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Part II
Mittenwald--which is only about eight kilometres from the
Austrian border and nearly twenty kilometres from the famous Garmish Partenkirchen
where the winter ski Olympiad once took place--was surrounded by beautiful
mountains and a lake, Lautersee. Many live rose fences surrounded the
front of the houses. It was a delight to take a walk and smell the perfume
of the variety of those roses.
In Mittenwald, we had two D.P. camps. One housed Ukrainians and the other
Jews. When Elek and I came back from Italy, the Jewish D.P. camp was in
Hotel Traube. For reasons unknown to me, we moved to Hotel Karwendel.
Due to a lack of space, we also occupied a small building near the Karwendel
and a part of Pension Hoffman, where Elek and I stayed before I got married.
Cultural activities were not many. Every now and then, a cultural evening
with entertainment took place. The U.S. Joint Committee sent over some
Jewish books. The famous H. Leivik, poet of Jewish literature, visited
our camp in Mittenwald. In 1945 he had published, among the twenty or
so books he wrote during his lifetime, In Treblinka bin ich nicht gevesen
(I have not been in Treblinka). We had social activities daily. The activity
which most people took part in was ballroom dancing. Some enjoyed playing
cards. Our D.P. camp was supported by UNRRA (the United Nations Relief
and Rehabilitation Administration) which ceased functioning in 1951. We
also got clothing from the U.S. Joint Committee which was to be distributed
according to the needs of the camp members. Unfortunately, that was not
always the case. When I arrived in Mittenwald from Italy in December 1945,
my wife (now of fifty-four years) wore a plastic raincoat over a jacket.
The wives of Camp Committee members, however, were elegantly dressed due
to the clothing they received from Joint. Myra bought a second-hand coat
which I remodelled for her with the help of Abram Soika.
The wedding took place in Hotel Karwendel. Radomer friends came from out
of town to share the joy of a former dream—marrying off a friend,
a survivor. How much more joyful it would have been if our full families—parents,
sister, brother, aunts, uncles and cousins—could have been present.
We were one of the lucky families to have survived with siblings: I with
two brothers, Jacob and Elek, my wife with her sister Bela. Only in spirit
were our parents able to share the joy with us; the joy of seeing their
children under the Chupa canopy, sharing with all the guests--who were
considered almost family--in the good wishes and having Nachas (joy, pride).
The accommodation my wife had was a very small room. We needed a larger
place due to the fact that my wife was pregnant. The Camp Committee made
decisions about the priority of receiving lodging. Some couples--friends
of Committee members--received lodging before us, although their wives
were not pregnant. We took the lodging where Elek and I lived and Elek
looked for other accommodation.
Remaining in Germany was out of the question since we saw no future in
a land where the orders for the destruction of a third of the Jewish nation
came from. We looked for countries that would open their doors to us.
We registered for Canada and Australia. In order to go to Palestine, I
went to Munich to see Mr. Gad Beck, a representative of the Sochnut--a
non-governmental institution working outside Israel which took care of
immigration, work placement and monetary campaigns. I was refused because
my wife was pregnant. They were looking for single people or married couples
without children to go with the ship Alijah Beit illegally to Palestine.
They foresaw the day when Palestine would become a Jewish state. To build
a state, a strong healthy economy and a future, a country had to have
a foundation. The foundation was people--young people.
The I.L.G.W.U. (international Ladies Garment Workers Union) from the United
States and Canada were short of workers in the trade. The Canadian Union
decided to get Jewish workers from D.P. camps. Union leaders, including
President Bernard Shein, came to Germany to examine who was and who was
not a tailor. Due to the fact that we wanted out of Germany and would
move to whichever place we could get to first, we decided we would go.
My brother Jacob registered as a tailor also. I passed the examinations.
My youngest brother Elek left in 1948 to go to Palestine illegally with
the Alijah Beit and arrived with the first boat to Israel after
Israel proclaimed itself a Jewish state.
For us, doctors’ examinations followed and questionnaires had to
be filled out: we passed them all. With Aron, our eleven-month old baby,
we arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia on December 3, 1948 on the ship Samaria.
Aron became sick on the train from Halifax to Montreal. From the train,
arrangements were made with the Red Cross and in Moncton, New Brunswick,
a Red Cross ambulance was waiting at the train station and took us to
the hospital. Without language or money, in a strange country, we arrived
at the hospital in the evening. Aron immediately got very good attention
from the doctor in charge. My wife Myra, who had taken some English lessons
in Germany, was thankfully able to communicate with the doctor, answering
all the questions regarding our son. As strangers in the city, we had
no place to go. The doctor asked us if we would like to stay with the
Rabbi for the night. We had the impression of a Rabbi in a small town
in Poland with a large family of children, a non-fluent knowledge of the
country’s language, immersed only in Jewish studies. In reality,
Rabbi Medjuck was just contrary to our thoughts: he had a lot of feeling
regarding the Holocaust and the suffering of survivors, and was very knowledgeable
about the situation of the world. We didn’t want to impose on the
Rabbi as strangers at night, so we did not accept the doctor’s proposal.
