DEATH CAMP SURVIVORS REUNITED AFTER 60 YEARS.

Byline: Dana Bartholomew Staff Writer

Nearly 1,500 Jews spilled from cattle cars at Auschwitz-Birkenau as Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele fingered everyone for death except 13 able-bodied men - including Sigi Hart and his friend Hans Ausubel.

More than 60 years after they lost touch, death camp tattoo Nos. 162774 and 162770 met Tuesday during an emotional reunion at Los Angeles International Airport.

``All my tears of happiness,'' cried Ausubel, now Robert Austin of Florida, wrapping his arms around his long-lost friend. ``You finally made it, you finally made it. It's OK, I'm here.

``This is what I've been waiting for for 60 years,'' said Hart, 79, of Calabasas, tears streaming down his face. ``It's an unbelievable story.''

The story began during World War II.

Hart, a teenage native of Berlin, had fled with his family to Belgium, then to France and finally over the Alps into war-torn Italy.

Austin, a native of Vienna a few years older than Hart, had also fled the impending Holocaust.

With the help of Catholic clergy, both hid in Florence until Nazis discovered their hide-out.

Although they'd seen synagogues burned and Torahs defiled, neither was prepared for Auschwitz.

``We were thrown into an inferno of madness, cruelty and suffering,'' said Austin, 83, of Bradenton, Fla., before a throng of news cameras at the Bob Hope Hollywood USO at LAX. ``They squeezed us, they squeezed us, but they couldn't squeeze the life out of us.''

For two years at the Nazi camp in Poland, the friends exchanged scraps of food. Austin credits Hart, who worked in an infirmary, for first aid on his foot that saved his life. Every two weeks, the Nazis would put the weakest workers to death.

At the end of the war, the two were separated during the death march from Auschwitz. Their lasting memory: two bony youths in prison stripes verging on death.

After the war, Hart moved to Israel and fought in two wars before he moved to Los Angeles in 1957 and founded a garment factory. Memories lingered of his friend.

After years of searching, Hart, a longtime volunteer at the Shoah Visual History Foundation in North Hollywood, contacted the American Red Cross of Greater Los Angeles.

A year later, the Red Cross Holocaust Tracing Service - credited with reuniting more than 1,300 survivors - found Austin.

When Hart finally called the man he'd known as Hans last December, Austin couldn't recall him through the closed memory of Jewish extermination.

``I (had) suffered enough,'' said Austin, who lost his father at Auschwitz and went on to become a furrier in New York City. ``I made a conscious decision to put it behind me and live my life.

``When I came to America, I was free.''

On Tuesday, both men closed the gap of history.

Hart, stocky and bald with a diamond stud in his left ear, gestured to the gift of his wife, Vera, his son and five grandchildren.

Austin, short, slender and bald, arrived with his wife, Barbara, to give Hart a plaque inscribed with their tattoo numbers.

``I wanted to see him, I wanted to talk to him, after 60 years,'' said Hart, who was lauded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Holocaust Remembrance Day. ``I don't know who he is now.

``But I have him in my head.''

Red Cross officials were stunned by the reunion.

Said Los Angeles Red Cross spokesman H.T. Linke: ``It doesn't get any better than this.''

Dana Bartholomew, [phone]

dana.bartholomew(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Sigi Hart, right, meets with his friend Robert Austin 60 years after they last saw each other at a Nazi death camp in the waning days of World War II.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer