Across the Street in Vienna—Across the Town in Connecticut

I’ve always believed that things happen for a reason—even if we don’t always see it right away. Some connections are too powerful, too precise, to be chalked up to coincidence.

In January, a man walked into the Woodbury Public Library and stopped at the small display about my family’s Holocaust-era history.

He paused. Looked at every artifact. Read every word.

My family had been in the hat business in prewar Vienna.

So had his.

He asked the librarian if she could put him in touch with me. He also sent a message through my genealogy website. I responded to both. But life—his and mine—got in the way, as it so often does. A half year passed.

And then, yesterday afternoon, we finally met.

We sat together for two hours, sharing names, photos, addresses, and memories. His family’s hat business was more prominent and well-known. Mine, more modest. Not only that—his family owned a home just down the street from my grandfather’s hat shop in Vienna. They worked on the same street, likely served the same customers, and experienced the same heartbreak.

But there’s no question in my mind that our families knew each other.

Now, two generations later, he and I live just a few streets away from each other in a small town in Connecticut—4,000 miles from where our families began.

What are the odds?

I keep turning that question over in my mind. And while I’m not someone who usually talks about fate or the universe or divine timing… moments like this make me wonder. Maybe there is something bigger than us, nudging us toward people we’re meant to find. Maybe our stories don’t just survive—they lead us back to each other.

This isn’t just a coincidence. It’s something deeper. A reminder that history is alive, that threads can reconnect long after we think they’ve unraveled.

Before we left the coffeeshop, we agreed to meet again.

I gave him a copy of Nothing Really Bad Will Happen, the book I wrote about my mother’s story. He’ll be sending me a link to his mother’s story as well. I can’t wait to read it and see how the lives of our two families might have paralleled—how they rose, endured, scattered, and somehow… crossed paths once again.

This isn’t just a coincidence. It’s something deeper. A reminder that history lives on in the most unexpected places—in libraries, in conversations, in neighbors.

And sometimes, in someone who lives just around the corner.