Holocaust

Survivor urges vigilance

Resilience and determination were the themes at an International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration at the Bayit synagogue in Richmond Jan. 27. It was the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Marie Doduck, a child survivor who was the youngest Jewish orphan admitted to Canada after the war, spoke of her survival story, as well as her life in Canada, and she urged vigilance in the face of rising contemporary antisemitism.

Doduck was born Mariette Rozen in Brussels, Belgium, in 1935, the youngest of 11 children. She was 5 years old when the Nazis invaded her hometown in 1940. She and her siblings were scattered across the city and countryside, hiding with non-Jewish families, in convents and orphanages, and at times assisting the resistance. While her parents and three of her siblings were killed, eight survived, a remarkable number given that an estimated 85% of Belgian Jewish children were murdered.

In 1947, she immigrated to Canada as a war orphan and, with three of her surviving siblings, was brought to Vancouver. Her memoir, A Childhood Unspoken, was published in 2023. (See the Independent’s review of the book at jewishindependent.ca/an-intense-urgent-read.)

Doduck spent the war years being shuffled from one place to another, even serving as a messenger between her siblings and for the resistance, because of her photographic memory.

“I lived mostly in darkness, literally in hiding places where the Nazis could not find me,” she recounted. “When I returned to Brussels years later, I could not recognize the city in the daylight, for my Brussels was a place of darkness.”

Her survival – and that of seven other siblings – is a result of series of near-miracles and near-misses.

“At one of the orphanages, the mother superior hid me in a rat-infested sewer after one of her nuns found out that I was a Jewish child and reported me to the Gestapo,” she said.

After liberation, Doduck was one of 1,123 orphans sponsored by Canadian Jewish Congress to migrate to Canada. Her adaptation to life in Vancouver, while smoother than many of the children, was very difficult.

“When I first tried to tell people what happened to me, they said, ‘Forget the past,’” she recalled. “We all find our own ways of dealing with pain. I became more resilient and learned from life’s harsh lessons to depend only on myself. I, as a child, had a strength to go on despite the mistrust, fear and pain that I then felt. I went on. I went on because I would not consider the alternative. Those lessons are, in a significant way, responsible for whom I am today.”

Doduck explained that the word “holocaust,” which came into the use in 1950s, originally meant a sacrifice burnt entirely on the altar. She contrasted her own experience with that nihilistic image.

“The person you see before you tonight, Marie Doduck, is a happy Jewish mother, a successful businesswoman, an author, a grandmother, a great-grandmother,” she said. “I’ve also been president of my synagogue and on the board of many Jewish organizations in our community.”

photo - Marie Doduck mingled with attendees after the International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration at the Bayit — Marie Doduck mingled with attendees after the International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration at the Bayit. *(photo by Pat Johnson)*

She is a co-founder of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC).

Doduck’s personal story of success and happiness is replicated among countless survivors of the trauma of that time.

“Although our childhood was ripped away from us, we survived and continued and we thrived,” she said. “We have achieved so much for ourselves, our families, and for our community. And I and many others will continue to speak about our stories and to remember, to acknowledge those who perished, who cannot speak for themselves. It is estimated that only 11% of Jewish children who were alive in Europe in 1939 lived to see 1945. As many as 1.5 million of the six million Jews cruelly murdered by the Nazis were children under the age of 18.”

Doduck said the world needs to learn from the past.

“No society is immune to the danger of prejudice, antisemitism and racism, and we must work together to stand up when we see injustice in the world around us,” she said.

She explained that the vision of the VHEC is a world free of antisemitism, discrimination and genocide, with social justice and human rights for all.

“This noble idea can only be achieved when governments, schools, educators and organizations work together hand-in-hand to teach future generations about the danger of racism and discrimination,” Doduck said. “Together, we must remember the past and pass on the teaching of the Holocaust together.… We must make ‘never again’ a reality, not just an ideal.”

Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, took exception to the term “survivor” to describe people like Doduck.

“They’re not survivors. They’re thrivers,” he said. “Survivors just get by. Survivors are what they thought we would have as a Jewish people after the Shoah. They thought we would have a group of survivors who could not make it in the world beyond the Shoah.”

The lives of these individuals defied expectations, he said.

“We have thrivers that not only found meaningful relationships, not only built families, not only had kids, but cured diseases and became artists and won Nobel Prizes,” said Shanken. “They did for the world, but the world didn’t do for them.”

The countries where survivors made their homes and contributed so much have become rampant with antisemitism, he said.

Shanken called on those in the room, especially elected officials, to demonstrate clear leadership.

“It is critical that people understand what is in bounds and what is out of bounds within our society…. I know it’s hard as politicians to get that done,” he said. “But I have to tell you, please, on our behalf, keep doing as much as you can because we need you.”

Parm Bains, member of Parliament for Steveston-Richmond East, sent greetings from Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Kelly Greene, member of the BC Legislature for Richmond-Steveston and minister for emergency management and climate readiness, brought greetings from Premier David Eby. Also in attendance were fellow MLAs Hon Chan (Richmond Centre), Steve Kooner (Richmond-Queensborough) and Teresa Wat (Richmond-Bridgeport).

Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie, in attendance with city councilors Laura Gillanders, Kash Heed, Andy Hobbs, Alexa Loo and Bill McNulty, read a proclamation from the city. He noted that there are fewer Jews in the world now than there were in 1939.

Doduck was joined in lighting memorial candles by three fellow survivors, Amalia Boe-Fishman, Miriam Dattel and Regine Fefer. Brodie and Dave Chauhan, chief superintendent of the Richmond RCMP, also participated in the candlelighting.

