MEMOIRS
OF SHERESHEV
By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ
We too settled down to a routine. Our son Kenneth (Itzchak Yaakov Kopel) was a good student, in which Ruth and I took much pride. Our two daughters, Sharon (Esther Sheva) and Aviva (Chayah Sarah) stayed home with Ruth and I changed my routine by leaving home Sunday evening and returning Friday. At that time the Jewish community had an old Shul (Synagogue) on Henry Street. As the community was growing due to the influx of a dozen or so new members, mostly survivors of the Holocaust and the old members and their children, who became more prosperous during, and after the war, the leadership proposed and was accepted by the members, to build a new Shul. (Synagogue.) Committees were formed to raise money. A piece of land was bought on Elizabeth Avenue for a building and parking lot and soon after the construction began. In summer 1959, Ruth’s parents Penny (Pinchus) and Dora (Deborah) PLEET came to visit us. This became a yearly tradition. The members of the Jewish community were busy raising money. While the men were writing cheques, the women were coming up with all kinds of projects. There were rummage sales, bake sales, card games, bingos, dinner parties, lotteries and others. Before we knew it, it was spring 1960. The new Shul (Synagogue) was finished and the community was humming with activity. The day of the dedication was drawing near. Equally so was the tenth anniversary of our wedding, which is June 14th.
By a fluke of fate, the executive of the community decided on a Saturday and the next day Sunday, the thirteenth and fourteenth of June as the two days for the dedication. It was to be an affair to remember, worthy of the occasion. For indeed the struggling Jewish community of St. John’s had survived to see its membership outgrow the old wooden Shul on Henry Street, into a beautiful stone edifice, worthy of a much larger congregation. In reality the membership of our congregation a that time was the highest in its history, reaching sixty eight members, which has never been as high before and I am sad to say, never since. The Friday night’s services before the dedication was conducted by Rabbi KOTZINER (may he rest in peace) who was filling in the position of Rabbi, Torah reader, blower of the ram’s horn, teacher, procurer of Kosher food and other functions required in a Jewish community. In fact, our son Kenneth (Itzchak Yaakov Kopel) started that year to attend the first year Hebrew school, so called Sunday school, which in reality meant three times a week, twice besides Sunday. Rabbi KOTZINER was endowed with a pleasant voice and would not be embarrassed in front of a group of accredited cantors. He conducted the service very much according to our traditional orthodox way, which was the tradition of our congregation since its conception. Present at Friday nights services for the dedication of the new synagogue was Rabbi S. ZAMBROWSKY, who held the office of chief Rabbi of the city of Montreal, and was representing the Rabbinical Association of Canada. He was elected some time later as president of World Mizrachi and, giving up his rabbinical position in Montreal, he moved with his wife, Belle, to Israel. We are related to the ZAMBROWSKYS, but neither they nor we have figured it out exactly. The second guest was the first secretary of the Israeli Embassy in Canada, who represented the Israeli Government.
The following morning, Saturday, the day of dedication, which because of the Sabbath was extended to the next day, Sunday, the synagogue was full to over flow with dignitaries, besides the entire community, men, women and children. Led by the premier of Newfoundland, Mr. J. R. SMALLWOOD was his entire cabinet, the clergy of every religious denomination, the mayor of St. John’s and many of his councilmen, representatives of every organization - in a word, everybody who was anybody. After the service, there were speeches beginning with the president of the community. Followed by the premier and others. After the speeches a reception was held for the community and at night there was a dinner for the entire community. The next day the dedication took place at which all the distinguished guests of the previous day were present. Again there was a reception for all the guests and the community, at which time we rubbed shoulders with all the dignitaries. That, as I mentioned took place on Sunday, the fourteenth of June. I recall saying to Ruth, as we were leaving that affair, “what a beautiful way to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary”. I must admit now in all honesty, that of all our anniversaries I remember our tenth the best.
Since the end of the war, the St. John’s Jewish community was beginning to experience a problem with getting rabbis, or spiritual leaders as they were often called, for not all were accredited or ordained rabbis. As the economic situation and with it the standard of living during and after the war had improved in North America, so has the situation of the Jewish communities. At the same time a major source of rabbis and Hebrew teachers dried up, namely European Jewry, which was almost completely destroyed under Nazi rule. The demand for rabbis grew in North America. There were not many rabbis or Hebrew teachers willing to leave larger Jewish centres on the main land and move to a far away place like St. John’s, Newfoundland that was six hundred miles from the nearest Jewish community. Not to mention the isolation of the island and its inhospitable climate. Neither could the community tempt any body with generous remuneration, because of its size and substantial expenses in upkeep of the synagogue. So we had to do at times with less accredited rabbis and settle for Hebrew teachers who were not as versed in the Talmud as a rabbi. As long as they could teach the children Hebrew and conduct religious services on Sabbath and holidays. In a pinch, some of our congregants could help out with conducting the services. Here I would like to mention three such people that come to mind who have helped out in such situations throughout my time in Newfoundland. One was Morris WILANSKY who hailed from around Minsk in Belarussia and came with his parents, brothers and sisters to Newfoundland as a teenager but who acquired a good knowledge of Jewish religious education in his early years by attending a Yeshiva (an institute of higher Talmudic learning) in Pruzany before leaving for Newfoundland. By the way, his father was the first and only Shoykhet (a Jewish ritual slaughterer) in Newfoundland’s history who used to slaughter chickens according to Jewish law for the community in St. John’s.
While I am at it I would like to mention that Morris WILANSKY’s son, Graham, who was born in St. John’s went in his father’s footsteps. Besides acquiring a good formal education, he also attended a Yeshiva in New York where he became well versed in Jewish tradition and used to help out with the services in our synagogue. Unfortunately he passed away at an early age, leaving a wife and three young children. The second was Lewis (Leibel) FERMAN, a survivor of the Holocaust, who survived with his wife in a partisan group under the leadership of Tevie BIELSKY. He was a decorated resistant fighter and above all a committed Jew to its tradition and survival. It was Mr. FERMAN who organized the yearly Remembrance services, in memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which at the same time was dedicated as an evening to commemorate the Holocaust. It used to be a well-organized affair at which distinguished Newfoundland personalities used to address the gathering, which was open to the public. I must say that at many such affairs the synagogue hall was full to capacity.
Besides the above-mentioned activity, Mr. FERMAN often used to conduct services in the synagogue. Those who knew him well will remember him for his magnanimous nature and benevolence. Unfortunately, Mr. FERMAN died shortly after moving to Toronto in 1989. A third person who helped out a lot in conducting services was Ernest MAUSKOPF. A survivor of the Holocaust, he was not only the “Baal-Thefillah” but also the “Baal-Krie” (reader of the Torah) for many, many years. Others helped out too, according to their ability amongst them me. There was a short period when the community was without a spiritual leader for some six months. It happened in 1957 and I volunteered to teach the children for those six months once a week whenever I was in town. We then got a teacher from Israel by the name of EISENBERG who came with a wife and two boys, ages four and six. They stayed for close to two years and moved to Calgary. We got a young couple, Hungarian Jews that came via Israel by the name of FISHLOVITZ. At that time I became a member of the executive committee and was given the portfolio of education. A function I held for thirty years in the Newfoundland Jewish community until our departure. I do not know for sure the reason, but despite the fact that executives were changing every couple of years in those days, I was always handed the education portfolio even if the slate of officers of which I was a member did not get elected. Is it because I did such a good job? I doubt it. It is most likely that I was the only “Learned Jew” as we used to say in Europe. In my part of the world, meaning I knew Hebrew.
For this I am thankful to my parents who put so much emphasis on my education, and my father’s constant reprimanding me for running with the boys instead of reading, which resulted in me sitting over books for many hours, envious of my friends who were playing ball outside. However, this sitting over books resulted in me having a good command of Hebrew, even in comparison with native Israelis. It was after the teacher FISHLOVITZ, that Rabbi KUTZINER came to St. John’s and remained up to 1962, when he left for the Maritimes and it was our good fortune to have had him, because of his qualifications as a Rabbi, his voice as a cantor and his traditional eastern European approach to the Rabbinate. Those were also the most active and productive year of the community. After the completion of the synagogue, the community was left with a substantial mortgage. True, a large part of the building funds was raised by outright contributions of the members and the sale of the old synagogue on Henry Street. Still, all of it covered barely half of the building’s cost. The community set out to raise extra money above the needed to pay up the mortgage. It was needed for the upkeep of the synagogue and Rabbi. A committee to find ways was formed and was appropriately named “ways and mean committee.” In this endeavour the women of the Sisterhood excelled over the men. They continued to organize bake sales, rummage sales, card games, dinners and other means of raising money. The Men’s and Ladies committee organized dances in the synagogue and even card games open to the public. The ladies of the community were busy and to a large extent the men, too. One could feel the heart beat, the pulsation of an active and vibrate Jewish community in a faraway, and at that time, isolated place.
In summer 1961 our daughter Sharon (Esther Sheva) started kindergarten in the Harrington School on Lemarchant Road. As I was most of the days away from home, Ruth used to take both children, the five-year-old Sharon and the three year old, Aviva on the bus to kindergarten and return home with the younger one Aviva. The same was in the afternoon when Sharon had to come home. Ruth had to take the younger one with her to pick up the older one. Understandably it was hard on Ruth, besides the wasting of so much time on buses. She decided to let the five-year-old Sharon go by herself. The trip entailed changing buses at Rawland Cross. Ruth went with her a couple of times, giving Sharon the bus ticket and pretending that she was not there. Sharon went along with this game and after a few tries, Ruth let her go by herself. A feat for a five-year-old but it also attests to the peace and tranquility in which a capital of a province lived in those days. A mother could let a five-year-old child go alone to school, traveling on buses and having even to change buses on the way. Sharon finished kindergarten there and continued for the next two years in grade one and two. When it came time to enroll in grade three, Ruth decided to enroll her in St. Andrew’s School, which was no more than two hundred meters from our house. There was a problem however. The Newfoundland School Board was administrated by the assorted religious orders. That is to say, that up to now the schools were administrated and belong to individual religious denominations. As there were no Jewish schools, the Jewish kids were accepted in all other school, but had to continue going to the same in which they started. The St. Andrew School did not belong to the same Protestant denomination as the Harrington School and when on the first day of school, Ruth brought Sharon to the principal with the request to accept her into the St. Andrew School; he asked her religious denomination she belonged to. Hearing that she was Jewish, and knowing that there is no Jewish school, he said that she has to continue with the same religious denomination that she started. Ruth kept asking him to accept her, as we lived no more than a two to three minute walk from St Andrew school and to go to the one she started entailed a ride with two buses. He gave in. Taking Sharon by the hand, he led her to a class while Ruth followed them. In the classroom he introduced Sharon to her teacher whose face shoved disapproval. Understandably, for what teacher wants an extra pupil as it was more than the prescribed thirty she already had. But she had to accept her as the principal, Mr. Brown directed.
Sharon proved herself to be an excellent pupil throughout all her school years, receiving yearly recognition and awards. The same as her brother, who meantime in 1959 was transferred from Harrington to Holloway School, where he studied until 1964 and from there he transferred to Macpherson Junior High up to 1966. When Sharon started in 1963-second grade in Harrington, Aviva was enrolled there into kindergarten and the two of them were traveling by bus together. Sharon was now seven years old and was taking care of her five-year-old sister. A year later in fall of 1964 when Sharon was accepted to third grade in St. Andrew’s School, Aviva started grade one there as well. Each of the girls attended that school up to and including grade six.
In 1962 when Rabbi KUTZINER left our community, we managed to get Mr. SHEIN. He was in his mid forties and his wife about the same age. They hailed from Hungary, fairly recently. He seemed to have come from a religious background and his wife the opposite. He did his job conscientiously, correctly but lacked or was unable to instill enthusiasm in others. He was always a gentleman, accommodating and ready to compromise and in questions of Jewish law at times, in my opinion, too much. They had no children and kept very much to themselves, a bit too much for the liking of the community. But since they were so extremely reserved, so distant from the community, without imposing any demands or requests of any sort, the community or the majority of it was happy to let things be. Some parents whose children attended his classes disapproved of his methods of bribing his students with chocolate bars if they exceeded their work. It used to stir up jealousy and even animosity among the students. Coming from a very orthodox Hungarian background, he was never exposed to Zionism. Understandably he could not instill it in his students of which I greatly disapproved.
As I mentioned earlier, the ideal of Zionism and the state of Israel was always on my mind. My dream as a teenager was to go at that time to Palestine, to help rebuild the Jewish homeland. Now that the dream of a Jewish homeland had materialized, I began to dream of a visit there, which at that time, in the early nineteen sixties for me, was unattainable. In the early sixties there must have been over a dozen young couples of our age, with children of our children’s age in the community. A good example would be the boys of our son’s, Ken’s, age. There were five of them - all born within a period of six months. The oldest being Larry RITEMAN who was born in May 1952 and the youngest, our son Ken whom was born in October of that year. In between there were three others - Harvey HERSHENKOPF, Sidney WILANSKY and Allan FERMAN. They did not attend public school together but they did attend the Hebrew classes so called Sunday classes. The same was applicable for the girls. The boys, as they got old enough joined the cubs and later the scouts while the girls, their counter-parts. I did not have much time to spend with our children, being out of town most of the week. Every week even being in town, I was constantly busy, so I tried to play games with the children while working. Sunday was the day I was loading the truck. Having converted the garage into a warehouse, I used to back up the truck to the garage door with its door in the back open, thus having the truck covering the entire garage door from the outside. This gave me complete privacy and easy access from the warehouse to the inside of the truck. This way I could load up the truck out of sight of inquisitive eyes. It was then that the kids, in their preschool or early school years, used to come down to the basement, which served as a warehouse too. From the basement a door led to the garage and they would try to help me load. One can imagine that loading a truck with dry good merchandize, where every item had to be marked and every dozen had to be assorted into size and colours and wrapped or tied individually and then place in its assigned place. A four or six year old, or even a ten-year-old is not much help. But I kept them entertained and happy by playing games with them. The most favourite that never failed was hide and seek. Two of them had to go into the garage while I used to hide the third child in a box of clothes in the basement. After hiding, the other two children had to find the hidden one. I can see now the joy in their eyes or hear their delighted voices after having found the hidden one. On those Sunday mornings, Ruth used to surprise me with one of her specialties. The most favoured by all was her chocolate cheesecake, still warm from the oven, which she used to bring down or call up one of the children to take it downstairs for the children and me.
A couple times a year, in winter, I used to get some firewood ready plus a tin can, kosher hot dogs, mustard, buns and matches and we used to drive out some twenty miles out of town. There, behind the shelter of a wall from an old abandoned water reservoir, we used to get a bonfire started, suspending the tin can filled with hot dogs in water. After the water used to boil, we ate the hot dogs in buns with mustard. The kids used to love it and I think that not only I, but they too remember it fondly. As I mentioned hot-dogs, I reminded myself of the fact that we arranged to order delicatessen for a group of people. Actually Ruth did it for she used to be the one to make the phone calls to the members of the community about ordering delicatessen. It started quite innocently. After being away from Montreal for some years, we, or I began to miss the Kosher Montreal delicatessen. Seeing that we had the connection with “Lewitt's Delicatessen” from before, Ruth wrote to ask if they would send us a few items. They did and when we had guests and served the food, their question was: Where did we get it. The following question was if we could order for them too. Before we knew it, we were ordering for half of the community. Such an order had to be sent airfreight. The good part was that we only ordered it once a year, in the fall. The not so good part was that it was I who had to divide up the order according to everyone’s specific requests and even had to deliver it to some of the elderly members. It is interesting to note, that despite my attentiveness in figuring out how much every one owed us, we always came out losing a few dollars and had to put it out of our own pocket. In the later years when the community started to shrink, we stopped ordering it altogether.
Many of the parents in the St. John’s community who had children a little older than ours, were sending them to Camp Kadima, some hundred miles from Halifax. This was the only chance Jewish children in St. John’s had to meet other Jewish children from away. Here they shared experiences and acquired an understanding of Jewish life in other places across eastern Canada. Above all, in that camp they were introduced to Zionism and to Jewish traditions that some did not get at home. Many of those things were taught and enhanced with the help of Israeli songs and dances that remained in their memory up to and into their adulthood. The acceptance age to the summer camp in those days was ten years, but we decided to send our son, Kenneth earlier and in the summer of 1962, a few months shy of his tenth birthday, he went with a group of about half a dozen others. Two weeks before his departure, we sent out his clothes, which in itself was quite a task. We had to buy a large trunk, a sleeping bag, flannel gray blankets, but the big job was to sew on nametags on everything from hankies to blankets. On dozens of underwear, socks, T-shirts, shorts, swimming trunks, you name it. Half way through the camp season, I among other parents from St. John’s left to see the campers. Arriving in Halifax late in the afternoon, we spent the night there and left in the morning by car, a two-hour ride. It was visiting day and there were many parents from Halifax and the few surrounding Jewish communities. We were late in coming and as we parked near the gate, I got out of the car expecting to see our son nearby, for according to the instructions we received from the camp directory, the kids would be waiting for us at the gate. In fact there were no kids around. After inquiring in the office, we were directed to go to their cabins. Sure enough, as I approached the cabin, I noticed Kenneth. He noticed me at the same time and began running toward me. I can see his face, which expressed so much joy on seeing me and at the same time the hurt he felt for me letting him wait for me while other parents showed up earlier. Those two feelings were so plainly evident on his face and moved me emotionally so much that it made my eyes tears. Of course, so were his as I hugged him. How could I explain to him that it was not my fault at all. That I was getting a ride from a former Newfoundlander who took a carload of us to the camp and on the way, a mother who was traveling with her five year old daughter who got car sick, decided to stop at a farm to rinse her daughter’s little dress. It would not have been proper to be seen like this by her twelve-year-old brother. If the meeting was tearful, the parting was worse, but at least I had lots of company for all the campers came to the gate to say good-bye to their parents. Judging by the tears, one would think that the parting was forever. Even now, I am not so sure if visiting day in camp is such a good idea. The following year, 1963, Ruth went on visiting day. The next year, I went. This time, however, it was much better. Ken was already a seasoned camper and the hellos and good byes were more restrained.
Through all the years, since I came to Canada I walked around with a guilty feeling, a sense of betrayal, the betrayal of my childhood dreams and aspirations. The betrayal of my fervent wish during the Nazi nightmare, namely that if I have to die, why can’t I die for a Jewish home in at that time Palestine, instead of perishing namelessly among millions of others, without a name or without anybody ever knowing I existed. The gnawing feeling was enhanced by my awareness that I left Italy for Canada, at a time when the newly reborn infant state, Israel, was fighting for its very first breath of air. When five Arab armies had attacked her in order to snuff its life out before its persecuted people, many survivors of the Holocaust, knew the taste of freedom and independence. Now that Israel was independent, it had not known a day of peace since its conception, for its Arab neighbours kept on sending gangs of murderers across its borders who used to, under cover of darkness, attack individual vehicles on isolated roads. Or place bombs under waters pipes, or electrical transmissions or in general terrorize distant Jewish settlements. My longing for that little corner of the world, the realizing of a two thousand year old dream of my people, was beckoning to me from afar, as if to say; Come. Take a look at me. You dreamed about me so much. The least you can do is to walk on my soil so soaked with the blood of your forefathers of old and with the blood of your brethren of late, who gave their lives so that you and others like you, my children, can walk in the streets of my cities. In the fields of my valleys, and the rocky hills of Judea and Samaria you can walk. Inhale the fragrant air of my mountains and feast your eyes on my beloved city, Jerusalem. I spoke to Ruth often about my dream of visiting Israel. But how could I afford it. The years began to roll by and I was unable to put aside a few dollars. My other dream was to do something in memory of my parents who perished with the rest of my family and after whom there was no mention or marker anywhere, never mind a gravestone. I had mentioned it to Ruth too but that was as far as it went.
