Books – Page 3

Seeking middle ground

At the local launch for her new book, October 7th: Searching for the Humanitarian Middle, Globe & Mail columnist Marsha Lederman admitted she’s “not doing great.”

“A lot of us in this room can say that,” she said in her opening remarks at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver Sept. 18. “It’s been another terrible week with terrible news.”

Lederman was the Western arts correspondent for the Globe for 15 years, before moving to the opinion section in 2022. Her memoir, Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed, was published that same year. (See jewishindependent.ca/a-story-of-two-families.)

On Oct. 9, 2023, Lederman began writing columns on the aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel and the tide of antisemitism that followed it. When an editor suggested she publish a book containing a full year of those columns, together with other material she’d written on Jewish identity, she began working on October 7th.

The process of collecting material for the book was emotionally wrenching, said Lederman, a child of Holocaust survivors whose intergenerational trauma was triggered by the Hamas attack.

“It was really hard to relive those early days, rereading the columns and remembering what was happening in the world at that time. When I read through older articles I’d written about my Jewish identity, I was shocked at how many times that subject matter had come up and the extent to which they foreshadowed what would happen in the war.”

When she filed that first column on Oct. 9, Lederman said she wrote it in a haze of shock, emotion, upset and fear. “I knew it wasn’t what had just happened, but what would happen next: retaliation, that it would be terrible for Palestinians, and that there would be anti-Israel sentiment. But I could never have predicted that all things would have exploded the way they have and that it would still be there, almost two years later.”

Describing herself as a “progressive Zionist,” Lederman said she believes the state of Israel has a right to exist but is “strongly against the war and the occupation. I’m horrified by what some of the settlers are doing in the West Bank, but I love Israel and Israelis – though not the ones in power right now. I don’t blindly approve of everything Israel does and part of my caring for Israel is what has led me to speak out.”

In an hour-long talk moderated by Kathryn Gretsinger, a journalist and associate professor at the University of British Columbia, Lederman discussed her hope for a two-state solution, her annoyance at how people speaking out in favour of Palestinians have been branded antisemitic, and the threats she has received in response to her columns.

“My trauma is nothing compared to what people in the war zone are experiencing, but it’s still a horrible experience,” she said.

Prior to Oct. 7, Lederman said she saw herself as a journalist who happened to be Jewish. After Oct. 7, as she began writing about the attack and subsequent war, she said she put herself on the page, explaining her Jewish background. When she wrote about plastic surgery recently, the Globe received a letter to the editor stating, “how dare Lederman write about that when children are dying in Gaza!”

The book’s subtitle, Searching for the Humanitarian Middle, deals with the quandary of holding several feelings simultaneously: concern for Israel and the Israeli soldiers, as well as Palestinians who are being killed.

“I believe the humanitarian middle is essential, and there are a lot of caring people who want to see an end to this war. The numbers are terrible: 60,000 Gazans have been killed in this war,” she said, citing numbers released by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health.

“That’s appalling to me,” she continued. “Hostages are still underground and antisemitism has reached a level that’s shocking, even to me, as a pessimistic catastrophizer. The word genocide carries so much weight for us as Jewish people. Israel was born out of the ashes of the worst genocide we have known. So, for Israel to be accused of that very crime is heartbreaking.”

Asked what her solution to the war would be, Lederman said a ceasefire deal is the way to go. “I believe what we’re seeing from Israel is an over-

reaction and I would urge the government of Israel to consider a two-state solution. I believe that’s the answer.”

She said, “My heart aches for the hostages and their families, and for all the people in Gaza. When I think about the intergenerational trauma from this time, it’s shattering. I feel a responsibility to write about this as a Jewish person, a journalist, a mother, as someone who cares about other human beings, and as a child of Holocaust survivors, but I’m feeling the weight of the world in my fingers.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.

Survival in the forest

The harrowing new memoir by Vancouver’s Evelyn Kahn, They Never Left Me: A Holocaust Memoir of Maternal Courage and Triumph, written with her daughter Hodie Kahn, tells of a family’s survival while hiding in the forests of Eastern Europe.

They Never Left Me includes some of the most debasing inhumanity imaginable. Perhaps most shocking, though, is that human beings can withstand what the author and her family experienced and somehow endure and begin again in a post-Holocaust world, to raise a successful family and find meaning and happiness.

image - They Never Left Me book cover — Evelyn Kahn wrote They Never Left Me: A Holocaust Memoir of Maternal Courage and Triumph with her daughter, Hodie Kahn. On Oct. 19, at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue, Evelyn Kahn will talk about the book with Dr. Robert Krell.

Stories of Chava’s (Evelyn’s) early years, typical of traditional Eastern European Jewish shtetl life – her father’s preparations for morning prayers, her mother baking round challah for Rosh Hashanah, a live fish floating around in preparation for gefilte – read as ominously ordinary, knowing as we do a little of what is to come.

From their hometown of Eishyshok, a shtetl in Poland that historically had shifted between Lithuania, Poland and then, tragically, between the Nazis and the Soviets, the family moved a few dozen kilometres to Lida, in what is now Belarus. This relocation, an economic move driven by her father’s proficiency in the Russian language, was the least dramatic move of Chava Landsman’s young life. Nonetheless, that move might have been the first of many near-miracles that saved the lives of Chava and the women in her family.

“On the eve of Rosh Hashanah 1941, Eishyshok’s Jews were rounded up and locked in the synagogue and two schools. After three days, they were herded to the horse market.… Over the next two days, the Jews were taken in groups of 250 – first the men and then the women and children – to the old Jewish cemetery. They were ordered to undress and stand at the edge of large open ditches, where they were shot to death by Lithuanian police. Babies were bashed to death against headstones or tossed into the air for sharpshooting practice led by the chief of police, Ostrauskas, before their tiny lifeless or quivering bodies were thrown into the killing pits to join their parents. Everyone was murdered.”