Sherri Barkoff, vice-president of the Bayit, emceed the event, which was presented by the Richmond Kehila Society, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the VHEC, the Bayit, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

Rabbi Levi Varnai welcomed guests to the event, Cantor Yaakov Orzech chanted El Moleh Rachamim, Café McMullen, program officer at the VHEC, spoke of the organization’s work, and violinist Lior Perry played before and during the ceremony, including a piece from the film Schindler’s List.

Family memoir a work of art

Karen Bermann’s The Art of Being a Stranger: A Family Memoir, published by New Jewish Press, an imprint of University of Toronto Press, is a work of art. It is moving in ways hard to describe. It might not capture every detail of her family’s history – in fact, wide swaths of that history are missing. What’s not missing, what is powerful, are the feelings this book evokes.

Bermann, who lives in Rome, is professor emerita of architecture at Iowa State University. Her father, Fritz, was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Vienna. At 15 years old, he and his younger sister, Elsa, who was 10, fled Europe, alone, in the late 1930s. They were separated in Haifa, his sister being taken to an orphanage with the other children who were too young to work. Fritz, as lucky as one can be after losing one’s family and home, ended up with a Russian farming family who treated him well. Nonetheless, at 18, he left the farm and headed off to live on a kibbutz.

The way in which Bermann intertwines her father’s words with her own commentary and descriptions is so effective. For example, when Fritz tells her about getting in trouble, at 10 years old, for writing a story about building a bomb to blow up the school, Bermann writes, “‘Oh, Dad, that is really bad.’ Yes, that was a particularly bad one. ‘Were you always so angry?’ I was born angry. And scared. As was my father before me. ‘Even before the Nazis, you were so angry and scared?’ Well, yes. But the Nazis didn’t help.”

This dark sense of humour permeates The Art of Being a Stranger. Bermann doesn’t sentimentalize or sensationalize, she just tells us what her father tells her and sometimes shares her reactions. We also learn – and feel – what she went through as Fritz’s daughter. She writes succinctly, poetically, in both words and images.

From pre-state Israel, Fritz went to New York City, where he worked in building maintenance. After an incident with an antisemitic boss, he found work at a company, where, over 20 years, he rose up the ladder. “Somehow from being a peasant in Palestine I found myself a bigshot in the world of New York building maintenance,” he tells his daughter.

But New York never became, for him, a city of museums and operas, but remained one of crooks and bribes. Just like his Vienna wasn’t the city tourists visited to eat sachertorte and go skating, but rather was “a shtetl of poor religious Jews, a ghetto of ignorant bastards who beat their children for making noise on Shabbos, but who knew in their bones that they were not welcome, who recognized the stench of antisemitism in the street while others were perfuming their noses in the rose gardens.”

Fritz’s trauma, inherited from his ancestors, is passed on to his daughter in full force. Yet, Bermann, as a teenager, would defend her father against her friends’ calling him a Nazi, for instance. He was brutally abusive. She only talks about this in relation to herself, not others in the household. To survive, she built “a parallel structure to the one I live in my father’s house.”

“Fritz was ruthlessly (one of his favorite words) honest about the danger of hope. Hope was more than pointless, it was stupid, and led to suffering,” writes Bermann. “People disappointed by life were stupid people; they made him angry…. He taught us about the strength of character that hopelessness required.”

In addition to sharing some of her childhood experiences, Bermann shares some of her experiences working, at the age of 19, on the rehabilitation of one of the more than 1,000 abandoned buildings on the Lower East Side that she and a group took over from the city: “Ditched by landlords who couldn’t squeeze a profit out of a tenement in need of heat, in need of maintenance, a building that leaked from every weak pore.”

We meet other family members, we find out how Fritz’s story ends. From fragments of a life, we see how complex we humans are, how many contradictions we hold within us, how we can be that which we hate, how we can hurt who we love and how we can love the broken, how beauty exists, sometimes inextricably with the ugly. The stranger of the title is Fritz, it’s Bermann, it’s us. Yet, experiencing The Art of Being a Stranger made me feel more part of humanity, kind of like when we chant Ashamnu together as a congregation: we have abused, we have betrayed, we have been cruel…. None of us is perfect, none of us gets through life unscathed or without hurting others. Yet, we keep getting up in the morning and living. Until we don’t.

Lessons from past for today

At the Kristallnacht commemoration in Victoria on Nov. 6, Congregation Emanu-El’s Rabbi Elisha Herb led a community pledge of mutual respect and support, joined by local politicians, faith leaders and law enforcement. (photo by Penny Tennenhouse)

“Hate has no boundaries and needs to be resisted wherever and against whomever it is found. This is necessary to protect our whole society. The history of the Shoah teaches us the dangers of complacency,” said Micha Menczer in his opening remarks at the Nov. 6 commemoration in Victoria of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.

Menczer is a founding member of the Victoria Shoah Project, which held the community’s commemoration at Congregation Emanu-El. The project is a group of Holocaust survivors and their descendants, as well as educators and other individuals, dedicated to Holocaust remembrance and education.

photo - Micha Menczer — Micha Menczer, a founding member of the Victoria Shoah Project, gave the opening remarks at the Nov. 6 commemoration in Victoria of Kristallnacht. *(photo by Penny Tennenhouse)*

After Menczer spoke about the increase in hate crimes in Canada – of which Jews are often the target – Kristin Semmens, a history professor at the University of Victoria, spoke about Kristallnacht, the organized anti-Jewish riots in Germany and Austria on Nov. 9-10, 1938. The violence sent a clear message to Jews that they were not welcome in Germany, said Semmens, noting that, although Jews had already faced extreme persecution, no one foresaw what would come.

“Even after November 1938, even after the destruction and horror and humiliation and fear, even after the shattered storefronts, the burning synagogues, the mass arrests, the physical assaults and murders, few could have imagined how much worse things could get,” she said.