In 1964 Kenneth was enrolled in Macpherson Junior High School. At the same time, Sharon entered grade three in St. Andrew’s School and Aviva entered the same school in grade one. For the Jewish boys of Ken’s age, the time was approaching to become Bar Mitzvah, a time when a Jewish boy turns thirteen and assumes his own religious responsibilities. Traditionally, when the boy’s thirteenth birthday used to come around, he used to be honoured with an “Aliyah” or with “Mafter”, in the synagogue. That is to read a portion of the Torah for that particular week. In the affluent countries, in the post World War II years, particularly in the U.S.A. it developed into a show off affair where parents and grandparents are trying to out-do their friends by throwing more ostentatious parties. It also caught on in Canada. In St. John’s, being away from Jewish centres, the competition was not as great, but it was also the first time in that community that six Bar Mitzvahs came up in the short time of six months, an unprecedented event in its history and never to be repeated again so far. As our son Kenneth was the youngest of the group, we had time to come to our own conclusions. Those affairs markedly differed one from another. While one consisted of just a Kiddush on Saturday after services, the most ostentatious was a dinner, music and dancing on a Saturday night. We came to the decision to take our son on a trip to Israel. By it, accomplishing two aspirations. One to let him see with his own eyes the land of his forefathers, by instilling in him a sense of belonging and the ongoing connection between the people of Israel and the land of Israel. The second was to fulfill my own life long dream to see that land with my own eyes. Taking in consideration all the expenses, we came to the conclusion that the trip for the three of us, that is for Ruth, our son and myself would not exceed the expense of an evening of dinner and music, even for our small community. It would be of much more benefit to our son, who is after all the main subject of the whole affair.
In the fifties and in the sixties, the fishing on the Grand Banks, off the coast of Newfoundland was very rewarding and it attracted mainly fishing boats from across the Atlantic. Next to the traditional boats that fished there from Spain and Portugal, others began to fish too. The largest in size and quantity were the Soviet fishing boats, followed by the Polish, Japanese, German (both east and west) and other in small numbers. Those boats used to come into the St. John’s harbour for supplies, mainly fuel, fresh water and fresh vegetables. Besides for supplies they used to come in for emergencies. Particularly the Soviet and Polish boats who used to spend as much as six months at a time off the shores of Newfoundland. As there were more than a hundred Soviet boats around, it was inevitable that some one would take sick or get hurt in an accident. Then they had to take that person in for treatment in St. John’s for the medical care aboard the ships were poor. With so many foreign boats in port and at times hundreds of sailors on the streets, it is not surprising that the local population got used to seeing them and stopped paying attention to them. I did however pay particular attention to the Soviet boats, hoping to meet a Jewish sailor. A big help in this endeavour was my friend Lewis (Leibl) FERMAN, who besides having a dry goods store on Water Street, was also a part time employee of the St. John’s dry dock, owned and operated by the government. It was he who used to serve as a translator for the dry dock when Soviet or Polish boats used to come in for repairs or when a sick Soviet or Polish sailor used to be brought in to the hospital for medical attention. It was this job that gave him the opportunity to get on those boats and even see the list of names of the crew. Glancing through them, he used to look for Jewish sounding names. Even finding Jewish names was only the beginning, for no individual was permitted to be alone with a foreigner. The only way to get them off the boat was to offer a group of them a ride to see the town and take along the Jewish man.
During those years, I had succeeded in meeting even a couple of Jewish captains, but they were even more careful than the non-Jews. Even inviting them home, they would not go by themselves, always with a couple of companions. Still I kept on looking for a Jewish face in a crowd of foreign fishermen as I was passing them on the streets or in a store. On a late Saturday morning, in early March 1965, I found myself with Ruth and our youngest child, Aviva who was then six years old, in Woolworth’s department store on Water Street. The street which was the main business street in downtown St. John’s, ran parallel to the principal docking wharf for most of the foreign fishing boats, giving the crew of the boats easy access to the city’s shopping facilities. Therefore, it was no wonder to see at times literally hundreds of foreign fishermen on Water Street and in the stores as they were easily recognized by their attire. We were just about ready to leave the store as a group of foreign fishermen passed by in front of us. More as habit than anything else, I looked at them assessing their nationality, which I rightly determined to be Polish. One face caught my eye. It was strangely familiar. It belonged to a man in his mid fifties, who must have been tall once, but now slightly bent over. He was wearing a beret on his head and a long gray coat that was in fashion before the war and was still in fashion in Eastern Europe after the war. Where have I seen this face before? I stood there for a moment thinking. The face triggered a memory in my mind, but it could not be or could it? Could it be the face of Leon KULOWSKI? The man I attribute with saving my life in Auschwitz by taking me away from the penal colony and getting me the job in the carpenter shop? I stood there glued to the floor, not knowing what to do. I wrote to him from Italy’s displaced persons camp several times after liberation, but to no avail. Should I go over and ask him and make a fool out of myself? But what if it is him! I hear Ruth’s voice asking me what I am looking at. Do you see that man in the black beret and dark gray coat? I ask her. Yes, said Ruth. What about him? His face looks familiar to me, I tell her. It reminds me of Leon. You are crazy, Ruth answered. I knew it sounded crazy. Yet, I couldn’t go away. Well, said Ruth, come on, it is lunchtime. But what if it is Leon? I ask. O.K. O.K. said Ruth, go and ask him if it will make you feel better and we will go home.
I walked over to the group of Polish fishermen. Facing that man in the dark gray coat, I addressed him in Polish. Are you Polish? Yes, he answered. Have you ever been to Auschwitz? The man looked at me inquisitively, slowly nodding his head, he says: Yes. I feel immediately that I got the right man and can feel the tension rising in my stomach. I say to him: Is your name Leon KULOWSKI, Auschwitz number 805? His mouth dropped, his eyes open wide. He can barely blurt out: Who are you? I can hardly control myself. Shivering with excitement, I am trying in one minute to tell him who I am and what he did for me. He does not remember a thing. I take him over to where Ruth and Aviva are. Ruth knows all about him. What follows is like a dream. We take him home. The story spreads in minutes over the town. There are people from the television, reporters from the newspapers. Friends call to congratulate me on such an event. At about supper, I finally stopped shaking. It turns out that it is his fifth visit to St. John’s. He is now the ship’s physician. After the war and liberation, he went back to university and became a doctor. As fishermen and fishing crews make much more money aboard ships than doctors or university professors on land in communist Poland, and having to support a wife and two children, he decided to join the ships crew and go to sea as a ship’s doctor. This story spreads across his ship immediately too and when I took him back late in the evening, the entire crew was on deck looking at me with curiosity.
In those days there was a chronic shortage of everything in the communist countries and I gave him whatever he dared to take in clothing and footwear. He would not take money, for if he would get caught, he would have spent the rest of his life in jail. Even the cloths and footwear we had to smuggle aboard, unnoticed by the crew, for if anyone of the crew would had seen, there was no doubt in Leon’s mind that they would inform the officials upon arrival in the home port - either because so many of them were informers or out of sheer jealousy. So Ruth and I took the stuff under our coats the following day and went with him aboard where we deposited it in his own small cabin. I will add that we had to make a couple of trips in order not to look too suspicious with all the clothing under our coats. After two days stay in St. John’s, his boat left for home, which meant the Polish port town of Gdynia.
Their plan was to be back to continue fishing on the rich fishing grounds off Newfoundland’s Grand Banks. Normally after spending a month or so on the fishing grounds, those Polish or Russian boats would come into St. John’s for supplies and I was looking forward to seeing Leon again. The three months passed. His boat came into St. John’s but there was no Dr. Leon KULOWSKY aboard and no one on the boat could tell me why. A short time later, I received a letter from him telling me in a very unclear, ambiguous way that he could not make the trip with his boat this time nor did he say if he would be on it the next time. It did occur to me that it might have to do with me meeting him. But how would I know unless to ask him in a letter which would in all probability be opened by the Polish government censor and if they found it too inquisitive, it would be either destroyed or filed in his personal folder of the secret police files as they did with so many of my later letters to him. Some six months after Leon’s return to Poland, I received a letter from him informing me that he was assigned another boat and is due in St. John’s in a couple of months.
Through the spring of 1965, we were making our preparations for a trip to Israel. We were advised to go with a group for two major reasons. Firstly, it is much cheaper and secondly, the more important reason is the convenience and expertise of the guides. After much searching, Ruth found a group organized by the J.N.F. The trip was to last three weeks from the later part of July to the middle of August, with a three-day stopover in Paris. In the previous few years, I have expressed my wish to Ruth to put up some lasting memorial to perpetuate the memory of my parents. Being unable to afford it, I finally put the idea on the back burner. But Ruth did not forget it and a couple of weeks before our departure to Israel, she came up with an idea to plant a grove of trees, a thousand trees in memory of my parents. I had no concept of how much money it entails, but Ruth knew for she had been in touch with the J.N.F. (Jewish National Fund) to inquire about such a project. I called J.N.F.’s head office and was told that at two dollars a tree, it comes to two thousand dollars, which scared me right away. They went on to say that I do not have to pay the full amount at once and that I can pay in installments. We arranged it to be paid out in a period of ten years at two hundred dollars a year.