The final victim of the massacre was the town rabbi, “shot after being forced to witness the murder of his entire flock.”

As the Nazis invaded Lida, the family witnessed the aerial bombardment and made the decision to flee. They headed south, and sought refuge in another shtetl, Zhetel. But this was a brief refuge – not an escape. Death was chasing them.

Chava’s father was rounded up during a cull of intelligentsia on July 23, 1941, barely a month after they arrived.

“We watched in misery as Papa climbed into the back of a truck and was driven away,” she writes. “I never saw my father again.”

Chava’s Uncle Chaim and Rivke’s husband Shael were conscripted into the Red Army, leaving the women as the only family together in the Zhetel ghetto, which was created in February 1942. Chaim was captured by the Nazis, but incredibly escaped a POW camp and returned to Zhetel, where he became a Partisan in the forest and was killed. On April 30, 1942, the first liquidation began in the Zhetel ghetto.

“My own memory of the procession along the street is of being corralled into a narrow funnel and of feeling smothered by the crush of human bodies around me,” she writes. “I remember telling my mother I could not breathe. I was worried I might pass out and be trampled. People were on top of one another – on top of me – crying and tearing their hair out. I wanted Mama to pick me up, but it was impossible. We were compressed like livestock in a cattle chute. I just held onto Mama’s hand and prayed that mine would not slip out of hers.”

In terror, Chava told her mother she was being suffocated.

“She bent down close to me and I will never forget her tearful words,” Kahn writes. “My child, it is better that you should suffocate here than my eyes should witness you being murdered.

“I took in what she said and then simply asked, ‘Does it hurt to die, Mama?’ She assured me it was a peaceful experience. ‘Neyn mayn kind, es iz vey a feygele, git a brum’ (‘No my child, it is like a chirp of a bird’).

“Her answer quieted my fears and calmed me. I was never afraid of death from that moment on. I never remember feeling despair. On the contrary, I was exceptionally calm and clear throughout the nightmare to come.”

Somehow, the women survived the first liquidation. When the second and what would be the final liquidation of the ghetto began on Aug. 6, 1942, 3,000 Jews were herded to the Jewish cemetery and murdered. Knowing what was to come, Chava’s mother Basia decided to risk going into hiding – a choice between instant death and likely later death for disobedience. Again, it was a lifesaving decision.

Basia, Chava and her grandmother (Bobe) Hoda fled to the forest. Miraculously, with the help of a non-Jewish friend of the family, they were reunited with Chava’s Aunt Rivke, and the three adult women and Chava would endure the horrors of life in the woods for two years. (Shael fought with the Red Army through the war and survived, but he and Rivke did not reunite.)

The women largely fended for themselves with some assistance from Partisans and the occasional righteous non-Jew. Like other Jews in the forests at the time, they formed fluctuating ad hoc survival “family groups” of a dozen or as many as 20 people.

“We had learned the rules of the ghetto and we had survived. Now we would have to learn the rules of the forest. And we would have to learn them very, very well and very, very quickly. We could either adapt and hopefully live or not adapt and definitely die.

“We lived with the constant nervous anticipation of being discovered and killed at any moment. We were careful to speak quietly. We were always alert. We became as hypersensitized and wary as the creatures of the forest.”

In winter, they sheltered in holes in the ground.

“Needless to say, hygiene and maintaining our health in the forest was hugely challenging,” Kahn writes. “We were malnourished and vitamin deficient. We were unwashed and unkempt. We wore the same clothes day after day with no relief. We were filthy skeletons, bulked up only by the layers of our lice-infested clothing, which we wore 24 hours a day. I often wonder how we managed to survive those two years without bathing.”

Basia’s doggedness saved her family. Even at 40 degrees below zero and with snow to her thighs, she would trudge out of the woods to beg or steal provisions from local farmers.

“It is true that many (most) farmers were unfeeling or, worse, informers. But it is important to acknowledge that there were those who hung onto their humanity during the war, righteous gentiles who were sympathetic and compassionate and gave us food and other necessities,” Kahn writes.

It is estimated that only one-half to one-third of the Jews who hid in forests survived to liberation. And, when “liberation” did come, and the Nazis were defeated, antisemitism remained. Many ordinary Russians, Poles, Lithuanians and Belarusians thought they had seen the last of the Jews and were not welcoming to the few straggling remnants who found their way back home.

The three generations of women – Bobe Hoda, mother Basia, Aunt Rivke and Chava, as well as Rivke’s baby, Joseph, who was born in and knew life only in the forest – remarkably survived and proceeded through a series of displaced persons camps, with schooling and vocational training for the young survivors. They had no family in the new state of Israel and so America seemed the more logical destination. At age 16-and-a-half, Chaya/Evelyn, her mother, aunt, cousin and grandmother were greeted at New York by the Statue of Liberty and a coterie of cousins. Eventually, Evelyn reconnected with a young man from Eishyshok, Leon (Leibke) Kaganowicz, who would become Leon Kahn and, because of American migration quotas, a Canadian who lived in Vancouver. Together, they became stalwarts of the Vancouver community.

Leon Kahn passed in 2003. His memoir, No Time To Mourn: The True Story of a Jewish Partisan Fighter, was published in 1978 and reissued in 2004. It will be released again this fall.

Evelyn has two sons, Mark and Saul, and daughter Hodie, as well as seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

The idyllic start of Chava’s life, surrounded by a tight and loving family and community, juxtaposes horrifically with the abrupt cataclysm of history that would follow. The survival of three generations of women in the forests of Eastern Europe is a monument to human resolve and resilience. They Never Left Me is a momentous contribution to the literature of the Holocaust.

An event featuring Evelyn Kahn in conversation about the memoir with Dr. Robert Krell will take place on Oct. 19, 2 p.m., at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue, presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Ronsdale Press and Schara Tzedeck.

