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For Holocaust survivor Leon Gersten, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving had a special meaning this year.
He was reunited on Wednesday at JFK airport in New York with Czeslaw Polziec, the Polish man whose family kept him hidden from Nazis during World War II.
Polziec's parents hid Gersten and members of his family for two years in the attic of a old house in Zawadka, Poland until the Soviets liberated the area in July of 1944.
Stanislaw and Maria Polziec risked a lot by hiding the family.
They had five kids of their own, and they endured raids and beatings by the Nazis.
Decades later, the two men could hardly let go of each other.
The reunion was made extra special, Gersten said, because it happened on the first day of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights.
Gersten said, "You know, Hanukkah which also represents the traditional Jewish victory over the Romans while the Romans were trying to repress us, and I think Thanksgiving day is also, it represents symbolic feeling of having freedom, justice, fairness and being able to be what you want to be."
Young Gersten would go on to have 34 grand-children.