The departure point was Montreal. Arriving a few days earlier with the children, we stayed at Ruth’s parents. A day or two before departure, we were introduced to the rest of the small group that consisted of eleven people including us three. The man in charge of the group was the well-known Montreal lawyer and Jewish activist, Maxwell Swartz, who in his retirement years made Aliya (moved to Israel), where he continued with the sacred work of helping to build a secure Israel. I will say that it turned out to be a congenial group of people, which made our trip so much more enjoyable. Our group leader kept on telling us on the way over to try and see all we can, for the first trip is the most memorable, the most noteworthy. How right he was for, after all the trips we made afterwards, none remained as vivid in my memory as the first one. Even though I did not know it them, our trip was a luxurious one. We checked in the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv, which is even now one of the prestigious hotels there. We stayed in the Dan Carmel in Haifa and in the King David in Jerusalem. We even flew to Eilat for a day where the temperature reached more than one hundred and thirteen degrees in the shade. I recall going in the Red Sea for a swim where the water was the temperature of bathtub water. Coming out, I expected the breeze to cool me off; instead it hit me like the blast from a furnace.
As a group we had to our disposition two large cars, whose drivers were also qualified tour guides, one by the name of WAXMAN, the other by the name of CARMEL. With them I had the opportunity not only to show of my knowledge of Hebrew and the history of Zionism but also my familiarity though theoretical, with the geography of Israel and the intimacy of many of the settlements history. For this I own my gratitude to my teacher of the Hebrew school, Yohel WALDSHAN. I am lacking words to describe my feelings walking the streets of Tel Aviv or better yet, the streets of Jerusalem even a divided one. To hear Hebrew spoken in the street, to walk in the narrow streets of Meyah Shearim, to listen to the voices of little boys reading the Torah and vocalizing the meaning and commentaries in Yiddish, something that stopped in my shtetl, Shershev, when I was a child. Looking with longing from the top of the roof in the direction of the Western Wall without even being able to see it. A thousand major and minor attractions that gladdened my heart, which seemed to pass, unnoticed in the following visits.
Another major event was the meeting of some of my relatives, who were fortunate enough to have left Poland before the war and thus saved their lives. Among them was my mother’s first cousin Shaine Rochel who left Pruzany in the mid thirties with her husband and two small children. My father’s first cousin, Chaim SHEMESH who left Shershev in the beginning of the thirties and was joined by his girl friend Sonia PINSKY, who left Shershev in the mid thirties and they got married shortly after. When we met them in Netanyah, they had already a married daughter and a single teenage younger daughter. They were the only family I had besides my mother’s two brothers and their families in New York. Sadly, my mother’s two brothers were already gone at the time we were visiting Israel. But there was somebody else I desperately wanted to see in Israel. It was my very close friend Leibel BLISKOWSKY, whom I met in my shtube (room) number four in block (building) number eighteen in Auschwitz. The one who used to supply me with soap for washing my superior’s underwear. The one with whom I spent nine months in Sosnowitz, the affiliated camp of Auschwitz. The one I lost contact with after the infamous march from Auschwitz to Mauthausen and the very same whom I found a couple weeks after liberation in a refugee camp boiling chicken feet (not legs) in a tin can. He was also the third partner to the room in which the three of us shared for three years in various refugee camps in Italy. Understandably I was in touch with him throughout all the years we left Italy. I came to Canada and he went to Israel. By then he was married and they had a little girl.
We were spending the Shabbat in Haifa. As I did not have his telephone number, I wrote him that we would be over to see them Friday night. By the time we finished the Friday night dinner in the hotel with the group, it was past eight o’clock and by the time we got to his house, even by taxi, it was nine. Haifa is a hilly city. To get to his house, I had to walk up a couple dozen stairs. In addition, he lived on the third or forth floor. I finally got to his door and knocked on it. Not getting any answer, I tried again and again with no response. Disappointed, I went down telling the driver of my failed expectation and frustration. The driver, a young man, thought for a moment and then said; Sir, I am sure that your friend is home and might have gone to sleep. If I were he, I would be very disappointed if a friend of mine would come from Canada and did not waken me. Go up and knock on the door harder. I liked the young man’s advice, so I went up and knocked much harder. Sure enough, after a short while there was a commotion behind the door and the door opened. There he was my friend Leibel in his pajamas. All of his five foot, two-inch frame. Behind him stood his wife, even shorter than him in her nightgown. It turned out that they expected us much earlier and when we did not show up by eight o’clock, they went to bed. One has to keep in mind that I was then forty-two years old and my friend, Leibel was some eighteen-twenty years older than I was. Besides, he was working at Bet-Mam-Bet, a large industrial workshop just out of town, where the work used to begin at six in the morning. His day began at four. We sat there to the wee hours of the morning. We had a lot of catching up to do. The last time I saw him was him sitting on the Balustrade of the Genoa passenger wharf, waving good bye to me as my ship was moving out of the harbour on its way to Halifax, seventeen years earlier.
As Ruth and I got into the taxi on our way back to the hotel, I remarked to Ruth that there is something missing. Something was lost in our friendship, something I did not quite know, some kind of openness, and some kind of frankness, which we did not or could not express. I, after all, considered him as the best friend I ever had. Ruth, having good perception answered quite sensibly that I should not be surprised. Our friendship, that is mine and Leibel’s was forged in a concentration camp where we had nobody close and everybody reached out to anybody who would reciprocate with a friendly gesture and it remained so in refugee camp. But now you have both built your own lives, not as friends with each other but with your families. With your wives and children and it is to them that you direct your attention, your commitment and your love. How right she was.
During the trip we spent three or four days in Jerusalem in a small hotel called “Ganey Jehuda”. Later after an impressive extension, it was renamed “Diplomat.” At that time that little hotel was hard on the Jordanian border. The fence of the border was three meters from our window, which overlooked an Arab village half a kilometre away. It was completely enveloped in darkness at night with not a single light in the street or from a window. When we visited the same hotel a dozen or so years later, nothing looked the same. The little hotel was no more. In its place stood a modern multi-story “The Diplomat” and the insignificant Arab village was twice or three times its former size. The added new homes were modern, comfortable dwellings, built according to Israeli designs but owned and occupied by Arabs. At night the streets of that now prosperous village, were lit up as bright as any street of Jerusalem if not more and so was every home, judging by the brightly shining windows. I was thinking to myself; what a difference a few years of introduction to Israeli know-how made to those people and yet what an odd and strange way those people have to show their gratitude, a way so particular, so endemic to them.
We spent a Shabbat in a hotel by the name of “Acadia” in Hertzlia, where at that time among the guests were celebrities like the movie actors George Sanders and Kirk Douglas who were making the movie “Cast a Giant Shadow.” It was because of that movie making that the three of us had to make an additional trip from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem as the grove dedication in memory of my parents had to take place in the Martyrs Forest, which is in the Judean Hills near Jerusalem. So was the shooting of the movie “Cast a Giant Shadow.” In order to proceed with the filming, the road to the Martyrs Forest was closed to all traffic, and we had to postpone the dedication to a later date.
Israel is a hot place in mid summer, which does not cool off even at night except in the mountains. That is why I enjoyed the evenings in Jerusalem when one can use a sweater or jacket at night regardless of how hot it gets during the day. I recall going into a restaurant at five in the afternoon to eat and escape the heat of the day. When we came out an hour later, I wished I had a jacket. In Tel-Aviv however, there was no escaping from the heat. Ruth and Kenneth did not mind it as much as I did and it is applicable even today. During the weekend, which consisted of Friday afternoon and Saturday, we utilized the Saturday to go to Benjamina, where I had a “Landsman”, a compatriot. It was Gottel WEINER from Shershev some ten years older than I, who was mobilized together with my uncle Eli KANTOROWITZ in March 1939. They and a couple other young men from Shershev spent three months of German imprisonment as Polish war prisoners after the Polish surrender. Together they returned home in December of the same year to live a year and a half under Bolshevic rule, only to find themselves again under Nazi occupation. For most of them it was to the end of their young lives, perishing by the hands of the murderous Nazi beasts. However, Gottel WEINER succeeded in cheating death, surviving Auschwitz where he worked in D.A.W. night shift. The same place where I worked day shift. He married a girl from Pruzany by the name of Sarah after the war and after spending three years in different displaced persons camps in Germany and Italy. After the creation of the state of Israel they made their way there, settling in Benjamina where Gottel had two brothers who left Shershev in the late twenties. I did not remember them from my childhood. We spent part of the morning and the entire afternoon there. There was no end to the stories each of us had to share and wanted the others to listen to. It could have gone on for eternity it seemed.
The same happened on our next visits and with everybody we saw. With my cousin (my father’s first cousin) Chaim SHEMESH and his wife Sonia, nee PINSKY, Chaim left Shershev in 1932 and she in 1935. Sonia returned to Shershev for a visit in 1939-40 and was fortunate to be permitted by the Bolshevics to go back to the land of Israel in the beginning of 1940. I recall saying to Chaim SHEMESH that my life-time-dream as been fulfilled, namely to see Israel. He replied; do not say fulfilled for once you have seen it, you will not be able to stay away. How right he was! How beautiful that summer evening was there in Netanyah, the three of us sitting with them on the veranda of their charming little villa, surrounded by blossoming trees, the embodiment of the Israel of my dreams. If only that moment could come to the fore again. Could reappear. But again, I have other moments of my life that I wish they could reoccur again. Haven’t we all? The same was applicable to when we came to visit my mother’s first cousin, Shaine-Rachel and her family, the warmth of Shaine-Rachel, so endemic to the AUERBACHs. It cannot be equaled. It was so reminiscent of my grandmother Frieda-Leah, my mother’s mother. Their house already considered old by Israeli standards, was sitting in the middle of a small orchard of citrus trees, but the warm reception more than made up for the inadequacy of the house. It was by coincidence that their older daughter, Hanna and husband and children who left Israel some half a dozen years earlier and moved to California, visited them at the same time. There was of course their younger daughter, Ita with her husband Yaakov and their two children who were living nearby in Petah-Tikva.