Semmens stressed that, while people came on Nov. 6 to commemorate what happened in the past, it is also fundamentally important to act in the present, to differentiate among people when it comes to basic human rights today.

“We cannot turn a deaf ear or a blind eye to defamation and demonization,” she said. “We must find the courage to challenge the wrongs we see in our society. And, as the events leading to Kristallnacht reveal, we must beware of the beginnings.”

Nina Krieger, British Columbia’s solicitor general and minister for public safety, was the keynote speaker. Due to inclement weather that evening, she spoke from the Lower Mainland via Zoom.

“How can we, today, fathom six million lives cut short solely because they were Jewish?” asked Krieger, who, before entering politics, was the executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC).

“Sadly, as we gather to remember events of 87 years ago, our historical imagination, I think, is less challenged than we thought. With the recent Manchester synagogue attack and the graffiti scrawled on this congregation, the echoes of the past are particularly and painfully resonant.”

In August, antisemitic graffiti was painted at the entrance of Congregation Emanu-El. According to a September post by the synagogue, Victoria police have since found the suspected perpetrator, who “has been charged on two counts: mischief relating to religious property and wilful promotion of hatred.”

Krieger noted that, during the pandemic in Canada, contingents within the anti-vaccination movement borrowed symbols from the Holocaust, such as yellow stars and photos of Anne Frank, to portray their feelings of being marginalized and victimized for the requirement to carry proof of vaccination. She said a commitment to history and memory is the necessary antidote to such Holocaust distortion and trivialization, “which we are seeing with increasing frequency as the Holocaust transitions from lived to mediated memory.”

She pointed to the VHEC’s use of primary sources when engaging with the 25,000 young people the centre educates each year. “Fragments of the Shoah – artifacts, photographs, documents – provide tangible entry points into the past and to individual human experiences during an event that might otherwise be an abstraction of numbers,” said Krieger, who reminded the audience that, in a time of rising antisemitism, the Holocaust may not simply be a lesson but a warning, “an inescapable fact that speaks to what is possible.”

Remembrance of the Shoah, she said, “provides an opportunity to wrestle with fundamental questions about the fragility of democracy and our responsibility as citizens today.”

Music performed by Kvell’s Angels, a local klezmer group, and the Capriccio Vocal Ensemble of Victoria, conducted by Adam Jonathan Con, was interspersed between speakers at the commemoration.

Politicians, leaders from other faith groups and members of the Victoria Police Department rose at the end of the ceremony to recite a pledge of mutual respect and support.

In the program notes to the commemoration, the organizers drew attention to the events that transpired in Germany 87 years ago, when at least 91 Jews were killed and 30,000 Jewish men were forced into concentration camps, Jewish homes and institutions were ransacked, businesses destroyed and synagogues burned. It was, the notes read, “a reflection of the inability of ‘polite society’ – of Jews and non-Jews – to comprehend that the institutions at the very heart of civil society (the police, uniformed people, political representatives) would be at the very core of this violence inflicted on the Jews of Germany and Austria, or contribute … to its devastating effect.”

The commemoration was sponsored by Congregation Emanu-El and the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Rebuilding a life after Shoah

Prof. Robin Judd, author of Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After the Holocaust, speaks with community members at the Kristallnacht commemoration in Vancouver Nov. 9. (photo by Sova Photography)

The history of war brides – generally British or European women who married Allied military men – is widely known and has been explored by historians and social scientists. Between 1944 and 1948, about 65,000 dependents came to Canada as spouses or intended spouses of military personnel.

Speaking at Vancouver’s annual Kristallnacht commemorative event Nov. 9 at Congregation Beth Israel, Prof. Robin Judd discussed an almost unknown subset of this phenomenon: Holocaust survivors who met Allied soldiers in displaced persons’ camps after the war and went on to marry them.

Judd is associate professor of history at Ohio State University and immediate past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, the largest international society for scholars of Jewish studies. Her award-winning book Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After the Holocaust explores the harrowing task of rebuilding a life in the wake of the Holocaust.

Many Jewish survivors, as well as community and religious leaders, viewed marriage between Jewish women and military personnel as a way for the survivors to move forward after extraordinary trauma, said Judd, whose academic interest in the subject stems from family history.

“My grandmother was a war bride,” Judd said. “She was a survivor. She and my father survived the war in hiding. My biological grandfather died at liberation, and my grandmother married an American soldier after the war, who then adopted my father.”

Her grandmother spoke little about her experiences during or immediately after the war, though Judd knew the rough outline of her past. Only when Judd began research into the subject did she learn that her grandmother’s experience was not as unique as Judd had assumed.

The individual stories of these war brides, and their efforts to integrate, offer lessons around survival in the aftermath of trauma, as well as larger issues concerning marriage, immigration and citizenship, she said.

Judd focused on a few couples, including Isaac and Leesha (neé Leisje Bornstijn) Rose, and Sala (neé Solarcz) and Abe Bonder.

Sala survived in the Warsaw Ghetto for more than a year, before deportation to a ghetto outside Lublin, then to Majdanek and a series of other camps. She was liberated during a death march in April 1945.

At Rosh Hashanah services at a DP camp in Hanover, she met Abe, a mechanic in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Until then, Judd said, Sala had avoided the Canadian and British soldiers overseeing the DP camp because she said they made her feel like a monkey in the zoo.

“But Abe came to her and started to speak to her in a very quiet Yiddish,” Judd recounted. “It was his questioning, his real interest in understanding who she was and what she had experienced that made her want to seek a second encounter with him.”

Many of the war brides found themselves at the whims of their new extended families, subsumed into existing structures that were foreign and unfamiliar. Often, they arrived in the new country and did not have homes of their own but lived with their husbands’ families, sometimes with multiple generations in the same home.

