From Canadian Jewish News, July 2013 Toronto psychologist Dr. Edna Magder was just a baby when the Nazis deported her grandmother from Vienna, but she knows it wasn’t the first time the Nazis had come to her grandmother’s door. A group of drunken Nazi soldiers had previously visited her grandmother — Theresia Hanni Brodi —…
S.W. Jacobs, K.C., M.P., Draws the Attention of the Members of Parliament to the Fact That Jews Have Been Murdered in Poland Even After the Treaty With Poland Had Been Signed From the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, September 19, 1919 Ottawa, Sept. 12 — Two resolutions calling for approval of compacts entered into by certain of…
From the Canadian Jewish News, October 2013 Some 70 years after he last saw his father, mother, brothers and sisters alive, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and Bergen Belsen concentration camp was recently given a photograph of his family for the first time. “When I received this photo, I said, ‘This is better than…
From the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, September 19, 1919 ◊ Note: “In 1919, Russian Jews were caught in the middle of a civil war, and became the victims of warring Red and White Russian, Ukrainian and Polish forces, among others. Thousands of pogroms resulted in the loss of an estimated 100,000 Jewish lives. Polish troops, Petlura’s soldiers,…
From the Canadian Jewish News, April 2013 Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler, by Trudi Kanter In a voice as fresh, direct and charming as Sylvia Plath’s, the late writer Trudi Kanter tells the story of her journey through war-torn Europe, seeking safe haven for herself and her beloved Walter, two Austrian Jews hoping to…
From Canadian Jewish News, 2003 He was a British soldier and she was a Jewish nurse in British-mandate Palestine: they met in Egypt about 1940. She was killed in an accident and he vowed to let her family know. But how to find them? He — the British soldier — knew that she had been…
From the Canadian Jewish News, October 3, 2012 TORONTO — A series of old historic photographs from the Polish shtetl of Staszow has been quietly wowing visitors since being installed in the Stashover-Slipia Synagogue on Sultana Avenue in Toronto. The photographs are to remain on permanent display in the shul’s lobby. “Everyone notices them when they…
From The Canadian Jewish News, 2001 SS commander Otto Moll had a tooth-ache, and so visited the dentist of Auschwitz, a Jewish inmate from Dobra, Poland named Berek Jakubowicz. Settling into the chair, the pulled out his revolver and pointed it at the emaciated attendant. “Don’t try anything stupid, dentist,” he warned. “Herr Hauptscharfuhrer,” the…
From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, Spring 2011 David Beck was a Holocaust survivor who had seen the worst of humanity, so “he wanted to focus on bringing out the good things in life,” said his son Mendy Beck about the long-time former shammus of Beth Sholom, who died October 2010 at the age of 89.…
From Books in Canada, 2002 One evening some months ago, a crowd of about 600 people gathered in Toronto’s Adath Israel Synagogue for the launch of Rabbi Erwin Schild’s latest book, The Very Narrow Bridge: A Memoir of an Uncertain Passage. The hall in the synagogue was packed (standing room only) as the rabbi delivered…
