German born siblings meet for first time in Lebanon

Lebanon, Oct 02 (AP):
‘I think I found your brother’: German-born siblings meet for the first time in Lebanon. About five years ago, Elizabeth Lynch was looking for information about her birth mother, Hedwig Halkenhauser.
Born in 1951 in Frankenthal, Germany, Lynch was adopted by a US Army chaplain and his wife and brought to the United States at the age of three. ‘Every once and awhile I’d put in Hedwig Halkenhauser and Frankenthal, Germany, (into Google), and I’d get some information. But not much,’ Lynch’s husband, James Lynch, said.
Don Smith and Elizabeth Lynch finally got to meet each other for the first time in person in Lebanon on Sept 17. The German born siblings found each other through searching for information about their birth mother.
Then during one of his searches, an article from the German Newspaper ‘Die Rheinpfalz’ popped in the search engine. The article said that Dieter Smith was searching for records on Halkenhauser and members of her family. ‘My husband reached out to Dieter, then he got back to him and said ‘I think your wife may be my sister,’’ Elizabeth Lynch said.
In an introduction almost 70 years in the making, Lynch and Smith finally met each other in person Sept. 17 at Lynch’s home in Lebanon. ‘When they walked through the door for the first time on (Sept. 17), I was like ‘You’re here,’’ she said. ‘I’m just so happy. It’s great, and I didn’t even know he was out there.’
Lynch was completely unaware that she had a biological brother when she was adopted from the German orphanage. ‘My father was a full bird colonel, and he was stationed over there in Germany,’ she said. ‘They wanted a boy and a girl, so they came to this place where the kids were and he got us. I was three and my adopted brother was four.’ Adopted in 1956 to a California police officer and his wife, Dieter, also known as Don, Smith’s adoption took several years to finally be processed.
‘Even though (World War II) was over, I went to school with kids whose fathers fought the war. And Germans were not looked at with kindness,’ he said. ‘I had a rough time going through elementary school cause I was different…But I’m proud to be a German, and that’s another thing that prompted ‘I want to find out who I am.’’
Smith has been tracing his roots since 1985, finding family members through records in Germany. Smith was 5 years old when he learned that his parents were not biological, but he had almost no information on his biological family.
‘I wanted to know who my biological mother was,’ he said. ‘The parents who adopted me were great…They were loving and they took care of me, and that’s all that counts, but I approached them in 1985 and said I’d like to search for my biological mother.’
Reaching out to a cousin living in Germany, Smith gave whatever information he had to find his mother. Within a day, he found she was living in a government rest home for refugees in Buxhiem.
Packing his bags immediately, Smith and his wife, Maggie, rushed over to Germany to see her. ‘A tearful and memorable moment meeting her,’ he said. ‘In fact, Elizabeth pretty much looks like her…that’s how we know we’re family.’
A few years after their meeting, Halkenhauser passed away after being diagnosed with cancer. But the search for his mother whetted Smith’s appetite to learn more about his family, including his other biological siblings.