Leesha arrived in Ottawa and moved in with fiancé Isaac and her soon-to-be mother-in-law, with whom she had limited language skills to communicate. The groom’s mother took it upon herself to plan the wedding.

“Leesha and other war brides are often talking about how, in these moments, whether it was the marriage or it was having their first child, or it was their first child’s bar or bat mitzvah, or their first child’s wedding, how they so desperately missed those murdered family members at that time,” Judd said.

Newcomers were sometimes judged unfairly, as if their healthy appearance diminished the perception of their suffering. A newspaper article described Leesha as “a good-natured chubby little girl.”

“There was this notion that these women looked almost too healthy,” said Judd, “That the trauma was almost not written sufficiently enough on her body.”

Associations and networks existed for the newcomers to connect with others from similar backgrounds, including Jewish war bride clubs and synagogue-affiliated groups.

The war bride experiences Judd studies are diverse and include sad but also happy memories, she said, from the difficulties of reconstruction and recovery to stories of resilience and rebuilding.

Prof. Chris Friedrichs, a scholar of German history who taught at the University of British Columbia from 1973 until his retirement in 2018, contextualized Judd’s presentation, as well as Kristallnacht and the larger history of the Holocaust.

Kristallnacht sent a message to the world, he said. But the world did not listen.

“This horrific Night of Broken Glass was front page news all over the world, but not for long,” he recounted. “Much else was going on in the world at that time and, within a few days, Kristallnacht was forgotten. In fact, the world learned nothing from Kristallnacht. But the Nazis learned a lot. They realized that whatever they might do to the Jews, there would be no consequences. And thus, once Hitler’s war started in 1939, within Germany itself and in every country the Germans conquered under cover of war, a relentless program to exterminate the Jews began to be carried out by beatings, by shootings, by starvation and by gas.”

Hannah Marazzi, executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC), which presented the event in partnership with Beth Israel and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, called Kristallnacht “a defining moment in which the shadow of hatred quite literally burst into flame.”

Dr. Abby Wener Herlin, associate director of programs and community relations for the VHEC, introduced Holocaust survivors, who lit candles of remembrance.

“Tonight, as we are about to light candles … we vow never to forget the lives of the women, men and children who are symbolized by these flames,” she said. “May the memory of their lives inspire us to live so that we may help to ensure that their memories live on.”

Beth Israel’s Rabbi Jonathan Infeld thanked the speaker and reflected on his family’s experience.

“My father left the DP camp and moved to Pittsburgh,” Infeld said. At a party at the Jewish community centre specifically to make shidduchim, marriage matches, for Holocaust survivors, he met the woman who would become his wife and the rabbi’s mother.

photo - Vancouver Deputy Mayor Sarah Kirby-Yung, centre, and councilors Lenny Zhou and Lucy Maloney at the Nov. 9 Kristallnacht commemoration — Vancouver Deputy Mayor Sarah Kirby-Yung, centre, and councilors Lenny Zhou and Lucy Maloney at the Nov. 9 Kristallnacht commemoration. *(photo by Sova Photography)*

Cantor Yaakov Orzech chanted El Moleh Rachamim, the memorial prayer.

Taleeb Noormohamed, member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville, warned of the dangers of ignoring the lessons of history.

“If we don’t take the lesson that remembrance requires us to take, we end up with a quiet normalization of what that night represented,” he said. “This is a fight that we all take on. We take on with responsibility, we take on with conviction, and we take it on to honour all of you who survived and all of you that have relatives and friends and loved ones that didn’t. So, we say, may their memory be a blessing and, indeed, may it be, but may it also be a reminder to all of us that the work that is to be done is for all of us.”

Terry Yung, member of the BC Legislature for Vancouver-Yaletown and a retired senior officer with the Vancouver Police Department, told the audience the future depends on education.

“We cannot arrest ourselves out of hate, we cannot,” he said. “We have to educate people in this world of darkness.”

Sarah Kirby-Yung, deputy mayor of Vancouver, and fellow city councilors Lenny Zhou and Lucy Maloney read a proclamation from the city.

Anne Frank exhibit on now

Created in 1995, the traveling exhibit Anne Frank: A History for Today is on display roughly 300 times a year. Mainly for school groups, people can visit the exhibit at Seaforth Armoury Nov. 11. (photo from Anne Frank House)

The traveling exhibit Anne Frank: A History for Today, hosted by the Consulate General of the Netherlands, is at Seaforth Armoury until Nov. 21. An opportunity for school groups to learn about Anne’s story and the legacy of her diary, the exhibit tours have already sold out, but the public is welcome to visit on Remembrance Day, Nov. 11.

While this is not the first time the exhibit has been in Vancouver, its presence at the armoury and museum is poignant. Started in 1920 by Scottish Canadians, infantry from the Seaforth Highlanders were on the ground in Amsterdam on May 8, 1945. They entered the city as part of the Allies’ liberating force.

Following months of battles and Germany’s surrender, the Seaforth Highlanders offered humanitarian aid to the city’s population. The close ties between the regiment and the people of the Netherlands are commemorated every year.

The school tours at Seaforth Armoury are led by volunteers trained by Phyllis Lewis, a staff member of Anne Frank House, said the house’s director of Canadian activities, John Kastner.

Arriving on Nov. 5, the exhibit required about six people half a day to set up, then there was peer training. The response to the call for volunteers was excellent, said Kastner, as has been the level of interest from local schools.

“I think the premise is from Anne Frank House in Amsterdam – there’s real value for people to become ambassadors of the message. People that are close to the same age as Anne are particularly effective when it comes to relaying the message of the diary,” he said.