He arranged a hotel for us, where we stayed for a week while Aron was
in the hospital.
On the way to the hospital the next morning, we were approached by a lady,
Sara Rubin, who asked if we were the couple who arrived the previous day
with a sick child. She assured us that the doctor who was taking care
of our son took care of her children and that Aron was in good hands.
We got to know her family and the family of her sister-in-law Rose Rubin,
now residing permanently in Montreal. We were invited to Sara and Rose
Rubin’s for meals. Most importantly, we got moral support: that was
the greatest help. We did not want to accept any clothing or other merchandise
from their department store, although the offer was genuine. We were taught
from childhood to keep our dignity. Getting handouts was a disgrace, according
to our parent’s teaching.
Upon Aron’s release from hospital, Mr. Rubin, Rose’s husband,
and another gentleman from the Moncton Jewish community, arranged train
tickets for us, with a sleeper, to Montreal. Arriving in Montreal, the
J.I.A.S. (Jewish Immigrant Aid Service) who had been contacted by the
Jewish community in Moncton, arranged and paid for accommodation for us
on Casgrain Street, where we stayed only one month. We then rented a room
at the home of the family Lou Holtzman, located on St. Laurent, corner
Villeneuve. The grandchildren of the Holtzmans were older than Aron. Mr.
Holtzman liked to take Aron on his knees while eating and play with him.
Aron enjoyed putting his hands in Mr. Holtzman’s plate. Mrs. Holtzman
used to give her husband arguments, saying, "You didn’t allow
your own children to put their hands in your plate." Aron was always
very clean and nicely dressed. This, I think, was why Mr. Holtzman permitted
Aron to do what he did. It is fifty-one years later and we are still friends
with the children of the Holtzman family.
Eventually, an opportunity arose to rent a house. I spoke about it to
my brother Jacob who lived across the street. We looked at the unheated
house at 170 Van Horne and decided to take it with a three-year lease.
For this, we had to pay key money (without key money, it was practically
impossible to rent a house) for which we received an old burned table,
a few chairs and a gas stove from the previous tenants. After the termination
of the lease, Myra and I rented a heated house, and from there moved to
our home where we presently reside.
The beginning in Canada was not easy. Without family, friends, language,
the new surroundings required a tough adjustment. Work was seasonal and
wages were meagre. The minimum wage was twenty-five dollars for fourty-four
hours in my trade. I only got twenty dollars for the same amount of hours
on my first job. This was barely enough to support a family with a child,
but I was happy to have a job and it was only later that I found out about
the minimum wage. Had I been more assertive, I would have acted differently
in the union. The constant nightmares about the ghetto and concentration
camps did not help in my situation. I changed jobs constantly. My wife
helped with selling to neighbours. She also managed to take me out of
the cloth industry and, through our friends and ship-brothers and sisters
Esterka and Srulek Schwartzbaum, a furrier, I became a fur finisher. The
first coat I had to finish was through Srulek Schwartzbaum. Fur finishing
means I would receive a coat, jacket, stole or cape with the collar, lapels,
facing and pockets sewn in. I marked for loops or hooks, made sure the
bottom of the front edge was even, and sewed in the lining, making sure
the stitches were not seen.
I started contracting at home and then took a place on St. Alexandre.
St. Alexandre was the centre of the fur industry and fur suppliers at
that time After a while, I moved my contracting business to the Mayor
Building on Mayor Street in downtown Montreal. The most reliable person
in my finishing business was my wife Myra. At any time, any weather, when
hired hands refused to come to work, Myra came down and did the necessary
work. Actually, she was never an apprentice: she learned just from observing
how the finishing was done.
I had an established fur contracting business when the fur union started
to give me trouble. The union wanted to eliminate contracting completely,
although legally, contracting was permitted. Only in a small way did they
succeed. From a manufacturer that I worked for, I got an offer to liquidate
my business and work for them inside the plant. The arrangements were
favourable for the time being, so with my five-person staff, I started
at a new company, which lasted about twenty-seven years, as foreman of
the finishing department of Taran Fur. A conflict erupted between the
fur union and Taran Fur Co. in the spring of 1987, and in the middle of
1987, all employees, with exception of a few, were locked out. The settlement
case is still pending in court now, in the year 2000.
The outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 sent a shock wave through the
Jewish population in Montreal. We did not expect that the Israeli intelligence
would neglect such an important point as being prepared for every eventuality
on the Egyptian and Syrian borders, especially after the victory of the
Six Day War. Many school children brought in their piggy bank savings
in order to contribute to the C.J.A.’s (Combined Jewish Appeal) emergency
campaign for Israel, as did the elderly people with their pensions. When
I started the campaign at Taran Fur in 1973, about eighty Jewish workers
were employed. The yearly C.J.A. campaign continued until 1987 when we
were locked out.
The Radomer Mutual Aid Society was established in Montreal before we arrived
after World War II. Unlike myself, with two brothers, and Myra with her
sister, most of the newcomers had no family. The Radomer Society was considered
an extended family. I became active in the organization and continue to
be even now, in the capacity of correspondence secretary. Our achievements
were many: we bought a part of a large cemetery; erected a monument in
memory of our families, friends and the six million men, women and children
who perished during the Holocaust. We donated an ambulance to Magen David
Adom (the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross); a room to the dormitory
at Technion in Haifa; and a monetary donation to Beth Halochem, a convalescent
home and hospital for Israeli soldiers wounded in wars, by unexpected
Hezbollah attacks, by mines, or for those who are mentally disturbed.
We also helped needy landsmen in Israel, plus made the local and out-of-town
yearly donations to Jewish institutions like Combined Jewish Appeal, the
Simon Wiesenthal Centre, etc.
After my retirement in 1987, I did a few things I couldn’t do while
working. I became a volunteer for a meals-on-wheels program and I learned
the hobby of stained glass work from my wife Myra, which is very gratifying.
Together with Myra, I enrolled in College Marie Victorin in a Social Science
program for active retired people, which took three years. We wanted to
complete the studies we were unable to finish in Poland. There I had the
opportunity to study without being discriminated against; I did not have
to stand or sit in designated places, as was the way in universities in
Poland in the 1930s. In my class, I had students of many nationalities
from different corners of the world. We learned customs, behaviours, etc.
from one another. I made friends with some students, and after ten years
we still attend lectures of the alumni. Some of the classes I took with
Myra. For assignment topics, we always chose different ones, never taking
the easy way out, for which professors were very pleased. The course I
most enjoyed was a current-events course given by Stan Nachfolger. The
way he presented it made me feel good, and I learned to see and understand
differently than I had. I would not, however, minimize the other courses
and how they were delivered, especially one held by Dr. Francis Xavier
Charet in comparative religion and philosophy, which was a delight. I
also enjoyed studying English, law, anthropology, Canadian history, and
literature. For us, attending college was a great achievement. I arrived
in Canada not understanding English or French. For a very short time,
I took evening courses subsidized by the government and designed for newcomers.
Circumstances did not permit me to continue. I learned to speak the English
language mainly from reading and conversing, and to spell from visual
memory. In college, my vocabulary and writing improved tremendously, as
did my knowledge concerning retirees, due to the courses given to us.
We graduated in 1990 with high marks.
Myra also gave me the initiative to become a member of the Holocaust Remembrance Committee, and with this committee, I take part in arranging the Yom Hashoah memorials, which are still very well attended by the Montreal Jewish population. The Yom Hashoah programs are constantly improving. The candle lighting is very moving, as are the readings of personal experiences from survivors, and poetry from the second and third generation. Many hours of planning and discussion are well spent by the Committee until decisions are reached about the memorial's proceedings. For example, who should have the honour of making the opening remarks. The memorial is then followed by an introduction by our co-chairs, Sara Weinberg and Sydney Zoltak. Then the lighting of the memorial candles by a survivor and people of the second and third generation takes place, followed by a greeting from the Consul General of Israel, readings by a survivor, as well as the second and third generation, songs by a choir chosen by the Holocaust Remembrance Committee, a memorial service, the saying of a psalm, Kaddish, and a conclusion involving a partisan song, "O Canada" and "Hatikvah". How gratifying when we see the improvements which are made each year due to our devoted co-chairs.
It is almost fifty-two years since our (Myra, Aron and myself) arrival
in the free, democratic country of Canada, a country which has given me
the feeling and opportunity of being able to accomplish things using my
own abilities. Memories of the past can never be forgotten, particularly
the war years: the loss of family and friends, the experience in the ghetto,
the concentration camp. We have had our ups and downs in Canada, but I
always had to look on the bright side to survive. I got married and built
a family--Aron is now married with two lovely daughters, Shana and Raila--and
I have been able to give some of my free time to volunteer work, helping
those in need. This work makes me proud.
My wife and I are celebrating our 54th wedding anniversary. We hope and
pray to be able to keep our health for many years to come and have continuous
joy from our son Aron, daughter-in-law Bobbi and our two lovely granddaughters,
Shana and Raila.