Writers fest starts soon

he 38th annual Vancouver Writers Festival takes place on Granville Island Oct. 20-26. Among the 130-plus local and international authors at 87 events are several members of the Jewish community. A glance through the lineup finds, in order of appearance, Rachel Hartman, Marsha Lederman, Guy Gavriel Kay, Katherine Ashenburg, Jill Yonit Goldberg, Eve Lazarus, Sam Wiebe and Jerry Wasserman. There are, no doubt, others.

Hartman, author of the bestseller Seraphina, comes to the festival with Among Ghosts, which has a found-family theme set in a vibrant fantasy world. She participates with other writers in Paranormal Activity: Ghost Stories for YA (grades 8-12) on Oct. 21, 1 p.m., at Granville Island Stage ($12).

Lederman talks with Linden MacIntyre about his latest work of nonfiction, An Accidental Villain, on Oct. 21, 6 p.m., at the NEST ($27), and she is in conversation with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on Oct. 22, 5:30 p.m., at the Revue Stage ($27), about her own new book, October 7th: Searching for the Humanitarian Middle. October 7th is a collection of Lederman’s columns for the Globe and Mail, which have been a real-time archive capturing a period of deep division and trauma.

Kay, the internationally bestselling author of Tigana, All the Seas of the World and A Brightness Long Ago, talks about his latest fantasy novel, Written on the Dark, which is set in a magical version of medieval France, replete with ambitious royals, assassins and invading armies. He also talks about his overall body of work with moderator Robert J. Wiersema on Oct. 24, 8 p.m., at the Revue Stage ($27).

Ashenburg, author of Margaret’s New Look, published her first fiction book at the age of 72. She will join two other writers in the session called Wisdom, Age & Beauty, which takes place Oct. 25, 5 p.m., at Waterfront Theatre ($27). She also participates with several other writers in the Afternoon Tea on Oct. 26, 3:30 p.m., at Performance Works ($50), which includes high tea delicacies, including a signature glass of sherry.

The Soundtrack of Life panel, on Oct. 25, 8 p.m., at the Revue Stage ($27), includes Jill Yonit Goldberg with her book After We Drowned, a haunting coming-of-age story with a fierce feminist subplot set in 1984 to the music of Tina Turner, Madonna and Stevie Nicks.

On Oct. 26, 10:30 a.m., at Performance Works ($40), Lazarus joins six other authors of nonfiction in an event described as TED Talk meets café social, with a morning snack included. Lazarus explores a forgotten tragedy in Beneath Dark Waters, an account of the 1914 sinking of the Empress of Ireland.

The Crime Scene on Oct. 26, 7 p.m., at Waterfront Theatre ($27) is moderated by Jerry Wasserman and the authors featured include Sam Wiebe, whose The Last Exile finds PI Dave Wakeland at the centre of gang warfare on the streets of Vancouver.

In addition to Lederman’s October 7th, there are a couple of other Israel-related books included in the program, the first directly, the second only tangentially.

Palestinian-Canadian author Saeed Teebi is one of the writers joining Blood in the Pen: Stories, Crises, Repair and the Writer on Oct. 21, 8:30 p.m., at Granville Island Stage ($27), and he will be in conversation with Adel Iskandar on Oct. 22, 8:30 p.m., at Waterfront Theatre ($27). Teebi is also one of the writers featured in A Doctor, a Lawyer and a Journalist Walk into a Literary Festival, on Oct. 23, 8:30 p.m., at Waterfront Theatre ($27). He describes his memoir You Will Not Kill Our Imagination as exploring “what it means to be a Palestinian in this moment, the effects of the genocide on Palestinian art and imagination, and that to even claim a belonging to the land from a country thousands of miles away is an act of subversion.”

Queer Stories on the Map on Oct. 23, 8 p.m., at Revue Stage ($27) includes Ziyad Saadi, whose reimagining of Mrs. Dalloway, Three Parties, follows a Palestinian refugee who plans to come out to his entire family at his birthday dinner party.

For more information about festival events and to purchase tickets, visit writersfest.bc.ca.

– from Vancouver Writers Festival program

Shoah’s generational impacts

Robert Krell did not identify as a Holocaust survivor until the age of 41. His evolving realization about his own experience mirrors a larger trend in the understanding of child Holocaust survivors. As a psychiatrist, academic and leading Holocaust educator, Krell has been at the forefront of this evolution.

In a new book, Emerging from the Shadows: Child Holocaust Survivors, Their Children and Their Grandchildren, Krell brings together a number of his lectures and presentations, as well as contributions from other scholars and survivors, to explore the multigenerational impacts of the Shoah on families.

Krell discusses a “hierarchy of survival” consensus that prevailed for decades after 1945, in which concentration camp survivors were perceived as the “real” survivors, followed by hidden adults, partisans, those who fled and others.

“Children caught up in the horrors were dismissed as ‘too young to be able to remember,’” he writes.

Krell was one of those children.

There were dark portents from the beginning of his life. When Krell was born, on Aug. 5, 1940, the Dutch hospital of his birth was already occupied as an SS headquarters.

After successive waves of neighbours and family had been relocated “to the east,” never to be heard from again, the Krell family was ordered to appear for deportation. Instead, they went into hiding.

Young Robbie was given up at the age of 2 by his parents, Emmy and Leo Krell. He was hidden by a Dutch Christian family, Albert and Violette Munnik, who he would come to know as “Vader” and “Moeder,” and their daughter (his “sister”) Nora.

The Munniks remained in Krell’s life until they passed, attending his university graduation, wedding and other simchas. They would eventually be honoured as Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem.

“My days in hiding were the best that any hidden child could have had,” Krell writes.

