Gerda Cole, a 98-year-old woman from Ontario, says she received the best Mother's Day gift she could ever imagine after seeing her daughter again for the first time in eighty years.

As a young Jewish girl, Cole survived persecution in her homeland Vienna, Austria in 1939 at the beginning of World War II.

Her parents sent her alone in a stroller to England at the age of 18. She gave birth to her daughter Sonia Greist in 1942, but due to her economic situation, the Refugee Committee in England advised her to put her child up for adoption and told her not to have any further contact afterward.

On Saturday, after 80 years, the two held each other tightly during the reunion, then Cole screamed excitedly and repeated the phrase "80 years" and said, "Thank you all for coming and sharing this wonderful experience with me. I am overwhelmed with happiness because I can say 'My daughter, it means so much to be able to live to see these moments after a long separation'.

Stephen Greist, her son and Cole's grandson, helped trace and search for his grandmother in Canada and contacted her in a long-term care home in Toronto.

He said he always hoped to find his grandmother and did not lose hope until he found her after a long wait and a long search that lasted for years, and he considers it the greatest gift to his mother and grandmother on Mother's Day.