I was amazed then and more so on our subsequent visits at the phenomenal memory of my mother’s first cousin, Sheine-Rachel. She could recall events, names and places dating back to her childhood from the age of two. She died at the age of ninety-two and we saw her a year earlier still in possession of that extraordinary gift, her memory. We were told the she died with her faculties fully functioning and her special gift, her memory, intact. Ruth and I still recall with fondness the afternoons and evenings spent with her alone after her husband Velvell died. Sitting for hours on end and listening to her stories of my family from half a century before my birth. How interesting those stories were for me. How engrossed in them we were listening to her. She, Sheina-Rachel, was the last of my parent’s generation. Born and raised in the Shershev-Pruzany neighbourhood and who knew so thoroughly the history of my mother’s side of the family. With her passing, the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century history of that side of the family has become exactly this; History. Never to be told or repeated again. I should correct it. My cousin, my uncle Shloime (Solomon) AUERBACH’S oldest son, Jack, has written some of that family’s history in his book “The Undying Spark”, but nothing to compare with the wealth of information Shaine-Rachel possessed nor with its intricate relations.
On the way back, we stopped over for three days in Paris. The city is every bit as beautiful as they say, but for the people, it leaves a lot to be desired. The impression it made on me coming straight from Israel where I could converse with anybody in Hebrew or Yiddish and if necessary in half a dozen other European languages. A place where I felt to be among brethren, coreligionist, fellow co-sufferers, and fellow persecuted, was, at that time, the euphoria due to the rebirth of the state of Israel has not yet evaporated. Where I felt that every passer by is not only a friend but a relative, and then to be suddenly thrust in a big city like Paris, where people do not see you, or at best look at you with indifference. Or to be more honest, you are seen as someone to make a few bucks on. Some of those objectionables we had encountered when we checked in at the hotel that was supposed to be a good one. The following day, the chambermaid did not leave any soap. When I asked her for some, her reply was, “you got some yesterday.” At night, we as a group went to the well-known Paris Opera. Our seats were all marked on the tickets. The female usher pointed with the beam of her flashlight to our seats. As soon as we settled down, I felt a tug at my sleeve from behind. I turned around to see the same usher standing behind me with the palm of her hand stretched out in front of my face unceremoniously and quite loudly demanding “Tip”.
Just one more example - when we were walking on the street, I suggested to Ruth to eat at a sidewalk cafe. The place was crowded. The patrons were all locals and the tables small and squeezed together. We were seated near a French couple, looking at the French menu, unable to decide what to order. Meanwhile, the French couple placed their order, which the waiter brought within a few minutes. What it was I do not remember, but I recall that it looked good. Pointing discreetly at it, I said to the waiter, “La meme chouse,” which is one of a half dozen French words I know. The waiter answered in a fairly good English explaining what it was. He marked down the order and disappeared. When he brought us our order, the French couple, who seemed to be in a hurry, were finishing their meal and the man asked for the bill. I could not help to see the total. Maybe I was a bit too inquisitive. When we finished and asked for our bill, I recall it was twice as much as that of the French couple. When I asked the waiter this time in English, how come? He suddenly forgot his English and did not understand a word we were saying. In those three days, there were a few more such incidents with us and our fellow travelers. I promised myself never to return to Paris. We left Paris less excited than we arrived, I, with a sense of disenchantment. Disillusioned with the people, which I held in such high esteem for so many years.
As soon as we got back home, I had to go out on the road to make a living and to start paying some of my recently incurred debts. Yet Ruth and I felt that we ought to do something for the community in honour of Ken’s Bar Mitzvah, which according to the Jewish calendar is Erev Shmini Atzeret and on the world calendar is on the tenth of October. We decided on a luncheon after the Shabbat services for the entire community, which at that time was in its prime. Almost seventy families attended because at such an occasion, everybody used to show up. It was different when it came to attending services. It was not an easy task to order in all the food from Montreal. I will give all the credit to Ruth. It was she who looked after all the figuring out, the ordering and putting it away. The big deep freezer came in very handy. We, the kosher home keepers, knew how to pack things and how to freeze them. For this occasion, Ruth’s parents came from Montreal and her brother Leonard. That Saturday, after the services, the whole community, old and young alike, adjourned to the synagogue’s social hall next to the sanctuary for a lunch fit for kings. Even though the social hall is twice or more the size of the sanctuary, the place was full. I think that it was one of the very rare occasions that the entire community, members and non-members showed up in the synagogue. Never the less, it bothered me to see all the food left on the platters, not to mention on the plates. I know that this is a land of plenty and a lot of food goes to waste. I had attended enough affairs, but until then, I was not involved personally. Since my liberation I looked at food with different eyes, so to speak, with respect and appreciation, with something bordering on reverence. To see someone throw out food is to me a sacrilege, the profanation of the most precious thing in the world next to life itself. I would assume that many other Holocaust survivors feel the same way.
For me it was also a time for reflection, going over the last twenty years since my liberation. Again, despite my losses and hardships, I felt I was building continuity, someone to carry on the names, traditions, and memory of my dear ones. A continuity of our family after those who were so cruelly and mercilessly slaughtered as well as a continuity of my tortured and tormented people. My personal and very own in a small way contribution to the prophesy of the “Dry Bones.” Here again, just like during his “Brith-Milah”, I was speaking to my parents and grandparents without a sound or moving my lips saying; here, look, he carries your name, your memory, and legacy into another generation. It is within him that you and your memory will go on living. And so the years began to roll by amidst the daily problems, difficulties of making a living and hardships of the road, which I have described earlier to a small extent. For good measure, I will mention one more event on the road, which happened to me in spring on the way from Fortune to Lories on the Burin Peninsula.
It is a desolated stretch of road for some thirty kilometres. As it was infrequently used, it was even less looked after. In the spring with the frost coming out of the ground, it used to turn into a sea of mud. Half way between those two places, Fortune and Lories, there was a place called “Dantzic Point”. It might have had a couple of houses at some time, but in my days there was no sign of it. On that spot I had to get stuck axel deep in slime. No matter how I tried, the truck would not move. The spinning wheels would just dig themselves in deeper. It occurred to me to put on the snow chains on the wheels and maybe they will get me out of the mud hole like from a snow bank. The idea came easier then putting on the chains. The double wheel chain weighs eighty pounds, but this is only the beginning. The wheel has to be free. With snow, you can dig it away and the wheel is free. But with liquid like mud, it is completely different. As soon as you remove a shovel full of mud, two shovels full take its place. From around the wheel, from under the truck or from three metres away in any direction. I soon realized that the shovel would not be of much help. I got on my knees and became immediately immersed waist deep in mud. With my hand I began to scoop the mud from around the wheel and pushing it away in all directions. It took me a couple of hours to free each of the two rear wheels and put on the chains. By then I was soaked in mud from my neck down and it was coming off me in shovels full. I got into the cab dripping mud and started the motor. Lo and behind, the truck began to move forwards. Being afraid to stop, I continued until I got a stretch of dry road. Then I took off the chains, got back into the cab which by then was as muddy as the road, turned on the heater as high as it would go and began to dry myself and the inside of the cab. By nightfall I got to St. Lawrence where fortunately the little motel had rooms with a bath. As for my clothes, the dry mud was coming off in clumps.
The above-mentioned event was one of many during the first twenty-five years of my travels over the Newfoundland roads. True, some were like the one above, to the extreme, some not quite like this but enough to make traveling a constant struggle for every mile of the road. My prayer during all those years was to see those roads paved over, as to make my livelihood a bit easier. Little did I know that the paving of those roads would spell the end of a livelihood for many others, so called wholesalers like me who made a living by selling all sorts of goods to the small stores all over the island, in every settlement and at every road junctions. The completion and paving of the Newfoundland roads made traveling across the island an enjoyment. A pleasure if to compare with the previous state and people found a new pastime and recreation, namely traveling. Mainland chain stores soon started building shopping malls in the major centres where they opened large department stores. They could draw the population from as far as seventy or eighty kilometres away, thus depriving the local small storekeepers of a livelihood. Understandably, if the small stores could not sell, they stopped buying from their suppliers, people like me. It turned out that if for some the paved roads were a blessing, for others it was a misfortune, if not a calamity. If those like me could be counted across the island by the dozen, selling dry good, footwear, hardware, medicine, small ware, novelties, kitchenware, baked stuff, sweets and what not, the small stores that were forced to close could be counted by the thousand.
But all this happened in the eighties. In the sixties, we were still struggling in the mud. Pavement then, was a thing to be desired, to be yearned for and to look forward to, in the distant future. In the summer of 1966, our son Kenneth finished grade nine at Macpherson Junior High School and entered grade ten at Prince of Wales Collegiate. Finishing grade eleven in 1968 with distinctions like all previous school years. Our older daughter Sharon (Esther Sheva), meanwhile who entered St. Andrew’s School in grade three in 1964, continued there until finishing grade six in 1968. Our younger daughter, Aviva, (Hanna Sarah) was enrolled in 1964 into St. Andrew’s School in grade one, graduating grade six in 1970. As the summer of 1969 was approaching, and our son Kenneth was finishing the eleventh grade, (that is the last year of high school in Newfoundland), we began to consider that he take a trip to Israel organized by the Canadian Jewish congress. Then, as now, the congress was sponsoring such trips for Jewish teens across Canada with the aim of acquainting them with our ancient homeland. It was to enhance their commitment to Judaism and on-going connection with Israel. Such trips held the promise of instilling in those young boys and girls the ingredient needed in becoming committed Jews and Zionists. The group consisted of youths from all over Canada. The point of embarkation was Montreal and amongst them was our son Kenneth.