This raises questions for him as a survivor and as a psychiatrist. “From where, then, derived my feeling that something enormous and hideous had occurred? From where came this unsettled feeling of whatever it is that haunts me still? Perhaps from the separation. Perhaps from the fear of discovery or the anxieties of the adults around me. Perhaps from my silence, the absence of ordinary play, the wish not to be disturbing or noticed.”

These feelings, which much later he would discover were common among people who, as children, had experienced similar things, drove him personally and professionally.

Krell’s self-realization that he was not only a second-generation survivor – the son of survivors – but a survivor himself, struck him at the 1981 World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, in Jerusalem. It was a realization that others were coming to concurrently.

Later that decade, the seminal book Love Despite Hate: Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Their Adult Lives, by Sarah Moskovitz, signaled the beginning of a new understanding, and the identity of child survivors as a distinct category of survivors.

In 1991, the groundbreaking ADL/Hidden Child Conference, in New York City, attracted 1,600 participants, mostly child survivors. Krell summarizes the conversations that happened there as: “Thank God, I thought I was crazy. But you were crazy with the same issues. So perhaps we are normal.”

With Prof. Peter Suedfeld, former head of the University of British Columbia’s department of psychology, Krell conducted research into younger survivors and their children. They identified four paradoxes that were common in the families they investigated.

Survivor parents often expressed great pride in their children, but the perspective of the children was that they always fell short of fulfilling parental expectations and were often unaware of their parents’ pride.

Second, while children felt they had been provided with most of the material things, they reported feeling that they had missed out on receiving a set of values. This was belied by the evidence, Krell writes. “But it appears that, despite parental preoccupation with work and security, many second-generation survivors did absorb humanistic values for which the parents, of course, claim credit.”

The third paradox is that “though therapy groups of second-generation survivors emphasize complaints about earlier parenting, noting a relative lack of empathy for their problems, the same group members point out to each other their obvious humaneness, achievements and exceptional personal qualities.”

The fourth paradox has to do with the parental viewpoint that withholding information about their Holocaust experiences was crucial for the normal development of their children. “But from the point of view of the children, that past life was shrouded in an elusive mystery that prevented them from understanding the components of life in play from the Holocaust background,” Krell writes.

“Despite the overwhelming complexity of lives lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, it is remarkable that the havoc wreaked on Jewish children has not irrevocably crippled the next generations,” he notes, adding that 93% of Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Europe were murdered. “It is itself a miracle that so many of the remnants of surviving children and our sons and daughters have contributed so much. Let us be proud of that.”

Second-generation children learned quickly not to ask questions that could spur tears or other responses in their parents. Krell notes that some parents would ask why their children had not seemed interested in their Shoah experiences. In many cases, he urges members of the second generation to designate their children – the grandchildren of the survivors – to investigate the family history.

“They return with names, places of origin, descriptions of life (and of death), stories of defeat and loss, and of courage and heroism,” he writes. “They are enriched forever by knowing, for they are alive because their grandparents, against all odds, made it.”

Krell’s life has had multiple encounters with horrific history. In 1961, he was visiting Israel and his aunt got them seats in the courtroom of Adolf Eichmann’s trial.

In 1969, he was on TWA Flight 840 out of Rome when the plane was hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The plane and its hostages spent several days in Damascus before being freed in Athens, after which he flew on to Israel.

“So, by age 30, I was a Jew who had survived two deadly enemies,” he writes.

Krell became an academic and a clinician, the director of child and family psychiatry at the UBC Health Sciences Hospital and director of residency training for 10 years. He was founding president of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, on whose board he remains an active member.

Krell is the author of 11 books, two dozen book chapters and many journal articles. His interests include the care of aging survivors of massive trauma. His memoir, Sounds from Silence: Reflections of a Child Holocaust Survivor, Psychiatrist and Teacher, was published in 2021, in which year he was also inducted into the Order of Canada. He and his wife Marilyn have three daughters and nine grandchildren.

Emerging from the Shadows includes lectures and speeches from Krell, as well as writings from Vancouverite Ed Lewin, Robert Melson, Harry Penn, R. Gabriele S. Silten, Leo Vogel and Zev Weiss.

In an epilogue, Krell reflects on the Oct. 7 terror attacks through the eyes of a Holocaust survivor.

Whereas the Nazis made some efforts to hide from the world their atrocities, the Hamas terrorists perpetrated their brutalities in broad daylight and livestreamed them online.

“It was done in daylight, recorded and distributed! How shall we ever rest again, given such knowledge?” he asks. “How shall a Jewish child/adolescent deal with this? And who can heal this fresh wound when the old wounds had only just begun to close after three or four generations?”

His conclusion: “May I suggest that we remain moral, courageous, and worthy of being a ‘a stiff-necked people,’ strong, proud, and determined.”

Power Metal a reality check

Clean cars humming down quiet streets. Solar panels shimmering on rooftops. A world powered by sunlight and wind, freed from the smoke and pollution of oil rigs and coal plants. The age of carbon, we’re told, is drawing to a close, and a cleaner, greener future is within our grasp. But what if that future lies on foundations just as dirty – and just as deadly – as the fossil fuel era we’re striving to leave behind?

In Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future (Riverhead Books, 2024), investigative journalist Vince Beiser delivers an exposé that cuts through the promising façade of the green revolution. As a seasoned journalist and with the narrative drive of a storyteller, Beiser reveals the secret supply chains behind today’s electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels – chains marked by extraction, exploitation and environmental ruin.

The materials at the heart of this transformation – lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements – are mined in staggering volumes. However, this increase in extraction comes at a cost that far exceeds dollars and cents, according to Beiser.

From the salt flats of Chile to the cobalt mines of Congo, from scrapyards in Canada to geopolitical flashpoints in China and Russia, Beiser introduces readers to a cast of characters who live on the frontlines of the resource race: child labourers sifting toxic waste for cobalt, Indigenous communities resisting mining on their ancestral lands, and powerful nations jockeying for control of tomorrow’s metals.

