In 1938 two scared and lonely young girls were at a pivotal point in their lives. Edith Westerfield, age 12, and Gerda Katz, age 10, met one another on a boat – a big boat – that took them to a strange place called the United States. They were both traveling alone and it was hardly a holiday.

Hitler’s drums were banging loudly in Germany and the girls’ families, through the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society back then, arranged for them to flee the anti-Semitic rage of the day. Unbeknownst to the two little girls, they were part of the highly-secretive One Thousand Children effort that snuck away Jewish children from the Nazis. It was done stealthily; ten children at a time on cruise ships.

So the two girls befriended each other on the big boat as it sailed the Atlantic and both recall visiting New York City. They delighted in the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, watching the original “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” but then the two, suddenly fast friends, were tearfully separated when Edith was sent to an aunt and uncle in Chicago while Gerda was entrusted to total strangers in far-away Seattle.

Several weeks ago Edith’s daughter, Fern Chapman, told her mother’s story during a talk on the Holocaust at Madison Junior High School in Naperville, Ill. She told how the girls had never seen one another again but how her mother would never forget what her young friend had meant to her, especially at such a horrifying time.

Edith even still had a treasured old photograph, inscribed on the back, “21 Marz 1938. Zur Erinnerung Deine Freudin, Gertie Katz,” (March 21, 1938. For remembrance. Your friend, Gertie Katz.)

Her daughter had no idea the deep effect of her talk would have on the eighth-graders. You see, she explained that Edith’s mother and father had both been killed in a concentration camp and the child known only as Gerda Katz was the last German that Edith had seen when the pair was separated in New York 73 years ago.

Fern not only underestimated the emotional impact her story would care but she didn’t fully grip what today’s eighth-graders can do with new-fangled gimmicks like Facebook, Google, Yahoo and the myriad of search engines inquisitive children know all about.

Bingo! The “Madison Jr. High Detective Agency” sprang into action. Oh, Fern had tried, going to Google and Ancestry.com but, frankly, she was scared what she might find and didn’t want to tell her mother if the search was futile … or unearthed bad news.

The Madison Jr. High kids weren’t bothered by such and, splitting up into groups, they began an exhaustive search for a 10-year old girl named Gerda Katz. One of the teams found a tiny community newspaper story on a lady known as Gerda Frumpkin that was written when and her husband celebrated some anniversary.

The game was on; it was the same Gerda. Susan Rice, the teacher, was ecstatic. “I love how the kids didn’t believe they couldn’t find her. They just didn’t think that was possible.”

In a story that appeared in the Chicago Tribune, there was very soon an email from Seattle to Edith Westerfield Schumer. “I have thought of you often and am so thankful that you found me,” Gerda Frumkin wrote. “Can’t wait until we speak together.” It was signed “With love, Gertie.”

Next month Fern will take her 86-year-old mother to Seattle to see Gerda, age 84, but the eighth graders have already heard her delight in person. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” She bubbled at a recent reception at the school. “This is a dream come true.”

“I think you did a wonderful thing for your class,” she said with teary eyes. “I think this experience will be with you all your life, and you’ll talk about it. You’ll say, ‘You know what we did in junior high school? We found a friend for this lady who hadn’t heard from her in 73 years!’”

Mark this down – It may be the greatest class project of the year.

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