{"id":24584,"date":"2017-06-02T03:41:06","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T10:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=24584"},"modified":"2017-05-31T16:54:35","modified_gmt":"2017-05-31T23:54:35","slug":"making-canada-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/06\/02\/making-canada-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Canada home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marianne, left, with her father, Otto Echt, and sister Brigitte. (photo from Canadian Museum of Immigration [CMI] at Pier 21)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Marianne Ferguson\u2019s family missed the train that was supposed to take them to Montreal from Halifax. Just 13 at the time, she and her sister were mostly excited at the prospect of something new, although they were sorry to leave friends and family behind in Europe. Their parents, however, were apprehensive, worried about starting a new life in a foreign country. And that was before they got stuck in Halifax \u2013 where, almost eight decades later, Ferguson, n\u00e9e Echt, still calls home.<\/p>\n

In Europe, the Echts had lived in a little resort town called Brosen, just outside of the Free City of Danzig, which is today the Polish city of Gdansk. Ferguson\u2019s father, Otto, was a pharmacist and a hobby farmer, and they lived well. Her mother, Meta, had multiple maids; the children \u2013 Marianne, Brigitte and Reni \u2013 had a nanny, and every spring and autumn a dressmaker would come into their home for a week to create new wardrobes for the upcoming season. When Adolf Hitler came to power, Ferguson\u2019s family was relatively unaffected in the beginning. Even so, her parents saw what was coming and began making contingency plans.<\/p>\n

Ferguson\u2019s father kept homing pigeons on his farm. He would go to Poland to deposit money, and send the pigeons back home with coloured ribbons tied to them for Ferguson\u2019s mother to decipher. A yellow ribbon meant he had arrived, for example, while a red ribbon meant he had deposited the money. He was able to get away with this scheme because the guards at the Polish border assumed he was entering his pigeons into competitions.<\/p>\n

The Echts continued living in Brosen as the situation deteriorated for Jewish families. When the fair-haired Ferguson traveled to Hebrew school in Danzig with her sister, Hitler Youth would yell at her to \u2018Stop walking with that Jew!\u2019 When the Jewish children in the region were no longer allowed to attend school with their peers, the Jews of Brosen opened their own school on a local estate. The estate was at the end of a long street inhabited by Nazis, and it was understood the Jewish children all had to be in school and off the street by 8 a.m.<\/p>\n

One day, when Ferguson was about 11 or 12, her streetcar to school was late. As she was walking alone down the long street to her school, a man sent his police dog after her. The dog attacked her, biting her on the elbow.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd all of a sudden, somebody raised me up. Must have been an angel, really,\u201d said Ferguson in a recent interview with the Independent<\/em> from her nursing home in Halifax.<\/p>\n

It was the milkman. He put Ferguson in his wagon, drove her to school and deposited her inside the gate. Ferguson said that man saved her life.<\/p>\n

For her parents, it was the last straw. They decided they had to get out. A member of the Canadian consulate informed them that the country was not accepting pharmacists. Fortunately, though, the consulate worker saw their little farm and suggested sending them as farmers. And so it was that the Echts found themselves coming through Pier 21 in Halifax on March 7, 1939.<\/p>\n

When they arrived at the pier, someone called their names and frightened Ferguson\u2019s father. How did people here know who they were? But the woman calling them was Sadie Fineberg, from Jewish Immigrant Aid Services (JIAS). When the Echts missed their train, Fineberg put them up in a boarding house run by a Yiddish-speaking woman, and many Jewish families came to visit them.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Marianne Ferguson (photo from CMI at Pier 21)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMy parents said, \u2018The people were so nice to us, and how do we know what it\u2019s going to be like in Montreal? Maybe we should stay in Nova Scotia.\u2019 And then they helped us with finding the farm, they drove us out \u2026 and we moved over there,\u201d said Ferguson.<\/p>\n

The farm was in nearby Milford, about a 45-minute drive from downtown Halifax. The Echts had to stay and work the farm for seven years as a condition of their immigration and, after their term ended, they moved to Halifax. Fineberg became a close family friend, and her nephew Lawrence became Ferguson\u2019s husband.<\/p>\n