Not all the exhibit’s stops are in metropolitan areas. Kastner described its journey to Anne Frank Public School in Vaughan, part of the Greater Toronto Area, then it went to Marathon, a mining community on the shore of Lake Superior, then to All Saints High School in Toronto, before being displayed at Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery (Canada’s national military cemetery) and the Dutch consulate in Vancouver, which sponsored it.

And the exhibition will keep moving, said Kastner. “It’s been very busy in 2025 – demand has been very steady and it has hardly been in storage at all.”

Created in 1995, the Canadian exhibitions are just some of the many around the world, in languages including Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, Korean, Macedonian and two forms of Portuguese. In total, the exhibit is on display roughly 300 times a year.

Paired with a 30-minute film, Who was Anne Frank?, the tour takes about 90 minutes. It comprises 11 panels of information that are the same worldwide and the 12th panel is curated specifically for the region. The version that arrived in Vancouver this week references the liberation of Amsterdam and all the panels are in both English and French, which is the case for all the Canadian showings, though the exhibit for northern Ontario is also in Inuktitut.

The docents bear a responsibility as ambassadors for Anne’s legacy and message, said Kastner. “You want people who are in classrooms, at dinner tables, in peer groups at schools, who are aware of the story, that become advocates of fairness, opponents of racism, opponents of prejudice, and we really see it in real life – that those docents become docents of the message of Anne Frank House.

“Every generation that comes through, you create a new generation that becomes familiar with the story and the messaging of Anne Frank – not only what she went through, but her optimism in a world surrounded by hate, prejudice and violence…. As people go through the exhibit, they become aware of what an important story it is,” said Kastner. “They come to realize that it is, by definition, a history for today – that it has relevance in today’s society.”

photo - Anne Frank, in 1941. The traveling exhibit Anne Frank: A History for Today is at Seaforth Armoury until Nov. 21 — Anne Frank, in 1941. The traveling exhibit Anne Frank: A History for Today is at Seaforth Armoury until Nov. 21. *(photo from Anne Frank House)*

Kastner spoke about his personal connection to Anne’s remarkable outlook and values, referencing her often-quoted diary entry of July 15, 1944: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

“I wish we could all be as optimistic as Anne was,” he said. “It was remarkable.

“There have been many periods since the Second World War when we’ve had many reasons to be pessimistic, and that’s why it’s a history for today. It’s a recurring message that continues. After 75 years, it still has relevance.”

Kastner praised the design of the exhibit, calling it “fantastic.”

“There’s a timeline ribbon that goes down the centre … the date and the year. Above the ribbon is what is happening in the world politically at the time. Below the ribbon is how it’s impacting people – Anne, her family and everybody else,” he explained. “The idea is that [some people think] what you see on the news doesn’t really matter…. This says, it should matter, it does make a difference. And that creates an awareness of current events, of being involved … of speaking out. Even in minor cases of prejudice, it’s problematic and [can lead] to a greater problem.”

When talking about this idea in Marathon, Kastner gave the example of name-calling. “Calling someone a name, a slur, we can see it as problematic but not the end of the world,” he said. Or, “graffiti on a kid’s locker, that’s not very nice, but it’s not the end of the world – but it leads to a huge problem when [such actions] become the norm.”

Kastner spoke highly of the 3D model of the house, which is “one of the great learning tools that goes with the exhibit.” There is power in asking teenagers, “Who can tell us where Anne slept?”

“When I went to Anne Frank House to work there, where my workspace was, I’d be looking at the courtyard and at the Annex, looking at the tree, and it’s absolutely surreal,” he said. “Being in the presence of that kind of history. There’s no replacement for that.”

It’s the same tree Anne would have seen.

“I’d be in her father’s office at the warehouse and there are all sorts of people traipsing through the house,” he said, and he’d think about “how you [would have] had to be deathly quiet, completely stationary, because people were using that office.”

Certain questions come up time and again. Students want to know how the Holocaust started, for example.

“The Holocaust didn’t start with people getting loaded on trains,” Kastner explains to the kids. “The Holocaust started with all sorts of things that Anne talks about – her bike being taken away, not being allowed to swim in the public pool, not being allowed to take public transit, then extended to larger things. Her dad not being allowed to have a job or own property.… It starts by slow increments.”

At Anne Frank Public School in Vaughan, the kids asked Kastner how Anne’s diary got published. He described the return of Anne’s father, Otto Frank, to the Annex, which had not changed since the day their hiding place was discovered. He told the students that Miep Gies, who had helped hide Anne and her family, “had taken the diary after the Nazis had left and kept it, gave it to Otto and he read through it and then said, I should publish this.”

Kastner said the kids marvel at the serendipity, the turn of events that led to “one of the most important books written by somebody under the age of 16.” He added, “The kids say that it’s amazing that [Otto] survived, that he got the book, that somebody wanted to publish it and then the idea that it’s become standard reading for millions of kids 70 years later.”

During the exhibition’s stop at Beechwood Cemetery, Kastner recalled two students asking him, “What is it about Jewish people? Why do they pick on Jewish people?” And, “Why didn’t somebody do something?

Kastner explained the scapegoat theory to these students. “It’s in Shakespearian plays, it’s throughout history: the idea of a common enemy often solidifies a group,” he said.

Each exhibition site brings different opportunities for learning, said Kastner. Getting it to remote locations can be tough but it’s worthwhile. Shipping the panels to Marathon, for example, was challenging, but Kastner applauded the motivation of the school there as “very noble and progressive.”

“Every place it goes, it has a different impact and it’s going there for a different reason,” said Kastner of the exhibition.

“The message,” he said, “is in Anne’s experience, Anne’s death – that has relevance in today’s society.”

Shula Klinger is an author and journalist living in North Vancouver.