Beiser also brings to light the often-overlooked complexity of this electro-digital age, where minerals once obscure – like rhenium, crucial for jet engines, or rare earths that enable smartphones – have become linchpins of modern life. The race to secure these metals has sparked environmental havoc, political upheaval and rising violence worldwide, he contends.

In Power Metal, Beiser refuses to streamline or sensationalize. This is not a diatribe against technology, nor a rejection of the urgent need for clean energy. Rather, it’s a sobering reality check. As Beiser bluntly states, “There’s no such thing as clean energy.” The machines themselves may be green, he points out, but the systems that create them remain deeply flawed, still reliant on a resource-hungry, extraction-driven model that mirrors the very industrial forces we hoped to transcend.

If we are serious about building a sustainable future, Beiser argues, we must rethink not just how we power our lives, but how we source, use and value the raw materials that underpin our modern world. Simply swapping gas tanks for batteries is not enough, he says. We face a difficult question about what we’re willing to sacrifice – and which injustices we must confront – in pursuit of the green dream, he contends.

Power Metal challenges readers to rethink the green energy revolution. Beneath the promise of clean power lies a hidden world of environmental damage and human cost. Beiser doesn’t offer easy answers – but he shows why understanding this complex reality is essential if we want a truly sustainable future. For anyone ready to see beyond the surface, Power Metal is an essential, eye-opening read.

Uriel Presman Chikiar is a student at Queen’s University and serves as executive vice-president of external relations at Hillel Queen’s.

Traveling as a woman

Caryl Eve Dolinko, author of A Woman’s Guide to World Travel, has been to 93 countries and counting. (photo from caryldolinko.com)

Caryl Eve Dolinko’s A Woman’s Guide to World Travel literally covers everything you need to know when traveling, from choosing where to go through to reacclimatizing when you get back home. Anyone, but especially women, about to take their first international trip should have this book handy. For people who have been a few places, and even for seasoned travelers, Dolinko’s latest also has snippets of history, many short, informative travel stories, an interesting perspective – and likely at least one point you’ve not thought of before.

Dolinko, who is a member of the Vancouver Jewish community, has been exploring the world for more than 40 years. She has been to 93 countries and counting. She has journeyed on her own and with others, as a young person and as an older person, as “a working professional, a mother with kids, as a straight and gay woman, and a daughter caring for an elderly parent.”

A Woman’s Guide to World Travel, published by Whitecap Books earlier this year, is Dolinko’s third travel book, but the first as sole author. She co-wrote both The Complete Guide to Independent Travel (self-published) and The Globetrotter’s Guide: Essential Skills for Budget Travel (Red Deer Press), with Wayne Smits. The latter was a Canadian bestseller, notes Dolinko.

In the 25-plus years since The Globetrotter’s Guide came out, much has changed.

“The world’s population has almost doubled from over 4 billion in the early 1980s when I started to travel, to just over 8 billion today, putting a strain on finite resources,” writes Dolinko. “Many tourist attractions are now overused, overrun and exploited as a result of global tourism’s exponential growth. I believe it is past time for us to reconsider how we travel and become more aware of the impact we have.”

Her own approach to travel has changed since she started, at age 18, with a planned four-month trip to Europe that turned into “an epic eight-year odyssey.”

“When I first started traveling around the world in 1982, there was very little information available, especially for women, as very few were traveling the world alone,” she writes. “The internet didn’t exist, and neither did smartphones, digital cameras, selfies, social media, travel and hotel apps, GPS or texting. Lonely Planet was just starting to publish travel books and National Geographic was about the only magazine that showed exotic places around the world. Travel guides and literature were written with men in mind and, with so few women traveling, there was no need to address our particular issues and concerns. Only a small selection of useful advice was available to address women’s needs.”

That situation continues to change, with some studies estimating that “women are the primary decision-makers for travel in households, influencing up to 80% of all travel decisions. That’s a tremendous amount of buying power and it has influenced the tourism industry to change to meet our needs,” points out Dolinko, whose guide takes readers through some of the history leading to this development.

She briefly highlights six women “who dared to travel in their day,” starting with Ida Pfeiffer, who was born in Vienna in 1797. While Pfeiffer’s “travel stories and books inspired future generations of adventurers … her ethnocentric views frequently led her to be critical and intolerant of other cultures,” writes Dolinko. “As a result, she could be a harsh traveler, lacking the ability to appreciate other cultures on their own terms.”

Dolinko places great emphasis on what can be learned from other cultures, and stresses the importance of traveling with humility, not just for our own education, personal growth and safety, but for the benefit of the people and communities we encounter.

“Through our spending habits, we have the power to influence local economies and cultures, so it’s crucial to make informed decisions and be mindful of our impact,” she writes. “By supporting local businesses and organizations that prioritize sustainability and conservation efforts, we can make a positive difference and be a catalyst for change. Your actions have real consequences, so aim to leave a positive impact and a gentle footprint wherever you go.”

Elsewhere, she shares warnings, like “It’s strictly a cultural taboo or against the law in some cultures to be gay, and open displays of affection are discouraged”; “In some cultures, it’s expected and even considered impolite to accept the initial price offered by the seller without attempting to negotiate”; and “When communicating nonverbally, it is important to be aware of cultural differences and the meanings behind certain gestures. Pointing with your finger, for example, can be seen as rude or confrontational in many cultures.”

Dolinko spends time on photography in this context – reminding readers that some religious sites may prohibit photography, some people may not want to be on your social media feed and some cultures believe that a camera can steal a person’s soul. She talks about selfies, camera types and photo composition.

