TRR photo by Sandy Long Edith Schwarze, left, and Hilda Dilena visit in Greeley. (Click for larger image)

By KRISTA GROMALSKI

GREELEY - There is an unbreakable connection that comes with longtime friendship. Edith Schwarze and Hildegard Dilena, known simply as Hilda to her friends, possess that bond despite the fact that they spent almost 40 years separated from one another.

The two women met somewhere around 1938 as 11-year-old girls while attending the Kaiserin-Auguste-Viktoria School in Germany. Eventually, however, World War II forced the pair apart.

Dilena, originally from Styria, in Austria, was living in Germany with a woman she called Tante Madeline, or Aunt Madeline. Dilena's mother volunteered for the Red Cross with Tante Madeline, who offered to provide room and board while Dilena attended school near her. "Every Red Cross woman took one of the Styrian woman for one week to their home," Dilena said.

"Tante Madeline took Hilda's mother into her home. That's how Hilda got there," said Schwarze, who was born and raised until during WW II in Elblag, Germany.

As Schwarze tells it, Dilena was supposed to go to school in Graz, the capital of Styria, which was too far from her home. "She would have to stay in Graz, so Tante Madeline said that she would take Hilda and she could go to school with Toni [another girl in her care]. That was the same school I went to," Schwarze said.

	Contributed photo A class picture that shows the two old friends when they attended school together. (Click for larger image)

During the three and a half years Schwarze and Dilena attended school together, their friendship was galvanized under the cloud of Hitler's Germany. "In 1933 Hitler took Germany over," said Schwarze. Dilena added, "In this time, you could not speak, really, what you want."

Despite the circumstances the two girls, who traveled to and from school by railway, partook of the pranks that come with being young. "She was three stations ahead of me," said Schwarze.

"We sat together on the train and did school work," Dilena said. "If I forgot my train card, Edith would hide me in the hanging coats so the conductor would not see me."

When Schwarze and Dilena rest in the comfort of their shared history, they talk of ditching music lessons in favor of the movies and making trips to the local bakery for treats. "We always used to eat cabbage soup and save our money to go to the movies instead," said Dilena. "For me it was so special a time."

Unfortunately for the two girls, the escalation of the war in Germany ended their school days. "In 1944 Hilda went home for fall vacation and her parents did not let her go back" because of the Russian advance, said Schwarze, who continued at the school until December of the same year.

This marked a difficult period in each girl's life, as they separately fought to maintain their family ties and to survive the violent zeitgeist of WW II.

Following the war, their separation continued. "We didn't have a chance to go to school," Dilena said. "We had to make a living."

Over the course of time, Schwarze and Dilena became wives and mothers, never quite sure of the other's fate. "You wondered what happened to them all," said Dilena of her classmates.

Then, in the early 1980's an old school photograph in the newspaper brought their friendship full circle. In 1983 their class held a reunion of those in the photograph that had been found. Schwarze, who had since moved to the United States, did not attend the reunion. But through Toni, Tante Madeline's other border, Dilena discovered her childhood friend's address.

"Hilda [who resides in Austria] has relatives in Los Angeles and she came to visit them in 1985, and from there she called me," Schwarze said.

The women corresponded and called each other for several years, and in 1997 while Dilena was in Los Angeles again, she wrote to Schwarze who invited her for a visit. "She said, 'Okay, I'm coming there.'"

The women's first meeting was at the arrivals gate in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport. "She said she would be wearing an orange jacket," said Schwarze. "And there were two women with orange jackets." But, they recognized each other immediately.

"I was so happy," said Dilena, who stayed for 10 days and returned the next year.

Since reconnecting, Dilena has traveled to the U.S. several times to visit her old friend. "The first time it was really important to speak about what happened." she said.

Dilena carries a photo album of memories with her. "The photos are the only things that remain because she took that with her school bag," Schwarze said. "Her other clothes got lost because they were never shipped back when she left school."

Today, the women continue to forge their friendship through adventures that begin and end in Greeley. Their recent visit included a foray into New York City along with a fall foliage train ride on the Stourbridge Railway, in Honesdale. No matter where the future leads them, however, their past ever bonds them.