Reminder of humanity’s light

The passage across the Øresund, the body of water that separates the Danish peninsula from Sweden, is, at its narrowest, about the same distance as Horseshoe Bay to Bowen Island. But the waters can be treacherous – especially when it’s 1943 and the waters are swarming with Gestapo Kriegsmarine boats. Yet, for two weeks at the beginning of October 1943, 7,000 Danish Jews – about 95% of Danish Jewry (including the wonderful Victor Borge) – were safely transported across the Øresund in small fishing boats to the “sacred soil” of neutral Sweden.

In his new book, A Light in the Northern Sea: Denmark’s Incredible Rescue of Their Jewish Citizens During WWII, Tim Brady, author of the popular story of the Dutch Resistance Three Ordinary Girls, uses his excellent narrative skills to outline in detail how Danish Jews were warned about Nazi deportation plans, how they escaped and how they were treated when they arrived in Sweden.

Brady has described himself as a storyteller, rather than as a professional historian, but he has done his research and he tells this story in great detail. As he did with Three Ordinary Girls, Brady brings history alive with the telling of stories through the eyes of participants, rather than simply cold facts. The eyes here are, for the most part, those of the remarkable Dutch resistance fighter Jurgen Kieler, whose recently published memoirs (encouraged by Elie Wiesel) would not have been available to earlier rescue historians.

Readers might be surprised that the “light in the northern sea” of the title refers to welcoming Sweden, not, as you might expect, given the book’s subtitle, Denmark. But, as Brady is quick to point out, the Swedish “light” was not always bright – before, and early in the war, Sweden had demanded that Germany mark the passports of Jewish emigrés with a “J” so they could be more easily refused, and Sweden refused potential Jewish immigrants who were not financially independent.

However, as Brady notes, largely due to the enormously influential intercession of the great Danish Nobelist Niels Bohr (a dedicated Nazi-hater) with the Swedish government, Sweden’s position regarding the Jewish immigrants changed radically by October 1943, when it decided to admit all 7,200 Jews fleeing the recently occupying Nazis in Denmark.

Swedes almost universally opened their homes to the Danish Jews. The refugees were also made to feel comfortable in churches, community centres, hotels and schools, as welfare agencies constructed camps, provided clothing and household items, and helped them find employment. Also, as Brady notes, during the post-rescue months of the Danish resistance, Sweden provided a 25 million kroner (about $70 million in today’s dollars) credit to help Denmark train and organize the Danish Brigade revolutionary group.

Interestingly, the “rescue of Denmark’s Jewish citizens” referred to in the book’s subtitle has a double reference for Brady. On the one hand, there is the escape across the Øresund. But there is a second “rescue” described in the ending chapters of the book. These chapters deal with the 1943-45 undertakings of the Danish resistance, including detailed accounts of both their successful and non-successful sabotage activities. However, most of these Danish fighters were ultimately captured, and Brady carefully narrates their terrible experiences in German concentration camps. But, once again, the Danish Jews were “rescued.” Thanks to a coordinated effort of the Swedish Red Cross and the Danish government, most of the Danish concentration camp prisoners were returned to Denmark in the remarkable “White Bus Rescue” that was made possible in March 1945 by negotiations instigated between the Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte and Heinrich Himmler, which Brady describes at the end of his book.

When put into historical perspective, as Brady is careful to do, the rescue of 95% of Danish Jewry, while utterly unique in Europe, was not completely surprising. At no time had Danish Jews been required to wear a yellow star. Moreover, King Christian X, while greeting his Danish subjects, would never salute the occupying Nazis, and would habitually visit Denmark’s Great Synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. (King Christian, in contradiction to popular myth, never wore the yellow star – but he would later be placed under house arrest.) As well, Jews lived comfortably in Copenhagen; for 100 years, they had enjoyed full human rights and become very active in arts, politics and philanthropy. For these reasons, as Brady explains, and also because the Danish population was, in his words, “peculiarly democratic,” Germany hesitated to “twist the arms of Denmark regarding its Jewish problem” (no less was Denmark anxious to “poke the Third Reich bear,” as Brady puts it).

But how did the Danish Jews know about the Nazis’ plans to deport them? To answer this question, Brady emphasizes the courageous actions of Nazi diplomat Georg Duckwitz, whom history should celebrate as a kind of Raoul Wallenberg- or Oskar Schindler-type figure. With his life on the line, Duckwitz tipped off Danish authorities when, in September 1943, the Nazis decided to solve the Danish “Jewish problem” in the way history shows they “solved” other problems. Duckwitz also, after tipping off Danish authorities, courageously traveled to Stockholm to tell Sweden’s prime minister about the impending roundup of Danish Jews.

As a result of Duckwitz’s actions, Danes were warned in time of the impending roundup and, when the Gestapo came calling, there was no one home. Almost all (except the very ill and disabled who did end up deported) were in neighbours’ homes or schools, churches, hospitals or safe houses, preparing for their trip to Sweden.

Once the fishing boats were assembled, the flight to Sweden began in earnest. The boats were usually crammed; children and babies were usually sedated; and the passage was often rough, as high winds would often raise waves four to six metres high.

As an aside, in 1989, the annual Holocaust Symposium at the University of British Columbia arranged by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre focused on the Danish rescue. The speakers were a Danish Jewish woman who was rescued and a Danish fisherman who was among the rescuers. In the Q&A portion of their presentation, the fisherman admitted that he and the other rescuers charged as much as 1,000 kroner ($5,000 in today’s Canadian money) per “Jewish ticket.” Brady notes this, but finds it “understandable,” since the fishermen’s livelihood was at stake in crossing the Gestapo-infested Øresund.

All in all, the Danish rescue, as Brady presents it, is truly a remarkable story – and a welcome reminder that, even in the roughest seas and at the darkest times, the basic light of humanity can shine brightly.