There is not a stone left unturned in A Woman’s Guide to World Travel. She covers factors to consider when deciding where to go (like safety, cultural norms and accessibility), budgeting (don’t forget admission fees, tips, snacks, SIM cards and so on), choosing luggage (suitcase vs backpack, for instance) and packing (she gives detailed lists of clothing, footwear, toiletries and medical supplies to bring, plus a host of other items to consider). She suggests where you should be in your preparedness two months out, one month out, a week before you leave and the day before you leave. She explains and lists the documents you’ll need, the insurance and vaccinations, how you should leave your home and office, and what the people you leave behind might need if something were to happen to you on your trip.

Specific to women, Dolinko talks about how to interact with men (“being aware of cultural differences that may affect communication and behaviour, as well as keeping an eye out for red flags and listening to your intuition”) and how to safely have a travel romance (with men or women), as well as what to do if, God forbid, you are sexually assaulted or raped. She lays out how to deal with some common gynecological issues while traveling. She offers advice on visiting religious buildings. She makes suggestions about traveling with kids. And she shares so much more.

To say that the 384-page A Woman’s Guide to World Travel is comprehensive is an understatement. It encompasses 40 years of experience traveling around the world, lots of photos (which I wish had been captioned, with some in colour) and relevant anecdotes. It’s a one-stop “shop” for anything you might want to know – and lots you didn’t know you needed to know – about travel.

Thriller delves into AI world

Daniel Kalla commands readers’ interest from the first sentence of his latest thriller, The Deepest Fake. And he keeps us turning pages straight to the end, not only as we contemplate who might be the culprit(s) of our hero’s apparent demise, but also as we consider the ideas Kalla puts forward about artificial intelligence, intellectual property, relationships, trust, measures of a successful life, and more.

Jewish Independent readers will be familiar with Kalla, who, in addition to being a writer of many international bestselling novels, is an emergency room physician here in Vancouver. The JI interviewed Kalla in 2023 and has reviewed of a few of his previous novels.

The plot-driving topic of The Deepest Fake – artificial intelligence – is new territory for the doctor-writer, who has penned many medical and science thrillers, using his physician’s knowledge to powerful effect. But he also has written an historical fiction trilogy set in Shanghai during the Second World War, where thousands of Jews fleeing Europe found safe haven, even as China and Japan were at war, so we know Kalla’s not afraid to do the research necessary to create a realistic-seeming fictional world centred around places and concepts less familiar to him, and to most readers.

As much as The Deepest Fake highlights some of the moral issues surrounding AI, it also explores other big issues, like medical assistance in dying (MAiD), fidelity in marriage and business partnerships, the foundations of trust, and where the creative process begins and who owns it. Kalla manages to cover all this ground and raise so many relevant questions while telling a great story. The Deepest Fake begins with a bang – “Liam Hirsch never seriously contemplated dying before his forty-ninth birthday – until today” – and keeps up the pace throughout.

Liam, founder and chief executive officer of a thriving AI company, TransScend, is suffering from a mysterious medical condition that’s first diagnosed as an aggressive form of ASL (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). His symptoms – twitches and challenges with movement – have been getting worse, and he’s likely to lose basic motor function within months, maybe a year.

Despite the seriousness of his illness, Liam hesitates to tell his wife and kids, the former not only because of the pain it will cause, but because, weeks before, he discovered, with the help of a private investigator, that his wife was cheating on him. Adding to Liam’s stresses and the book’s adventure are some accounting irregularities at his company, the competitive nature of the tech world and the potentially manipulative AI app that he helped create. So, when it becomes obvious that someone wants Liam gone, the suspects are numerous, including his wife, all his staff, an aggrieved former business partner, and the technology itself.

The Deepest Fake is a fun, satisfying read.

Two different kinds of magic

It’s almost a new year. We’ve been taking stock more than usual throughout the month of Elul. It’s a valuable skill – being able to do regular cheshbon hanefesh, accounting of the soul, reflecting on our views and actions, with an eye to self-improvement, maybe even creating a positive ripple effect that extends beyond ourselves.

Two new children’s picture books introduce – or reinforce – the Jewish values of Shabbat (taking a break from work and technology, thereby recharging our physical and mental selves) and tikkun olam (taking care of ourselves, our homes, our neighbourhoods, and so on). They remind us that making the world better starts with us, what we do, how we treat ourselves and others.

Seattle publisher Intergalactic Afikoman released Fairy GodBubbie’s Shabbat by Ann Diament Koffsky this month. Koffsky has written and illustrated more than 50 kids books, with many about Judaism, its holidays, foods and symbols. Her website is worth checking out: there are reading guides, you can see her many artistic styles, download colouring pages featuring scenes from her books, as well as other images, and, of course, there are links to purchase her books.

In Fairy GodBubbie’s Shabbat, the Mazel family is busy and seems happy enough, Dad on his laptop, Mom on her phone, Sara playing games on a tablet. But, “Why is no one schmoozing?” wonders Fairy GodBubbie. “Noshing?? Kibbitzing!”

“Unlike regular fairy godmothers who come only when called, Fairy GodBubbies just show up to fix things.

“Even when they’re not invited,” writes Koffsky.

So, poof! With a couple of Shabbat candles and a frequency jammer, Fairy GodBubbie helps the Mazels experience a different kind of Shabbat, a much more fulfilling one, a magical one. And readers can create the experience at their own homes, trying out what Koffsky calls a “a Tech Shabbat – a day away from screens.” She asks, “If your family does choose to try out a Tech Shabbat, what would you most like to do during that time?” And offers some choices – “Will you eat a family meal? … Curl up with a good book?” – and encourages readers to come up with their own ideas to make their “next Shabbat feel magical.”