That summer both our daughters, Sharon and Aviva attended Camp Kadimah and continued going for the next few years. When our son came back, he was impressed enough to want to continue his studies in Israel. However, he needed a year university in St. John’s to compensate for the twelfth grade high school, which did not exist in Newfoundland. Our son was accepted into the Memorial University of St. John’s with the intention to enter the faculty of engineering. Meantime we got in touch with the Technion in Haifa and applied for his admittance. The reply came stating that our son would have to pass an exam, even with his first year university diploma and attend a four-month “Ulpan”. (Hebrew instruction course in Israel.) We, that is Ruth and I waited impatiently for his first university year to pass so our son could go to Israel to continue with his studies. Not having experience in sending a child to Israel, we were just waiting for the day to come, knowing that he will be there among his own. In early May, as soon as our son received his first year university marks, we sent it to Haifa Technion. The exchange of mail took three weeks, at which time we received a letter from a certain Mr. SHECHTER, the dean of the department for foreign students at the Technion acknowledging the receipt of our son’s marks and saying that in view of his exceptional marks, which in fact were exceptional, he would not have to write entry exams, but would still have to attend the “ulpan.” He also said that since the course had already started, Ken should come right away. I got in touch with Mr. SHECHTER on the phone and I will quote the exact words he used to emphasize the urgency of Ken coming over. He said; “As brent” (In Yiddish, it literally means its on fire), it is imperative that he comes now. A week or so later, our son was on his way to Israel. We had arranged with friends of ours by the name of Freda and Alter BRITVITZ residing in Netania, for our son to be put up there for a few days, until he would be ready to go to the “ulpan”. We began to make plans for Ruth and I to go in July to Israel to see how he was coming along.
Flying over, as I recall, Ruth and I were wondering if our son would be waiting for us at the airport. We came to the conclusion that he will, providing he gets the day off from the “ulpan.” The airport terminal in 1970 was much smaller than the present day one in Lod, now Ben Gurion Airport. The luggage room was divided from the passenger-waiting crowd by only a glass wall. While waiting for the luggage to arrive, Ruth glanced at the crowd behind the glass and immediately noticed our son. Look, she said to me, indicating with her head the direction I should look. Sure enough there towering by half a head above the crowd, stood our son. When we finally got our luggage and pushed the heavily loaded cart outside, we got to embrace our son and found out that he is still waiting to be accepted into the ulpan due to the lack of a particular signature from a member of the Jewish agency in Haifa, who is so busy that he cannot be found in his office. To be fair I cannot put all the blame on that particular persons shoulder. To a lesser degree, I can blame others, including ourselves. Being in a hurry to send our son to Israel, we did not inquire nor were we told that certain formalities might be needed in Israel that can be arranged in or from Canada with much greater ease and speed than there. For example, in order to be accepted into the ulpan, which included living accommodations and board, one needed a doctor’s health certificate, which we could have obtained from our family doctor in five minutes as he had the medical records of our children from the day they were born. As there was no record of our son in Israel, they had to build one sending him from doctor to doctor and from lab to lab. Due to the fact that those facilities were over loaded with work, he had to wait days for an appointment. In short, he wasted the whole month on those formalities and was now waiting for the earlier mentioned signature. I hate to say that Ruth and I spent another week in that office literally sitting and waiting before we got it on an early Friday afternoon.
On Sunday, erev Tisho Be’av (the eve of the ninth of the month of Av), we went to Narzeret Eilit where the ulpan was situated. To be honest, our mood was suitably depressed. It was the first time that we parted with our son, a seventeen year old boy, for what it was supposed to be a year - a distance of over five thousand miles and him not knowing anybody. We did not know his fellow students except for the fact that he was the youngest and the next youngest was six years older than he was. Also all the other students had already lived in Israel several months up to a year and that the majority are academics. Many were university professors from Eastern Europe and South America. But what concerned us most was the fact that he missed the first two months of the four-month course and he might find it difficult to catch up. We were right. From our consequent telephone conversations with him, we deduced that things were not easy for him and should he decide to give it up, it would be fine with us. In the end I suppose it was a combination of all the above that brought him back from Israel. After the ulpan was over, his place in M.U.N. University was waiting for him and he continued for the next four years until graduation.
The same summer of 1970 when Ken returned back to Memorial University of Newfoundland (M.U.N.), our younger daughter Aviva finished her sixth grade at St. Andrew’s School and was enrolled in the seventh grade at Macpherson Junior High School. A new system of instruction was adopted in the engineering faculty at M.U.N. by which the students attended four months of instructions and four months of practical application working on assigned jobs or finding their own study related work. It also meant that there were no more vacations for the engineering students for the next five years, except a few short ones in between semesters. It also meant no more summer camp for our son and from then on, only our daughters attended summer camp near Halifax. In 1971 our older daughter Sharon finished the ninth grade at Macpherson and entered grade ten at Prince of Wales collegiate graduating from grade eleven in 1973 with even higher marks than her brother. In the same year, our younger daughter Aviva graduated grade nine from Macpherson and enrolled in Prince of Wales collegiate for grade ten. Aviva graduated there from grade eleven in 1975.
Coming back to our older daughter Sharon, having graduated from grade eleven in 1973 at Prince of Wales collegiate, she enrolled in the first year at M.U.N. As with our son we began planning on sending her to Israel to continue her studies in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. However, this time having previous experience with our son, we knew better and arranged all formalities from Canada. So as when the school year came around in the summer of 1974, all that our daughter had to do was attend the “ulpan”, which was in conjunction with the university and under its auspice and to last for a full year. I would be lying if I would say that Ruth and I were not worried for sending a seventeen-year-old daughter away so far. The only people we had there were Ruth’s cousin, Pinchus OIRING and family, whom our daughter never met before and my second and third cousins, Gidon and Lau LERMAN and Rabbi Seymour and wife Belle ZAMBROWSKY. Also Chaim and Sonia SHEMESH and Sheine Rachel. We tried to make the best of that summer of 1974. As our son was constantly occupied either studying or working, Ruth, I, and the two girls used to take advantage of the few hours I could spare to go for drives or on a picnic to “Butter Pot Park” near Holyrood, some thirty miles south west of St. John’s. I found it even harder, I think, to say good-bye to Sharon than to our son when we left him in Israel four years earlier. Maybe it was because one expects a boy to manage better and more independently than a girl. The time for her to leave came in early summer of 1974. Anxiously, we awaited her call of her arrival and it came as a relief straight from Jerusalem and from the dormitory in which she had spent the entire following year. She returned a year later in early summer of 1975 to spend her vacation with the family. Being spared the hustle of her brother’s experience four years earlier, she quickly adopted easily to the local life style and what is more important became fast familiar with the Hebrew language to an extent that after a couple of years in Israel, she was being taken for a native, Sabra.
That same spring our son graduated from M.U.N. with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. The graduation in itself was quite an impressive affair to watch. Ruth’s parents came from Montreal. And so we lived to see our first child and only son graduating from university. A month or so later, our younger daughter Aviva finished grade eleven from Prince of Wales collegiate, thus receiving her high school matriculation and applied to university. A couple of years before our son graduated from university, he started going out with a St. John’s girl by the name of Lisa NATHANSON. They, Ken and Lisa knew each other from childhood, as our son was only four years old when we moved to St. John’s. The Jewish children attended Sunday Hebrew School, as it was customary in small communities. They used to participate in plays, at times attended services and so on. The community was like one big family inviting everybody for special occasions, celebrations, anniversaries and so on. There were many occasions for not only the grown ups, but for the children too, to be together. However, one should not get the idea that everything was just perfect, or smooth or without any frictions in the community. We had our share of quarrels, discords, and strives and with it came a good measure of gossip, rumour and even slander, which only ceased due to natural attrition and departure of the gossip mongers. The last few years before our departure, the Jewish community shrunk to a shadow of its former self, and the remaining few families, clung closely to each other.
In 1975 the community was in its prime when Ken and Lisa decided to get married. They set the date for August 24 and Ruth and I sat down to make up the list of guests from our side of the family. By then my uncles and aunts in New York had gone, so the invitations went out to the cousins. I did not forget my benefactor, Leon KULOWSKI in Poland. He was retired five years earlier in 1970 at the age of sixty according to the then Polish law. My constant attempts to bring him on a visit to Israel were fruitless, so I was hoping that the Polish government would let him come for a visit to St. John’s seeing that he was here so many times before. After the formal invitation, I paid a travel agency for his return ticket and waited to hear from him. The waiting days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. I even sent a notary public’s letter to the Polish government with a guarantee to look after all the expenses incurred by him but still no action. All he needed was a foreign passport to leave the country and time was getting short. I wanted him very much to be at our son’s wedding, feeling that if somebody deserved to be there, it was he. Some ten days before the wedding, we received a telegram that he got the passport. Ruth and I went to Montreal to welcome him at the airport.
Montreal was sweltering in a heat wave. The highest temperature I can remember. Most likely the highest ever recorded in Montreal. I remember sitting with Ruth and Leon in the kitchen of Ruth’s parents completely soaked in sweat. We were glad to get back to St. John’s with Leon KULOWSKI as our guest of honour. The moment we returned, we got busy with the wedding preparations and welcoming the guests from our side of the family. Among them were Ruth’s parents, Penny and Dora PLEET, Ruth’s brother and wife, Lenard and Sheila PLEET, Ruth’s mother’s best friend, Rose ROCKSTEIN and a cousin of the PLEET family, Pola BINDER. From the states were my cousins; the children of my uncle Shloime; Abe (Abraham) and his wife Rebecca AUERBACH, Rose and her brother Leo (Lipa) and his son Steven AUERBACH, Harold and his wife Eva AUERBACH and Eli and his wife Shirley AUERBACH. Of course for that summer vacation our older daughter Sharon came from Israel after finishing the year long “ulpan.” (Hebrew course.)