Graham Forst, PhD, taught literature and philosophy at Capilano University until his retirement and now teaches in the continuing education department at Simon Fraser University. From 1975 to 2010, he co-chaired the symposium committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

New bio gives Vrba his due

Rudolf Vrba, left, and author Alan Twigg at the University of British Columbia in 2001. Twigg’s new book on Vrba, Holocaust Hero: The Life & Times of Rudolf Vrba, breaks much new ground. (photo by Beverly Cramp)

Celebrated German factory owner Oskar Schindler is estimated to have saved the lives of about 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Carl Lutz, a Swiss vice-consul in Budapest, is credited with organizing protective documents and “safe houses” that helped between 50,000 and 62,000 Jews survive. Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish envoy in Budapest issued passports and sheltered people in buildings, saving somewhere between 20,000 and more than 30,000 Jews. Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, wrote thousands of transit visas, enabling about 6,000 Jews to escape via the Soviet Union and Japan, some of whom came to Canada and settled in Vancouver.

But few outside certain circles know of Rudolf Vrba. The late University of British Columbia professor of pharmacology escaped from Auschwitz and alerted the world to what was happening there. Estimates of the number of Jews saved by Vrba’s report vary, but a consensus among historians worldwide suggests he helped halt the mass deportation of more than 200,000 of Hungary’s Jews to Auschwitz. The late eminent historian Sir Martin Gilbert said of Vrba: “No other single act in the Second World War saved so many Jews from the fate that Hitler and the SS had determined for them.”

And yet, Vrba’s name remains largely unknown. This is not a coincidence. After the war, especially in Israel, there was a deliberate effort to downplay Vrba’s perspective of events.

A new book – the first of a meticulous two-volume assessment of Vrba’s life – has just been released by Vancouver author Alan Twigg. It goes great lengths to broadening awareness of Vrba’s heroism and correcting the many misconceptions around his legacy. In the process, Holocaust Hero: The Life & Times of Rudolf Vrba breaks much new ground.

Coincidental to the release of this publication, a monument to Vrba’s memory is to be unveiled later this month at Schara Tzedeck Cemetery, righting what many locals see as an unjust historic oversight.

While Vrba wrote his own memoirs, somewhat incredibly, Twigg’s book is the first real Vrba biography.

“There’s never been an in-depth biography of Rudolf Vrba,” said Twigg, who deliberately did not replicate the contents of Vrba’s own 1963 book, written with Alan Bestic, titled I Cannot Forgive and re-released in the 1980s as Escape from Auschwitz. “I tried to concentrate on information that was not available anywhere.”

While this first volume is an eye-opener for those who know nothing of Vrba, it contains bombshells and fascinating depth even for those who have read Vrba’s book or who otherwise know something about his story. And Twigg promises more to come in the next volume.

“The really revealing material is going to be in Volume Two,” Twigg told the Independent. “That volume will be almost entirely original material and it will show the evolution of Rudi’s character.”

Those who know of Vrba are aware of his daring escape. But that was, in many ways, the beginning of his historic story. He joined the Partisans and was a decorated war hero. He was an extraordinary intellectual, a difficult personality, had a dark humour many people didn’t understand, and carried anger throughout his life.

“I think it’s so important if you’re writing a biography to get across his character, not just the events of his life,” said Twigg. The participation of Vrba’s widow, Robin, was invaluable and the book includes extended transcriptions of Twigg’s engaging conversations with her.

Rudolf Vrba was originally a false name that came on the forged papers given to Walter Rosenberg soon after he filed his report and then joined the Czechoslovakian resistance after his escape from Auschwitz.

Born in Slovakia, Rosenberg/Vrba was transported to Auschwitz in June 1942. He steadfastly viewed the plunder of Jewish assets – not antisemitism as its own accelerant – as the motive for the Holocaust.

Vrba is said to have had a near-photographic memory, which allowed him to store away data that would change the course of history. It is believed that he greeted almost every train arriving at Auschwitz for 10 months, mentally noting estimated numbers and places of origin.

Eventually, he gained the coveted job of registrar of Birkenau’s quarantine camp, allowing him unusual access to additional information and limited freedom of movement. He learned that plans were afoot to liquidate the last remaining large population of European Jews – the 800,000 in Hungary – whose destruction would be streamlined by the construction of a new rail line to expedite transportation to the crematoria.

Vrba connected with Alfréd Wetzler, another Slovakian Jew who was registrar of the morgue.

On April 7, 1944, Vrba and Wetzler hid in a woodpile, still on the Birkenau site but outside the barbed wire prisoner encampment. Gasoline-soaked tobacco threw search dogs off their scent. They hid there for three days and nights as search parties worked 24/7 to find the escapees. After the intensive search was called off, they made their move.

The pair made an 11-day trek by foot through Poland to the border with Slovakia, where they connected with the Jewish community.

“Their feet were bloodied and misshapen,” Twigg reports. “A doctor was summoned. The malnourished pair recovered and soon cooperated with Jewish Council officials to produce an anonymous report that would be so detailed and emotionless that it could not not be believed.”

The Vrba-Wetzler Report, as it became known, was the first to have any significant reverberations, apparently because of the mathematical tallies and objective, scientific-like writing.

With the report, pressure came down on Admiral Miklós Horthy, the Hungarian leader viewed by most as a Nazi collaborationist, to halt the deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. By 1944, the tide had begun to turn against the Nazis and so it was not moral considerations, Twigg suggests, that turned Horthy against the deportations, but the fear of war crimes charges after the war. Regardless of Horthy’s motivations, it was this impact of the Vrba-Wetzler Report that is believed to have saved at least 100,000 and as many as 200,000 lives.