The Collective Book Studio’s Ruby Finkelman Finds the Real Magic, written by Mike King with illustrations by Shahar Kober, which came out earlier this year, also features a young heroine and, as the title indicates, “magic.” But there are no magical GodBubbies; rather, a self-realization that a beautiful village, a beautiful life, don’t just happen by magic – happiness, cleanliness, kindness, etc., require not only effort, but sometimes doing things you don’t enjoy doing. In Ruby’s case, she “especially didn’t like brushing her teeth,” so, one night, she decides, “I’m never going to brush my teeth again.”

Even such seemingly inconsequential actions have repercussions. Other kids stop brushing their teeth. Then they decide not to wash their faces, tidy up after themselves or treat one another kindly. Parents nag, children kvetch. The grownups become so exhausted, they have “no strength left to lift a toothbrush, do the laundry, take out the garbage, and on and on.” Kvellville soon turns into what neighbouring villages start calling “Schmutzville.” A town meeting devolves into several arguments, everyone turning on one another.

Seeing the madness, and realizing how it all started, Ruby sets about to right the situation.

“Mensch is a Yiddish word that means ‘human,’ but when used in the sense of ‘being a mensch,’ it means being a human in the best possible way, or being the best human that you can be,” writes King in an author’s note at the end of the story. “But it’s not only a Jewish thing – it’s a universal value, an idea of how to act in a way that makes the world a better place, simply because you behave in a good and kind way.”

While the toothbrushing premise is a little bit of a stretch, King is a pediatric dentist, so it’s no wonder, and he does manage to make the story work. It’s a wonderful message, of course, and Kober’s artwork is delightful.

Ruta’s Closet reissued

Lady Esther Gilbert speaking at Vancouver City Hall April 8, when Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim proclaimed Ruth Kron Sigal Day in the city. (photo by Keith Morgan)

Ruta’s Closet, the Holocaust narrative of the late Vancouverite Ruth Kron Sigal, is being reissued for a new generation of audiences – and the book’s author is ensuring the survivor’s inspiring story of survival and resilience reaches the widest possible global audience.

Vancouver journalist Keith Morgan, who completed the book shortly before Kron Sigal’s passing, at age 72 in 2008, has updated the publication – and created an extensive range of multimedia projects to expand the impact of the written volume.

First issued as a fundraising initiative for the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Ruta’s Closet was later published in the United Kingdom, with distribution there reaching new audiences.

The book recounts the harrowing survival story of the Kron family, imprisoned in the tiny Shavl (Šiauliai) ghetto in Lithuania, through the eyes of the youngest daughter, Ruta (later Ruth). Their survival against Nazi persecution hinged on the courage and resourcefulness of her parents, Meyer and Gita Kron, as well as the bravery of non-Jewish rescuers. Depicted with novel-like narrative power but rooted in rigorous research and eyewitness testimony, the memoir vividly portrays atrocities such as mass murder, a Nazi ban on Jewish births and the deportation of children to Auschwitz, while also shining a light on courage, compassion and human resilience amid the evil.

Kron Sigal didn’t live to see the book in print but she saw the final draft.

“She said to me shortly before she died, ‘You are going to carry on telling my story, Keith, aren’t you?’ And I said, of course I am,” Morgan told the Independent. “So, I took that on as a mission.”

Surveys indicating widespread ignorance of Holocaust history, combined with skyrocketing antisemitism, motivated Morgan to launch a series of Ruta’s Closet-related projects.

“We updated the book and decided it was time to go basically worldwide with this,” he said.

In addition to the re-release of the hard-copy, Morgan and his small team of colleagues recorded an audiobook and released an ebook. They revamped the existing Ruta’s Closet website and made it more interactive.

Working with Bill Barnes, a local radio producer, Morgan developed a 25-segment podcast.

“We are doing Zoom interviews with people around the world who are a part of a driving force behind an imaginative, creative initiative in spreading Holocaust awareness and education,” he explained. “I’ve got Ruth’s kids – Michael, Marilee and Elana – each week doing an introduction for book clubs.”

The VHEC has produced a downloadable guide for book clubs, as well as a teacher’s guide to the book, which makes it additionally relevant as British Columbia’s education curriculum mandates Holocaust education this year for the first time as part of the Social Studies 10 coursework.

“The beauty of it, for British Columbia, is it’s technically a local story,” Morgan said. “It’s about Ruth. It’s about somebody who came here and did a lot for her adopted society.”

photo - Journalist Keith Morgan, author with Ruth Kron Sigal of Kron Sigal’s memoir, Ruta’s Closet, is ensuring that her story of survival and resilience reaches the widest possible audience — Journalist Keith Morgan, author with Ruth Kron Sigal of Kron Sigal’s memoir, Ruta’s Closet, is ensuring that her story of survival and resilience reaches the widest possible audience. *(photo from Keith Morgan)*

Morgan, who spent many years as the crime reporter at the Province newspaper, met Kron Sigal when his editor asked him to take on a more uplifting assignment and begin a series about people doing good works at home and abroad.

“Somebody said, ‘Oh, you should talk to Ruth Sigal,’” who was sharing her Holocaust story with students. “I went to meet her. I was very impressed. She told her story and it had an amazing impact on me. I just knew this was an important story to tell.”

He found immediate support from Dr. Robert Krell, the founding president of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

“Robert Krell kind of took me under his wing – he was a close friend of Ruth – and he said, ‘I’ve got just the guy to introduce to you, who will be really helpful to you for pulling the story together.’”

The person was renowned historian Sir Martin Gilbert.

“The British schoolboy in me thought, ‘How do I curtsy?’” Morgan joked.

Morgan met Sir Martin in London and got a one-on-one master course in writing about the subject.

“He looked me right in the eye and said, ‘You have to tell the story as though you were writing it for your newspaper and make it accessible to all people,’” Morgan recalled. “Sadly, Martin died [in 2015], but Lady Esther Gilbert took up his mantle and, since then, she’s been an ally and was very important in this edition in terms of going through it, adding bits here and there.”