Ferguson\u2019s extended family was not so lucky. Her parents had applied to bring 11 of them over to Canada, and they were supposed to arrive later in the year. Cutting through all the red tape took time, but the process seemed to be progressing. Ferguson\u2019s 11 family members went to meet their boat in Hamburg \u2013 but it wasn\u2019t there. That day was Sept. 1, 1939, and the Second World War had just broken out.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father had bought a second farm. We were so lucky, it was right next to our farm. We thought we would all be together in the two farms. But it wasn\u2019t meant to be. They were all killed,\u201d said Ferguson.<\/p>\n

When the war ended, Ferguson began volunteering with JIAS, helping Jewish refugees find their way in Canada. Many of the displaced persons were children traveling alone. Ferguson remembers one 17-year-old boy in particular who came through Pier 21 in 1948 and needed money to get to Montreal. Ferguson and her mother gave him $20 and some food. They also told him that he would become a good citizen, and he should work hard and make something of himself. Meanwhile, Ferguson continued to volunteer at Pier 21 until it closed in 1971. She began volunteering there again when it reopened as a museum in 1999.<\/p>\n

Unbeknownst to Ferguson, the boy listened to her. His name was Nathan Wasser, and he had survived multiple camps in the Holocaust, including Auschwitz. He was trained as an electrician in Munich after the war, so that\u2019s the work he first did after arriving in Montreal. In 1952, he met his wife-to-be, Shirley, at a parade for Queen Elizabeth, who was still a princess at the time. Together, they started a family, having a daughter and a son, and he ventured into the business world. Wasser eventually came to own his own shopping centre.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Marianne Ferguson volunteered at Pier 21 when it was an immigration facility and again when it reopened as a museum. (photo from CMI\u00a0at Pier 21)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Through it all, Wasser \u2013 who passed away in 2015 \u2013 kept in mind the two women who had helped him when he first came to Canada as a scared and overwhelmed teenager.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I said to him, \u2018You know, you have this vision of two volunteers. Would you like to go back to Pier 21?\u2019\u201d said his wife Shirley Wasser in a phone interview with the Independent<\/em>. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Well, I\u2019ll never find anything.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite his doubts, Wasser contacted the Atlantic Jewish Council in 2003. The council connected him to Ferguson (her mother had already passed away), and they arranged to meet when the Wassers visited Halifax later that year.<\/p>\n

On the appointed day, Ferguson and her granddaughter waited in the lobby of Pier 21 for a man with a blue shirt. Unfortunately, it seemed as if every man was wearing a blue shirt that day. Finally, a couple entered. The man was wearing a blue shirt and carrying flowers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy granddaughter said, \u2018I think that\u2019s for you.\u2019 And, you know, he recognized me,\u201d Ferguson recounted as she started to tear up.<\/p>\n

Ferguson and Wasser stayed in touch until Wasser\u2019s death, and she is still in contact with his wife. Whenever the Wassers came to Halifax, the Fergusons would have them over for Shabbat dinner on the Friday, then the Wassers would take out the Fergusons for dinner on the Saturday. Every birthday and holiday, Nathan Wasser would send a bouquet of flowers to Ferguson.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had no words for her, how grateful and how appreciative he was to the pier and the volunteers,\u201d said Shirley Wasser. \u201cI think [Ferguson] was one of the finest ladies I\u2019ve ever encountered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did save his money and he listened to what we were saying. He said he owed it to us to do well. He was so grateful,\u201d said Ferguson, speaking of her late friend somewhere between laughter and tears.<\/p>\n

Alex Rose<\/strong> is a master\u2019s student in journalism at the University of King\u2019s College in Halifax. He graduated from the same school in 2016 with a double major in creative writing and religious studies, and loves all things basketball. He wrote this article as part of an internship with the <\/em>Jewish Independent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marianne, left, with her father, Otto Echt, and sister Brigitte. (photo from Canadian Museum of Immigration [CMI] at Pier 21) Marianne Ferguson\u2019s family missed the train that was supposed to take them to Montreal from Halifax. Just 13 at the time, she and her sister were mostly excited at the prospect of something new, although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3157,7052,53,356,7118,5875,1959],"class_list":["post-24584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","tag-canada","tag-halifax","tag-holocaust","tag-immigration","tag-marianne-ferguson","tag-pier-21","tag-tikkun-olam"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}