The deportations did not end permanently, though. And here Vrba’s history is inescapably tied up with that of another Rudolf – Rudolf (Rezső) Kasztner, one of the most polarizing figures in Holocaust history.

“A controversy persists to this day as to the extent prominent Jewish and Zionist leaders should be held accountable for a myriad of failures to adequately inform Jews about the lethal dangers of boarding the trains,” Twigg writes. “For the rest of his days, Vrba would chiefly lay the blame for the failure to adequately inform approximately 800,000 Jews in Hungary about the Holocaust on Kasztner, the Zionist leader from northern Transylvania.”

Kasztner was the first non-Slovakian official to see the Vrba-Wetzler Report and a harsh dispute rages still around what happened next.

In meetings among the leadership of Hungarian Jewry, it was apparently Kasztner who pressed for an approach in which, rather than alerting the Jewish population, the leadership would keep the information to themselves and negotiate directly with Adolf Eichmann for favourable terms that made it possible for Kasztner and other senior Jewish figures to save themselves and a number of others.

Kasztner (and those sympathetic to his narrative) would have seen some logic in the fact that the Nazi war effort was foundering and the Germans desperately needed goods and money, something Kasztner and his associates believed they could access through Jewish channels internationally. With the Soviets approaching from the east, they may have thought they could buy time and save more than their limited numbers.

Eventually, Kasztner negotiated with Eichmann that a trainload of about 1,684 Jews, many or most of Kasztner’s own choosing, would set off for Switzerland. It is estimated that the passage for each passenger had been “bought” from Eichmann for about $1,000.

The passengers did not go directly to Switzerland, though, but were rerouted to Bergen-Belsen. Unlike the other Hungarian Jews arriving at the concentration camps, however, these 1,600 or so were kept separate and eventually did make it to Switzerland, in two transports, later in the year.

In the meantime, 400,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to Auschwitz, where almost all of them were murdered.

The title of Vrba’s book, I Cannot Forgive, is assumed to refer to the Nazis. Twigg, among others, believes it is simultaneously a reference to Kasztner and his coterie of Jewish leaders.

Vrba was openly critical of the Jewish leadership, particularly those in Hungary and especially Kasztner, who by this time had risen to a moderately senior post in the Israeli government, along with other Hungarian Jewish leaders who were senior or mid-level figures in the governing party, Mapai. To some extent, put simply, the Hungarian Jews who had negotiated with Eichmann and who Vrba blamed for preventing his report from saving exponentially more Jewish lives, became integrated into the nascent elite of the new Jewish state. It was decidedly not in their interests to have the provocative professor, now halfway around the world in Vancouver, obtain any wider audience for his book.

Ruth Linn, an Israeli scholar of moral psychology and Holocaust memory at the University of Haifa, has Vancouver connections and stumbled onto Vrba’s story a couple of decades ago. She could not understand why his name was almost completely unknown in Israel. She spearheaded the first publication of the Vrba-Wetzler Report in Hebrew, in 1998, and, in 2004, wrote Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of Forgetting, which examined why Vrba’s account had been marginalized in Israel and how politics and memory shaped Holocaust historiography.

Capturing the dichotomy of the debate around Kasztner’s role in the Hungarian Holocaust, Twigg juxtaposes two quotes. An Israeli judge, Benjamin Halevi, said of Kasztner, “He didn’t sell his soul to the devil; he was the devil.” Canadian author and publisher Anna Porter, who has written about the subject, said, “If you’re in hell, who do you negotiate with but the devil?”

A 1955 libel trial instigated by Kasztner proved his undoing. Ostensibly a case against Malkiel Gruenwald, who publicized the wartime actions of Kasztner, the trial turned into an examination of the facts of the case. Halevi, the judge who deemed Kasztner the devil himself, ruled that, by saving a chosen few, Kasztner had sacrificed the majority of Hungarian Jews. More than two years later, Israel’s Supreme Court overturned the judgment, but Kasztner did not live to see his legal redemption. He was assassinated outside his home in March 1957.

Twigg came to the Vrba story more by happenstance than design. Twigg edited BC Bookworld, a newspaper about books and authors, for more than three decades.

“I used to keep track of all the books of British Columbia and I had categories,” he said. He could cross-reference, for example, all books on Japanese-Canadians or forestry.

Based on this knowledge, in 2022, Twigg wrote Out of Hiding: Holocaust Literature of British Columbia. (See jewishindependent.ca/a-roadmap-to-remembering.) Its largest, though still necessarily brief, section is on Vrba. However, this was inadequate for Twigg, who decided to expand the project – first as a comprehensive website (rudolfvrba.com) – now as this book.

Not directly related to Holocaust Hero but timely, if profoundly overdue, an ad hoc group of friends and admirers of Vrba will erect the world’s only monument to him on Sunday, Oct. 26, beginning with a ceremony in the chapel at Schara Tzedeck Cemetery at 2 p.m. The program will feature reflections on Vrba’s life, legacy and enduring impact from Dr. Robert Krell, Dr. Joseph Ragaz and Prof. Chris Friedrichs, and will conclude with the dedication of the memorial monument.

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.

Vrba monument to be unveiled

photo - Rudolf Vrba, in the 1960s — Rudolf Vrba, in the 1960s. *(photo from University of British Columbia. Archives)*

Rudolf Vrba’s escape from Auschwitz and testimony helped alert the world to the horrors of the Holocaust, and Vrba is credited with saving the lives of more than 100,000 Hungarian Jews. On Oct. 26, 2 p.m., at Schara Tzedeck Cemetery Chapel in New Westminster, a commemoration ceremony will be held for Vrba. The program will feature reflections on his life, legacy and enduring impact from Dr. Robert Krell and Dr. Joseph Ragaz, and will conclude with the dedication of a memorial monument in Vrba’s honour.

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.”