The Kleinbergs go Live! with Regis and Kelly
Nancy and Howard Kleinberg were featured on Live! with Regis and Kelly during their Valentines week segment, "World's Greatest Love Story." Watch the video below to hear their incredible love story, and click here to read their story in the Book of Life.
Toronto Holocaust survivors share their love story on Live with Regis and Kelly
By: NEWS STAFF
Regis and Kelly are looking for the world’s greatest love story and may have found it in a couple of Holocaust survivors from Toronto.
Howard and Nancy Kleinberg appeared on Live with Regis and Kelly Tuesday morning to share their love story with the world. The talk show is hosting a Valentine’s contest where viewers will vote for the World’s Greatest Love Story.
Their story begins during the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945, where both were imprisoned.
“We went into the men’s side, all you saw were corpses,” said Nancy in a pre-taped interview before the show.
Then Nancy, 16 at the time, found Howard, 18, buried under a pile of corpses, barely alive.
“I heard this young girl say, ‘You know he’s still alive, we’ll try and save him,’ “, Howard said.
Another woman told Nancy to leave him as he was almost dead, but she refused. “I said, ‘He’s not dead, if we let him lie here he’ll die for sure.’ “
Howard was carried to an abandoned building where over the next two weeks Nancy helped nurse him back to health.
Once day Howard woke up and didn’t see Nancy. Thinking he was left alone, he crawled to the closest road and waited for help. Luckily he was found by British soldiers and spent the next six month recuperating in a military hospital.
When Nancy came back she was surprise to see Howard gone. “We came back, we didn’t know what happened to him,” she said. “He didn’t let us know anything.”
For most, the story would have ended there, but Howard and Nancy’s story was destined to continue, and it did in Toronto.
Two years after recovering at the hospital, Howard immigrated to Toronto where he heard through another Holocaust survivor that Nancy had also immigrated there.
Knowing that it was meant to be, Howard decided to pay her a visit. With flowers in hand he went to where she lived and rang the bell.
“I open the door and I almost fainted,” said Nancy.
“When she opened the door, I was almost speechless,” said Howard. He found his voice and asked, “Remember me?”
And like all good love stories, the romance is still there, 61 years later. The Kleinbergs have four children and eleven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Live with Regis and Kelly will feature five couple this week. Based on viewers votes, the winning couple will receive a trip to Bora Bora. But as cheesy as it sounds, all these couples have already won. They found partners who they love more today than ever.