[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0G0Eub6YmY]

Two twin brothers have finally been reunited after 69 years apart.

George Skrzynecky and Lucian Poznanski were born in Kassel, Germany in 1946. Their mother Elizabeth, a Polish Catholic who was sent to a forced labor camp during World War Two, gave birth to her two sons after she was liberated but was deemed too ill to care from them. George and Lucian were then sent to Poland and adopted by separate families.

Neither of the boys was told of their exact origins, but both discovered the truth eventually. Lucian realised that he was adopted after being drafted into the army, whereas George read the reality in documents he found at the age of seventeen. Following his discovery, and the realization that his parents had kept his brother a secret, George moved to California to begin a new life. “All my life I wanted to know my family,” George told reporter Dan Johnson of the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show, who was there to film the reunion.

Throughout the 1960s George tried to find his brother, and even asked the Red Cross for their help. Now, through the Red Cross Restoring Family Links Programme, the two brothers have finally been united.

The Red Cross also uncovered documents that stated the boys’ mother had wanted her sons to return to Germany with her but discovered they were already adopted and she couldn’t get them back. The documents read: ‘By error the children were repatriated to Poland without their mother being notified’. She later died in 1952. It was also discovered that the twins’ father was a US solider who returned home before their birth.

‘I always had the feeling that I would come to America and now I’ve found out why,’ George said. Lucian was sad for his mother, saying: ‘when I finally learned the whole truth I cried for my mother. She lost two sons.’

‘The story is closed,’ George continued. ‘The best part of everything is that we finally found each other after so many years of separation. What happened in the past, you cannot change it.

‘Wars are terrible things. There are wars around the world right now, people are dying, people are being misplaced – it’s really very sad.

‘But we have a time to celebrate now and look to the future. Brothers forever.’