Anneke Thompson's parents perished in a Nazi concentration camp decades ago, when she was just a baby.
This past week in Dartmouth, N.S., she reunited with the woman who saved her from the same fate.
"It's strange, because I only remember her as a baby -- and now all at once there's an adult," said Cora Greenaway, who was a courier for the Dutch underground when she first laid eyes on Anneke in Holland during the Second World War.
"I thought she'd be much taller ... it's funny what you have in your mind," Greenaway said.
Anneke's Jewish parents, the Kuunkas, gave the baby to Greenaway when they were forced to go into hiding to escape persecution.
"They wouldn't allow a baby," Greenaway said. "Babies start to cry when they shouldn't."
So the couple called on Greenaway, a young student at the time, to come and get the little girl from their apartment.
The Kuunkas knew they had to let their child go to give her a chance of surviving -- but Greenaway said she still had to pry the baby from their hands as precious seconds ticked by.
"Finally, I said, I can't wait any longer -- I have to get to the Hague (in the Netherlands)," Greenaway said. "I have to deliver this child, and curfew is at eight o'clock."
Greenaway and Anneke left the apartment and embarked on a dangerous journey by train, tram and foot, to a rendezvous point, where the child was to be handed over to a contact.
If Nazi officers discovered Anneke for what she was, Greenaway said she would have been killed immediately.
But that wasn't the only risk -- if the duo was found out en route, the young woman would have met a similar fate, because helping Jews was punishable by death.
Although the stakes were high for them both, Greenaway told CTV's Canada AM Friday her mind was only on Anneke.
"(My) priority was to save a baby -- you just think 'I've got to do this...to the best of my ability. I must look quite normal and not cry' -- you just walk like it's your baby," Greenaway said.
Finally, the two were under the light of the third lamppost on an abandoned roadway.
"Nobody on the street -- not a soul," Greenaway said, recalling how she found the spot. "Third lamppost -- 1-2-3 -- and sure enough there was a voice behind me, 'You're late.'"
Greenaway handed the baby over, and it was the last she saw of the child -- until a friend dug into the past for her and found Anneke in the United States last spring.
Greenaway called Anneke, who now goes by the last name Thompson, and the two arranged to meet.
Thompson was excited to hear from her long-lost saviour, but said time hasn't erased the pain of losing her parents.
"I don't think a day has gone by in my entire life, including as a small child, when I haven't thought of people going to the gas chamber," Thompson said.
After Greenaway delivered the baby, Anneke lived with a family, posing as the middle child. Her parents were captured and taken to the infamous concentration camp Auschwitz.
When the war ended, she was sent to live with an aunt in New York after discovering her parents had died in the Nazi camp, where she tried to move on, and focused on her studies.
"I was very lucky -- I went to the nicest high school in the world ... in New York City," Thompson said.
Now married and a grandmother of seven, Thompson sat with Greenaway, sharing pictures and memories -- and wondering why the woman risked her life to give a stranger's baby a chance.
"Watching (my grandchildren) develop, I wonder about myself, which I rarely did -- thinking I was once that age," Thompson said.
"I think the most difficult thing is the feeling that I wasn't the right child to pick. That all these people went to such risks -- and it's just me."
When the two women met, Greenaway said she wasn't sure what to do -- because the first time, she just took Anneke into her arms without thinking twice.
"That's the baby I held in my arms 65 years ago," Greenaway said. "You don't know what to say. You'd like to get her in your arms, but, well, would she like that?"
Although Thompson said she the reunion was difficult and joyous at the same time, there's one emotion she was very sure of -- gratitude.
"After we got to know each other a little bit, I think I've gotten better at expressing ... how much I appreciate what she did for me and how much I admire the risks she's taken," Thompson told Canada AM.
"Thank you, thank you to Cora."
With a report from CTV Atlantic's Rick Grant
