{"id":34180,"date":"2020-02-14T03:59:06","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T11:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=34180"},"modified":"2020-02-12T10:45:07","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T18:45:07","slug":"survivors-reflect-on-liberation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2020\/02\/14\/survivors-reflect-on-liberation\/","title":{"rendered":"Survivors reflect on liberation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Ilona Shulman Spaar moderates a panel with Holocaust survivors, left to right, Janos Benisz, Amalia Boe-Fishman, Dr. Peter Suedfeld and Alex Buckman. (photo by Pat Johnson)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

One survivor of the Holocaust who spoke at a panel recently believes that, in a generation or two, people will largely forget about the catastrophic events of that time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the world will forget about Auschwitz,\u201d said Dr. Peter Suedfeld, a professor emeritus in the department of psychology at the University of British Columbia. \u201cThe world has already forgotten about \u2018never again.\u2019 We\u2019ve had a fair number of genocides since 1945, in which the world did not intervene. A recent poll that I saw \u2026 apparently, the proportion of people who remember anything about how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust, what Auschwitz was, what the Holocaust was and so on, is not all that much above 50%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is going to go on generation after generation,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe survivors won\u2019t be here to push the story any further. Their children will for awhile, but they have other things to do and other things to be concerned about and their children even more so. In a few more generations, it will be in the history books and people will say, yeah, I read about that or thought about that in grade whatever but, in terms of remembering it as something in your gut, something that arouses an emotion, something that has a personal connection to you, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to last all that much longer. I\u2019m sorry to say that, but that\u2019s what I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suedfeld, who weeks earlier was invested into the Order of Canada for his decades of work on the psychological and physical effects of extreme and challenging environments, was speaking at Hillel House, on the UBC campus, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27. He was part of a panel of four survivors sharing their reflections 75 years after liberation.<\/p>\n

Suedfeld, who was born in Hungary, survived under false papers and a back story as an orphaned Roman Catholic child. He recalled successive bombardments of the various sanctuaries he was in near the end of the war, as Allied bombers repeatedly blew buildings apart while Suedfeld and other children hid in the cellars.<\/p>\n

After liberation by Russian forces, Suedfeld was eventually reunited with his father; his mother had been murdered. The lesson he took from the experience, he told the packed afternoon audience, was to cherish and defend the values of freedom.<\/p>\n

\u201cFreedom to be who you really are, but freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of everything,\u201d he said. After moving to the United States, Suedfeld became a powerful advocate of the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion and expression. Since coming to Canada, he has been a similar champion of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, he said.<\/p>\n

Suedfeld\u2019s admittedly pessimistic perspective on the future of Holocaust remembrance was contested by Alex Buckman, a fellow survivor on the panel.<\/p>\n

As long as organizations exist like the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, which co-sponsored the event with Hillel BC, and children of survivors and others who have been touched by their experiences share the lessons they have learned, the future will be better, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe our children will pick up, speaking on our behalf,\u201d said Buckman. \u201cMaybe they will remember because we will tell them what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Suedfeld, Buckman survived by being hidden by Catholics; in his case, in Belgium.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey told us that the war was over and that we should rejoice and be happy and our parents would come and pick us up and everything would be hunky-dory,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAt 6-and-a-half in an orphanage, nothing was that rosy. We saw parents come and pick up their children and take them home, but nobody came for us. I was there with my sister Annie and she was crying and wondering why our parents weren\u2019t coming and I tried to tell her that I\u2019m sure that they will come. But, like her, I didn\u2019t know why they weren\u2019t coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair were moved back to Brussels and put in the care of the Red Cross, which posted the names of orphaned and unclaimed children on sheets around the city. Eventually, a paternal uncle showed up and took the two children to Annie\u2019s parents \u2013 who, since little Alex had believed himself to be Annie\u2019s brother, he reasonably concluded were also his parents. The truth came out in a cruel way, when another cousin, in a pique of anger, blurted out to Alex that his parents were dead and that Annie\u2019s parents were not his.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took a step back and, for the first time, I realized I was alone,\u201d Buckman recalled. His aunt and uncle did care for him, though, despite the uncle\u2019s misgivings, because of the aunt\u2019s insistence based on a promise she made to the heavens when she learned of her sister\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Also on the panel was Amalia Boe-Fishman, who was born in the northern Netherlands in 1939 and also survived thanks to a Christian family. Like many survivors, her liberation story is not one of joyous freedom but of confusion and fear of the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiberation should have been a real happy time for me. It wasn\u2019t,\u201d she said. \u201cI was told we were free, but what did that mean? What did that mean to a frightened 5-year-old girl who had been in hiding for three years? What did it mean to be free? I was told that, for the first time I could remember \u2026 I would now be able to go outdoors. I didn\u2019t know what to expect. What was there? What was waiting for me outdoors? Indoors had become my entire life. Indoors was where I felt secure and safe. Indoors was all I knew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her first venture out was harrowing. It was odd enough to be surrounded by throngs of strangers after her entire life had been confined to just a few familiar faces. After a victory parade, the girls she knew as her \u201csisters\u201d decided to walk to the town centre. While crossing a bridge with scores of others \u2013 Amalia had never seen a bridge before \u2013 a rumour started that the Nazis had returned and panic swept the crowd. Pushing and shoving was accompanied by screaming and concern that the bridge was about to collapse.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere I was, trapped outdoors, in a crowd of panicked strangers and I was terrified,\u201d she said. \u201cThe bridge didn\u2019t collapse, but, as you can imagine [it was] a very long time before I would ever cross a bridge again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another ostensibly joyous aspect of liberation was also clouded with confusion and fear.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was told that I had a real family. I had a real father, a real mother, an older brother and a baby brother,\u201d said Boe-Fishman. \u201cMiraculously, out of many different hiding places, all four of them had survived the war.\u2026 But who were these people? They were strangers. So, this is what liberation means to me. To leave the only family I ever had known to go outdoors to a place of terrified strangers, to strange people in a strange home.\u2026 I had to adapt to a new and also frightening world.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Janos Benisz, liberation was similarly conflicted. As a child, he had seen his father and his grandmother dead in the streets. His mother had been killed earlier by Nazi collaborators, during what was to have been a routine medical procedure.<\/p>\n

