet away from Anna Sobel Remler's Brooklyn home.

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