Joseph Ungar's life changed when he answered a phone call from his wife who died at Auschwitz

Joseph and Martha, 1942

  Joseph Ungar was a Hungarian immigrant working as a machinist and living at 716 de L'Epee in Outremont in April 1958 when his phone rang.

  "It was like a voice from the grave," he later said.

   Ungar had arrived in Montreal five years earlier in 1953 after enduring a tough time at the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp. 

  Ungar was born in 1921 and in 1942, he married Martha Roth in Abony, Hungary, about 90 kilometers south of Budapest. 

  Rabbi Andrew Klein oversaw the Jewish ceremony of the couple, aged 21 and 19. 

  One year later German SS agents rounded the pair up for the apparent crime of being Jewish and placed them in concentration camps, putting her at the Bergen Belsen camp, while forcing Joseph into Auschwitz. 

   Martha was forced to bring their newborn baby George who died - or perhaps was killed - at the camp, while Martha's mother suffered the same fate. 

  Both Joseph and Martha survived their ordeal and were freed by the Allies when they won the war in 1945. 

  Ungar was told that Martha died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. He did his best to seek her out nonetheless and eventually gave up, relocating to Paris. 

  Martha was also informed that Joseph was dead and so she petitioned the Hungarian government to pronounce Joseph dead and then remarried in 1948 to Ferencz Frankel, a plumber.

 Ungar came to Montreal in 1953 and soon after married Thelma Rosenberg who bore him a child in 1955. 

Ferencz Frankel

  Martha, for her part, moved to New York City with Ferencz. However she kept hearing rumours that Joseph was actually alive. 

  Martha finally found a phone number for George and made the long distance call from New York to Montreal. It was the first time they had heard each others voices since 1943.

   Both of them quickly decided to ditch their spouses and return to each other as a couple. 

 George hired lawyer Adolphe Gardner to annul his more recent marriage and renounced custody of his child. 

 Martha gave the bad news to her husband, who had little choice but to accept his unfortunate fate. "He knows I won't be happy unless I go back to Joseph. Ferencz was a very good husband but Joseph was the first man in my life and I can't forget it."

  Rabbi Klein, now living in New Haven Connecticut, confirmed that both Joseph and Martha were a real couple.

  The couple reunited in New York and their story was published in papers across the United States.

Martha around 1958

  But their romantic reunion hit a snag in mid-July when Joseph backed out, writing Martha in a letter: "I hope you understand my decision not to break up my present marriage but I had no choice because I have two lovely children which means more to me than to start a new life on an uncertain foundation with you." (his other child was apparently a step child).

 The later development went largely unreported in the news. 

 Joseph Ungar died in Montreal at the age of 97 in May 2007. He stayed married to Thelma Rosenberg. 

 No word on what became of Ferencz Frankel or Martha.