A Toronto couple may have the world's greatest love story, at least according to Live with Regis and Kelly.
Howard and Nancy Kleinberg appeared on the U.S. talk show Tuesday as part of a Valentine's week segment to share their story of surviving a Nazi death camp together, being separated and finding each other again in Toronto.
Their story about love and survival begins when both Jewish teenagers were imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
When the camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, Howard, 18, was barely alive and buried under a pile of corpses. Nancy, 16, saw his body move.
"We went into the men's side, all you saw were corpses," Nancy said in a pre-taped interview before the show.
Howard thought he was going to die when he heard Nancy's voice. "I heard this young girl say, 'You know he's still alive, we'll try and save him,' " he said.
Another woman with Nancy at the time told her 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.' "
The women took Howard into an abandoned barracks and for two weeks Nancy nursed him back to health. At the beginning of the third week Howard awoke and didn't see Nancy.
In a desperate attempt to save his life, he crawled to the closest road, was picked up by British soldiers and taken to a military hospital where he spent six months.
"We came back, we didn't know what happened to him," said Nancy. "He didn't let us know anything," she told the show.
Two years later Howard immigrated to Toronto and soon learned through fellow Holocaust survivors that Nancy was also in Toronto.
"Toronto was a very small town in those days, everybody knew each other," said Nancy.
Howard found where she lived, bought flowers and knocked on her door.
"He rang the bell and I opened the door and I almost fainted," she said.
"When she opened the door, I was almost speechless," said Howard. "I said, 'Remember me?' "
Howard says they are even closer now than they were 61 years ago and the flame still burns brightly.
They have four children, 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
The Kleinbergs are one of five couples featured this week. Viewers will vote for the World's Greatest Love Story and the winner will receive a trip to Bora Bora. Just for being on the show, they received a dinner for their family at a kosher fine-dining restaurant in Toronto and $3,000 cash.
Howard put his arm around Regis Philbin, looked him in the eyes and said, "Sixty-one years ago I would never have the capacity to dream that I would live through, come to New York, be on your show and talk about my past with my wife."
(Photo courtesy of Live with Regis and Kelly)
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