The “Chupa” marriage ceremony took place in the “Shul Bema” (The platform in a synagogue from which the Torah is read). The marriage was conducted by Rabbi PETERSIEL. The dinner and dancing took place in the modern Arts and Culture Centre. Right after the wedding, the newlyweds left on their honeymoon. A day or two later, the out of town guests were all gone. My friend and benefactor Leon KULOWSKI remained with us for close to six weeks. During that time he traveled with me all over the eastern part of Newfoundland and saw of it more than many local born people. During his stay he was interviewed on television and his or rather our story was written up in the local newspapers. I succeeded in arranging for him a stop over in Paris for twenty-four hours on his way back so that he could see his cousin living there and a tour of the city to see its highlights. After the excitement of our son’s wedding and the departure of Leon, came the days of awe, which in turn were followed by the holiday of “Sukkoth” (Tabernacle) that lasts eight days. There was still one difficult hurdle for us to get over, namely the departure of our daughter Sharon to Israel where she enrolled in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the overseas student program. Just as it was difficult for us to part with her the previous year, so it was this time too, as not only she, but our son Ken now married moved out. With us remained our youngest, Aviva who having finished grade eleven, enrolled in M.U.N. in St. John’s.
Our son got a job with Newfoundland Light and Power whose office was two minutes drive from our house or a ten-minute walk. Even though he used to pass by fifty meters from our house going and coming from work, we did not see him as often as we would have liked to and so the winter 1975-76 passed. During that time we were getting our younger daughter Aviva ready to go to study in Israel. By spring of 1976 all the formalities were ready. With the end of the university year, Sharon came home for the summer vacation and two months later both our girls left for Israel. Sharon to enter the first year at the university and Aviva into the university “ulpan.”
Now life became lonelier for us, especially for Ruth having to be home by herself 3-4 days a week. Even the activities in the community had lessened. Having paid up the mortgage on the new synagogue, there was no incentive for money raising functions and the bingo games, bake sales and dances ceased. True some were still taking place in order to raise money for “Hadassah” or other charitable organizations, but not to the extent of the previous years. And so did the long Newfoundland winter pass. In early summer both our girls came home for the vacation. That same year our son Ken and his wife decided to move to Toronto. After the vacations, our daughters returned to Jerusalem to continue their studies. Again in early summer of 1978 they came home on vacation but in the fall of that year only Sharon returned to Jerusalem. Aviva decided to quit the University of Jerusalem and move to Toronto to work. For a couple of years she shared an apartment with a Jewish girl from South Africa and worked with computers for a company by the name of “Sinnott Data Processing”. After the company was bought out by Moore Business Forms, the company then moved to Mississauga, it became difficult for Aviva to commute the long distance. She gave up her job after eight years and started working for the L.C.B.O. (The Liquor Control Board of Ontario.)
Our son Ken got a job with Digital Equipment Co. where he remained a software specialist for thirteen years. He later went on his own to work for the Toronto Sun Newspaper where he is working now. Sharon continued in the Hebrew University graduating as a pharmacist in 1980. While in Jerusalem she met a young Jerusalemite by the name of Meir GAZIT. They were married on February 17,1980 in The Central Hotel in Jerusalem From our side of the family from across the ocean came: Bobba Dora PLEET, her life long friend Rose ROCKSTEIN from Florida and Jenny SMILESTEIN from Montreal. Our son Ken and his wife as well as our daughter Aviva came from Toronto where they lived. Present were some of our relatives in Israel, my father’s cousin Yaakov Kopel NISSELBAUM, his wife Henia and son Moshe. The wife of my father’s cousin Sonia SHEMESH and her daughter Lau with her husband, Gideon LERMAN and their two daughters, Irit and Orna. Sonia’s younger daughter Niva and her husband who lived in Israel, came and also Ruth’s cousin Pinchus Moshe and his wife. Also my closest friend from the Auschwitz days Leibel and his wife Bat Sheva BLISKOWSKY and their daughter Jehudit and husband Azi. From Newfoundland came our friends Phishel and Tova AUERBACH and a dozen or so other members of our Jewish community. The wedding was officiated by Rabbi Seymour ZAMBROWSKI, a relative of ours living in Jerusalem. After the wedding Ruth and I made sure Sharon and Meir had a furnished condo in a new part of Jerusalem to move into. At that time Meir was working in the credit department of a large bank in Jerusalem. Sharon got a good job in the pharmacy of the new Shaarei Tzedek Hospital. She held that position until the birth of her first child, a girl, on March 13, 1984, (9th in Adar “B”) whom they named Orly Penny after my father-in-law Pinchas PLEET. As Ruth and her mother were already in Israel since January, I came to welcome the new addition to the family. Here again I went through all the emotions I went through when our son Ken was born. Not letting on, I hid all my feelings deep inside me, speaking without moving my lips, to my parents, grandparents, pointing out to them that their memory and legacy will live on in generations to come. I saw in my grandchild the continuity of all my family that had been so mercilessly murdered. I saw in her the permanence of my family and our people.
As it was close to Passover, we stayed in Israel over the holidays. The following spring in 1985, Sharon, Meir and Orly moved to Toronto. Meir began working in the jewelers business and Sharon having passed the Canadian Pharmacy exams and licensing exams, worked for a year as an intern as required by law. Having finished the internship, she started working for Shoppers Drug Mart where she is still working today. Having now our three children in Toronto and our first grandchild, our visits to Toronto became more frequent. I watched with pride and joy as our first grandchild was turning slowly from a baby into a little girl and wishing to be able to spend time with her. For us in Newfoundland things began to change. The Jewish community began to shrink. The old members continued to pass on. A few retired to Florida. The young people, unable to find work in Newfoundland, moved to larger cities on the mainland. My kind of business began to disintegrate. As more paved roads were being built on the island, communication between settlements became easier and malls were being built in major centres. The local population was suddenly exposed to a variety of merchandize they had never seen before. Abandoning their old sources of supply they began to make their purchasing at the malls, thus depriving the petty retailers of their livelihood. Many retailers were forced to close their business and lose their source of income inadvertently making me lose a great part of my income too. As my business ceased to be profitable and having our children in Toronto, we began to think of moving closer to them.
On May 5, 1989 our daughter Sharon gave birth to her second child, a boy. Ruth and I came to the “Brith-Millah” (circumcision ceremony) where the newborn baby was named “Eitan Lavi Aryeh”. Eitan was the parent’s choice. “Lavi” after Meir’s father and “Aryeh” after my brother “Laibl” (Lova) who perished in Auschwitz at the age of thirteen. By sheer coincidence Eitan Levi Aryeh was born on the 44th anniversary of my liberation from Gusen 1 concentration camp. Again all the thoughts and all the emotions I felt with the birth of our first grandchild returned to me with just as much intensity, with just as much earnestness. This feeling came over me with the birth of the other grandchildren too. The birth of our second grandchild gave us even more incentive to be with the children and at the end of August 1989, we moved to Toronto. Unable to buy a house for the money we got for our home in St. John’s, we had to settle for a rented apartment in which we are still living ten years later. No later than a month after we moved to Toronto, I received an invitation from Mr. Ernest Condon of Labrador to come to Labrador to address schools, churches and legions on the topic of the Holocaust in conjunction with the approaching of the 11th of November. Even though I knew the eastern part of Newfoundland like the palm of my hand, I had never been so far north as Labrador and was curious to see it.
Here I have to back track three or four decades. Sometime in the sixties I was approached by the dean of religious studies at Memorial University of St. John’s, namely Dr. Morley HODDER, to address one of his classes on the topic of the Holocaust. Half-heartedly I accepted. Apparently the class liked what I had to say for I was invited back repeatedly. Before long I was beginning to be invited to schools in St. John’s. It was more difficult with the out of town schools where some were over a hundred miles away and it entailed a loss of a day’s work for me. Many times it interfered with my weekly business trips out of town. Still I did not want to deprive the students the chance of acquainting themselves with the events, atrocities and immensity of its crime. I like to point out that I never accepted any gratuity not even a token. In fact if I would add up the time lost and loss of business plus the many miles spent traveling, the gas and vehicle depreciation, it would come to a nice sum to my detriment.
Apparently they heard of me in the far north of Newfoundland and invited me. Ruth traveled with me and we spent four busy days there. On the 11th of November, there was a march in front of the cenotaph. I was invited to participate. Marching between the chief of the local mounted police detachment and the chief of the local police who both towered over me, we marched in the front row. When it came to the wreath laying, it was announced on the loud speaker the name of the person and in whose behalf that wreath is being laid. There were wreaths laid on behalf and in memory of the fallen in the army, air forces, navy and so on. Suddenly two soldiers appear besides me carrying a wreath. On its wide ribbon, I see written in golden letters, “In memory of the six million Jews that perished in the Holocaust.” I was moved to tears when I heard the loud speaker announce that Moishe KANTOROWITZ will lay a wreath in memory of the six million Jews that were slaughtered in the Holocaust. With trembling legs I helped carry the wreath between the two soldiers and laid it at the cement wall of the cenotaph. Even now, ten years later, when I think of that event I get emotional and feel a deep gratitude to those Labrador people in general and Mr. Ernest Condon in particular who was instrumental in bringing us to Labrador City and making us feel welcome there and or showing his families, himself and even the communities respect and deference to the victims of the Holocaust. During those four days I must have delivered over a dozen speeches to schools and churches, not to mention radio interviews. We were also taken on a private tour of the iron ore mine, the largest in Canada. We were impressed with the mine, the city of Labrador. It is the most northern city in Canada and above all, they had the most friendly and warm-hearted people. It truly was an experience that Ruth and I will never forget.
