Sixty-one years ago, Joanna Zalucka hid a young Jewish girl in her bedroom for eight months, keeping the child from the Nazis in their native Poland during the Holocaust.

The girl survived, rejoined her parents and moved to Brooklyn in 1953. On Friday, Ruth Gruener, now 72, was reunited with her Polish friend at Kennedy International Airport.

"It is just so wonderful that no words can describe how I feel," said Gruener, sobbing as she hugged Zalucka. Although the two have corresponded for decades, they hadn't seen one another since 1944.

"It's a miracle," Zalucka, now 81, said in Polish.

Gruener's survival in their hometown of Lvov, Poland, was a miracle as well. She said she and her parents were the only ones from an extended family of 300 who survived the Holocaust.