She spoke at a ceremony at Vancouver City Hall on April 8 this year, when the mayor proclaimed Ruth Kron Sigal Day in the city.

Kron Sigal’s story resonates profoundly with people, according to Morgan.

“We can all relate to what happened to Ruth and her sister Tamara,” he said. “It also tells us compelling stories about how, through their own devices, they basically survived and helped others along the way. We also see what other members of the family did to help the broader community.… We get this family story, which, in itself, is very dramatic, but we also get this wider picture of how a community in the ghetto work with each other, help each other.”

Morgan sees Kron Sigal’s narrative as an inspiration not only because of her survival against the Nazis but in all she did after becoming a Canadian.

“Ruth came here, an adopted country, and spent 25 years at the Women’s Resource Centre and the VHEC Child Survivors Group,” said Morgan. “That’s an example to everybody: come into a new society, an adopted country, and just roll up the sleeves and get working. Isn’t that an example to anybody that comes in?”

No less a triumph, Morgan said, is the family Ruth and her husband, Dr. Cecil Sigal, created.

“You look at that family and you think, ‘Victory!” he said. “Because they beat Hitler.”

Power of propaganda

Understanding the past, including the darkest eras, can help people recognize the symptoms of a society going off the rails.

A forthcoming book for young readers, titled Can Posters Kill? Antisemitic Propaganda and World War II, by Torontonians Jerry Faivish and Kathryn Cole, explores how propaganda and racist imagery desensitized a society to atrocities.

Faivish, a retired lawyer, has collected Jewish posters since young adulthood, building one of the world’s largest private collections. The son of Holocaust survivors, he created this book with Cole, an illustrator, art director, editor, designer and publisher, to educate young people about the dangers of hatred and the powers of persuasion used for evil ends.

The richly illustrated publication spotlights how vivid imagery and repetition intended to evoke fear, distrust, loyalty or revulsion served to influence populations to accept (even collaborate in) barbarism.

“By understanding the visual language of propaganda from the past, we can learn to recognize and resist messages of hate – an essential skill in a digital world where information is spread in seconds,” according to the publisher, Second Story Press.

Aimed at readers 13 and up, this book about the past has its purpose firmly planted in the present and future.

“Like social media today,” write the authors, “visual communication in the ’30s and ’40s – from movies to newspapers to paper posters – was clever and interesting, engaging and effective. But, under Nazi manipulation, it became deadly.”

The focus of the book is visual, befitting a volume of this topic, with just enough copy to contextualize the imagery and point out salient aspects that the reader might not have noticed. It is also perhaps a perfect mix of text and graphics for the generation it aims to reach.

The authors provide a brief overview of the post-First World War economic conditions in Germany, the impacts of the Treaty of Versailles, and Hitler’s rise to power. This history tilled the soil for the hate-messaging showcased.

“A false message, when repeated often enough, can become the truth in the minds of people who are frightened, oppressed and searching for someone to blame for their misfortune during hard times,” the book warns.

Can Posters Kill? also delves into how graphic design played into the success of the brainwashing – “clever use of different typefaces grabs the attention of passersby,” among other innovations.

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ minister of propaganda, who more than any other individual is associated with this sort of material, did not overestimate his audience.

“The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine,” he is quoted in the book. “Propaganda must, therefore, always be essentially simple and repetitious. In the long run, only he will achieve basic results in influencing public opinion who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in the simplified form, despite the objections of intellectuals.”

The messages his department imparted were subtle as sledgehammers.

In one poster, a doctor or scientist is looking through a microscope at a vicious “Jewish” disease devouring healthy tissue. Jews are characterized as sexual deviants and blamed for spreading tuberculosis, syphilis and cancer.

“It’s a chilling message because it can quickly turn into ‘kill or be killed,’” the book says.

In another poster, a Jew hovers menacingly over the globe, spinning a web from his index finger.

“This reinforces the Nazi-supported notion that Jews are power-hungry and backed by secret cabals or conspirators,” the authors write.

Jews are depicted as the mortal enemy of Christianity and the Star of David is equated alongside the communist red star, implying a dual-pronged threat to German society.

Faivish shares his family’s story: his mother’s experiences in various ghettos, work and concentration camps, and at extermination sites such as Auschwitz, and his father’s defiant escape from a cattle car headed for the gas chambers. Faivish’s father lost his parents and his eight siblings in the Holocaust. His mother had just one surviving brother and one remaining sister out of a family of 10.

Faivish goes into some detail about the experiences of his mother in the constellation of Nazi ghettos and camps, and his father’s unlikely survival in hiding, thanks to a gentile Polish family. He places significant emphasis on the heroism of non-Jews.

“After the war, my parents met in Bergen-Belsen, the DP camp where they married and started a family,” he writes. “My older sister was born there in 1949.… In 1952, my parents immigrated to Canada. In 1953, I was born in Montreal. For my parents, the question of how to deal with recurring hate, and what could be done about it, was more than philosophical. It became a guideline for how to live their lives and what to pass on to their children. The lessons they taught us are still applicable and valuable today.”

He includes nine values his parents instilled in him and that he hopes the book will pass on to others, including: be proud of who you are and embrace your faith and culture [because the] aim of the “Final Solution” was to annihilate Jews and to destroy Judaism; respect your fellow human beings and treat them well; and recognize and eliminate hate and evil as much as possible.

A timeline of historical events and an excellent glossary of relevant terms are included at the end of the book.

As British Columbia and other provinces institute mandatory Holocaust education in school curricula, books like Can Posters Kill? Antisemitic Propaganda and World War II provide powerful resources for educators to convey the lessons of history in ways that are impactful but age-appropriate, with undeniable and clear lessons around critical media consumption for contemporary generations.

While not formally related, the book is also a valuable complement to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre’s current exhibition, Age of Influence: Youth & Nazi Propaganda, which is being reconfigured into a traveling exhibit.