Shortly after our return from Labrador, I received a letter from Dr. Sam REVUSKY, a university professor at Memorial University in St. John’s. In it he was asking me to help him translate one of his father’s books that he wrote shortly after the end of the First World War. The book that his father, Abraham REVUSKY wrote, among others under the title “In Di Shvere Teg Oyf Ukraine; Zikhroynes Fun A Yiddishn Minister.” It deals with the short period of Ukrainian independence in the years 1917-1919 and the slaughter of thousands of Jews in Ukraine during that era. Abraham REVUSKY’s observation from the vantage point of a Jewish minister in CHEKHIVSKY’s short lived socialistic cabinet. I gladly agreed, hoping to gain some experience for my own future writing of my story, which I started some ten years earlier and after having written a dozen pages in Yiddish, I put it aside. It took us two years to have it translated but it needed a lot of smoothing out for which my knowledge of English was insufficient. It was left to Sam Revusky to do it by himself. It was only after I finished my part in helping Dr. Sam REVUSKY translate the Yiddish that I sat down in earnest to write my story. As I had the first dozen pages written in Yiddish, I continued doing so. The real reason, however, that I continued writing in Yiddish was that despite my over fifty years in Canada, I still have a better command of Yiddish than English. The writing progressed slowly with many interruptions for various reasons. Many interruptions were short ones and others lasting a month or more. Even though my writing is based on my memory, I had to confirm certain dates or equate them to the world or Jewish calendar.
In 1993 I turned seventy. Ruth wanted to make it a memorable year. During our thirty-three years in Newfoundland, I made many trips to Montreal on business and accumulated many air points. Now after retirement, it was a good time to use them up. Ruth found out that I have enough points to take us both to Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, and back. Here was a chance to see an exotic part of the world we would not otherwise see. While in Hong Kong, we made a detour into China visiting Shanghai, Beijing, Xian, and Gulin. We came back two weeks before Pessach (Passover) and were picked up by Sharon and Meir. On the way home, Sharon tells us that she is pregnant. On October 21, 1992 (25th of Tishrey), Sharon gave birth to a boy. At his “Brith-Millah” (circumcision ceremony), he was named Erez Shlomo Lev. Shlomo after my sister Sarah, (Sonia) and Lev after my youngest sister Liba. Both of them perished in Auschwitz with all my family on February 1,1943. Now I had names after all the members of my immediate family. I felt that at least their names will not be erased, at the same time feeling sad for my extended family of which not a soul was left to carry on their names and memory.
Our second daughter, Aviva got married in the fall of 1990. The wedding took place in Toronto at the Beth David Shull and was officiated by Rabbi SHEIN. This time many more relatives of Ruth and mine attended. Besides Ruth’s mother, Dora PLEET, Ruth’s brother, Lenny PLEET, his wife Sheila and their two children, Janina and Joseph all from Montreal. Ruth’s cousins from Ottawa and Detroit also attended. From my side was Abraham AUERBACH, his wife Rebecca, his daughter, Pola and husband Herman, their daughter Heather with sons Adam and Robert, also, my cousins Rose and Eli AUERBACH all from New York. My cousins Harold and his wife Eva AUERBACH came from Silver Spring, Maryland and my cousin Jack AUERBACH from Long Beach. On August 27, 1995 (second day Rosh Chodesh) our daughter Aviva gave birth to a girl. She was named in the Lodzer Shul (synagogue) after my father’s two sisters who perished in the Holocaust. Their names were Sheindl and Pesl. Here again I had the privilege to fulfill their and my wish by perpetuating the names of my two aunts whose families were completely obliterated. My daughter calls her Ariella.
In April of the year 1995 I received a letter from Memorial University of Newfoundland saying and I quote: “1995 marks the 50th anniversary of end of World War II and the closure of one of the saddest chapters in human history. In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, in celebration of the triumph of life over the forces of darkness and evil and in contemplation of your personal involvement in those events as well as the years you spent as a citizen of this province teaching the consequences of racial and religious hatred, Memorial University of Newfoundland wishes to award to you an honorary degree. On behalf of the senate of Memorial University, I therefore have the honour to invite you to be present at our annual fall convocation on October 28, 1995 to accept the degree of Doctor of Law, Honoris Causa. The university community would also be delighted if you would agree to address the convocation.” I found out shortly after that it was thanks to our good friend and humanitarian, Ernest Condon who submitted my candidacy for this honour to the senate of the university, which was unanimously accepted.
Ruth and I arrived in St. John’s Thursday evening, October 26,1995 accompanied by our daughter Sharon and her two older children, Orly and Eitan. The third child Erez, stayed home with his father due to his young age. Our second daughter, Aviva could not come, as she would find it too difficult to travel with a month old baby. The next day I spent some time trying on graduation gowns at the university and seeing the city with Ruth. For the Friday evening Sabbath meal, we were invited to our friend, Judy WILANSKY, where we enjoyed the evening with some prominent members of the community including Ernest Condon and his charming mother. For Saturday lunch, we were invited to the lieutenant governor of Newfoundland. Sharing the meal with the premier and some ministers of Newfoundland as well as some university dignitaries.
After the meal, we were all driven to the university where in its huge hall the convocation took place. It all proceeded with great fanfare. After several hundred students received their degrees, the university public speaker introduced me to the thousands of guests, graduating students, their families and faculty. The content of his speech and delivery was admirable and impassionate. After being bestowed with the university cape and handed the degree by the chancellor of the university, John Crosby, I took the podium with a good measure of trepidation. I spoke in my life to small and large groups, but never to so large and prestigious an audience. I was told later the contents and delivery was good. I hope that it was. That same evening the university threw a dinner for the members of the provincial government, faculty, distinguished members of the city administration and us. The next day the Jewish community held a luncheon for us. Right after, Sharon and the two children left for Toronto. I spend the rest of the day and part of the following day, Monday speaking to schools. We returned home Monday evening.
Coming back home I returned to my favourite pursuit, that is the writing of my life story and when called upon by the Holocaust education and memorial centre, I continued to address students and teach them the results of hatred, bigotry and racial discrimination. Before I knew it, another few years rolled by and on Friday, November 14, 1997, (15th of Cheshvan 5757) our younger daughter, Aviva gave birth to a girl. She too was named in the Lodzer Shull and given the name Freida-Khinka. Freida, after my mother’s mother Freida-Leah who died in Shershev in 1935, and Khinka, after my father’s mother who perished in Auschwitz together with my entire family on February 1, 1943. My daughter Aviva calls her Genevieve but to Ruth and I, she is called Freidala. Here again, I had the privilege to perpetuate the names and memories of my two grandmothers.
Now as I am concluding the last few lines of my story I am going back to my youth, to my adolescent years and wonder if I could have changed something in my life or in the life of my dear ones. I still remember as a boy, the stories my father used to tell me about his escapades as a soldier during World War I. In my exuberant imagination I used to see myself a hero in such circumstances. How could have I, my father or anybody else for this matter, imagine the terror, the horror, the cruelties and atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis and their sympathizers during their long night of unimaginable savagery.
Who could have imagined that in the dark corners of their minds (not souls, for to commit such atrocities could there be a soul), there was the madness and ability to conceive and execute a plan to annihilate an entire people, an entire race, and an entire faith. This was done in the most inconceivable, in the most barbaric way. My mind takes me back to the open ditches and entire families lined up along its edge being moved down by machine guns. Little babies being thrown alive down into open pits, the gapping openings of the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The tortured deaths of the hundreds of thousands of camp inmates and ask myself what could I have done to change it, or to change anything at all? What could I have done for my family? I live with so much regret. I am tortured by remorse for not doing something. Yet I know that there was nothing I could do. The ten thousand souls of the ghetto I was in all tried to come up with something. All in vain. Every soul tried to save itself, to save a loved one. There were smarter people than I, braver than I. But to no avail. We all ended up in Auschwitz. The handful that succeeded to get out of the ghetto or ghettos, to fight the Nazis, were decimated in battle or by anti-Semitic partisan groups. Few of them remained to tell their stories and bemoan their losses.
I look back with so much hurt to the year and a half that we, that is my immediate family spent together under the tyrannical rule of the accursed Nazis and my heart aches with pain. I can still see the tears rolling down my mother’s cheeks, my parent’s desperate search for a way out, which they knew would not be found. The innocent and frightened faces of my little sisters and brother looking up to my parents who where looking back at them with so much pain, sadness and helplessness. They knew that there is nothing in the world that will reverse their ultimate fate.
I ask myself how could a civilized people sink to such depth to which the most primitive creature on each did not descent so far? I think about the millions that died and they died the most horrific deaths. What about their lives that have been snuffed out prematurely. Some were only hours old, some were not able to crawl or walk or speak yet. Those children from kindergarten, pre-schools and schools. A million and a half children. How much creative power, undiscovered and discovered talent. They were never given a chance. What about the grown ups? The amount of brain power, talent, creativity? It is staggering, incalculable. Six million human beings among them world-renowned personalities in every conceivable field and the ordinary people. Did they not think? Did they not feel? Were they not human beings like us? They knew of joy and of grief. Of happiness and sadness. Of satiety and hunger. Of health and sickness. Of bliss and sorrow. Of bounty and scarcity. What about their personal lives? Their dreams. Their hopes. Their plans for the future that were left unfulfilled. Who will finish their dreams? Their hopes? Their plans? Who will sing their unsung songs? Their unwritten music, poetry and prose? Who will do all this? Who will rebuild a world that took almost two millenniums to build, a culture with its own spirituality. A spirituality so profoundly damaged that the immensity of it cannot be comprehended.
I lift my eyes to the heights and join the millions of my slaughtered brethren in a heaven crying, why? WHY?