Young Janos was transported from his hometown of Esztergom, Hungary, to Budapest, where Jews were divided up, many being sent directly to death camps including Auschwitz.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ended up in an Austrian slave labour camp,\u201d he said, remaining there for seven or eight months before the Russians liberated them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had the body of a 4-year-old,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAt my bar mitzvah, I was under five feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making his way back to his hometown, he found squatters in the family\u2019s house and learned that, of his immediate family of eight uncles, two aunts and 29 cousins, only Janos and one uncle had survived the Nazis.<\/p>\n

Benisz was put in a Jewish orphanage in Budapest, then sent to Halifax, where he was put on a train to Winnipeg. He was bounced from foster home to foster home, back to an orphanage and then to a reformatory.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t fit in,\u201d he said. At 18, he got a job at the Winnipeg Free Press<\/em> as a copy boy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spent the next 15 years in the newspaper business, then I became a salesman on my own, retired in \u201971,\u201d he said. He noted the figurative and literal centrality of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver in his life today. He lives 40 yards from the centre, he said, and much of his social life is focused there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my second home,\u201d he said. \u201cI work out there. I shmooze there. I\u2019ve got a group of guys I call the \u2018kosher nostra.\u2019 I\u2019m very happy. I absolutely adore this country of Canada. It\u2019s been good to me ever since I turned 18.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to the panel, Holocaust survivors lit candles of remembrance. Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart read a proclamation declaring International Holocaust Remembrance Day in the city. Rob Fleming, British Columbia\u2019s minister of education, spoke on the importance of Holocaust education and credited the partnership of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC). Student Adam Dobrer shared his family\u2019s Holocaust legacy. Prof. Nancy Hermiston, director of voice and opera at the University of British Columbia, provided opening remarks. Nina Krieger, executive director of the VHEC, introduced the program and spoke of the importance of remembrance and the power of the memory of Auschwitz on the 75th anniversary of its liberation. Dr. Ilona Shulman Spaar, education director and curator of the VHEC, moderated the panel. Rabbi Philip Bregman, chaplain of Hillel BC, chanted El Maleh Rachamim and the Mourners\u2019 Kaddish.<\/p>\n

Many other commemorations and events took place throughout the province on and around Jan. 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Ilona Shulman Spaar moderates a panel with Holocaust survivors, left to right, Janos Benisz, Amalia Boe-Fishman, Dr. Peter Suedfeld and Alex Buckman. (photo by Pat Johnson) One survivor of the Holocaust who spoke at a panel recently believes that, in a generation or two, people will largely forget about the catastrophic events of that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9652,9653,9651,53,9654,9191,2364],"class_list":["post-34180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-alex-buckman","tag-amalia-boe-fishman","tag-commemoration","tag-holocaust","tag-janos-benisz","tag-peter-suedfeld","tag-vhec"],"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\/34180","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=34180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}