The two met in August 1973 at Farm Camp Lowy in Windsor, N.Y., a small camp that drew mostly children from New York and New Jersey, whose parents appreciated that the place hosted no color wars.

Lowy asked Loewner, a fellow Czech Jew, where he was during "the war." No qualifier was needed that he was talking about World War II. "I went to concentration camp, and I finished in Buchenwald ...