memoir

Ruta’s Closet reissued

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The person was renowned historian Sir Martin Gilbert.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flying through our life

It is sunny today. (Some other today!) I am on my balcony watching birds fly. The sky is blue everywhere, unharried by even a wisp of cloud. There are sailboats on the water and there is snow on the mountaintops. The gentle breeze is friendly, ruffling the tiny hairs on my exposed skin.

Although it is before noon, I have indulged. I am inspired by a smidgen of whiskey and the smoky vapour of a cigar of unknown heritage. (I drank from a new crystal beaker my Bride purchased for me to celebrate my existence.) Sensitized by their appeal, I can see my life experience stream like an indie film before my eyes.

I am watching how the birds launch themselves into empty space, beating their wings strongly until they catch a current, an unseen wave they sense will carry them forward. Then they glide, onward and upward. They fly singly or in flocks. Those flying together know well the strength and advantage that lies in union. Isn’t that always a better idea if it can be managed?

I think back to my youth, my life path, and extrapolate to the lives of younger people, and those not so young. I recall how I launched myself into the unknown – so eager to be off on my own that I was heedless there were any dangers. Some of us hung back and had to be encouraged into flight by our near and dear. Some of us traveled in packs. Some of us remained a long time on the home perch. Some had their departures well-planned, orchestrated by vision or friends and family.

For those of us who took off, we sometimes had to walk before we could fly, we had to work hard to get to the take-off point. This might have been particularly true for those of us who were the children of immigrants, of ethnic minorities often discriminated against. When we did make it off the ground, how proud we were to be sailing in the wind of life under our own power. It was great to feel the lift of independence under our wings. It gave us energy.

We were always looking for that wave that would propel us forward. We didn’t always find it. For many of us it was work, work, work, just to stay on an even keel. We squared our shoulders and kept on keeping on. We couldn’t help seeing others on their flights ahead of us, wishing we could also really soar.

How did we learn to fly? How did we know we could? Surely, we watched others, our parents, friends, people we knew. Some of us crashed and burned, a few of us never even tried – the grapevine and the media brought us the news of these events daily. We felt the downdrafts as well as updrafts and we all had our share of scary moments. For some of us, more than our share! But most of us kept on moving, looking to gain enough speed for lift-off.

And many of us eventually did take off. We got to feel the exhilaration of flight, to feel the current we had caught through effort and attention to the tasks at hand. When we stopped to think, it was great to relish and feel the momentum we had attained, to appreciate the distance we had traveled. It was great to contemplate the things we could look forward to if we kept on flying.

Sustaining the effort on the trip was never something one could take for granted – not all of us are built for distance. When I watch flocks of birds flying south for the winter, I am always mindful that each member takes a turn at the head so the leader can rest. Most of us do not have volunteers to take a turn at the head of our efforts to get ahead, to accomplish the tasks we have set ourselves. It is almost always totally up to us alone. It is always so special when there is a partner at the ready with a helping hand. Lucky, lucky, lucky! We have to be open to that.

I am one of the lucky ones. Coming to the end of my journey, closer every day, I can see that now. The wounds I have sustained along the way, many of them self-inflicted, have not proved fatal to this point. I can rest on my perch more often and watch the passing parade.

The flights that remain for me to take are more measured and more likely to be in the thick of a flock. I am complacent when overtaken and passed by the many more eager flyers. Sometimes, I am more concerned about our companions who have fallen behind. We are spending more time in the planning for others than in the doing for ourselves. And, I do have a partner ready to give a hand. Lucky, lucky, lucky!

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Sharing a special anniversary

When does something begin? I’ve been thinking about that as I go through 95 years’ worth of Jewish Independents. Well, 20 years of JIs and 75 years of its predecessor, the Jewish Western Bulletin. The JWB also had its predecessors – mimeos and letter-sized versions. The paper’s founders started counting on Oct. 9, 1930, the official first tabloid edition, when they could have started July 15, 1925, “the natal issue of the Vancouver Jewish Bulletin.” Or maybe earlier. Who knows when the idea that brought into existence what would become, through thousands of issues, the paper you today hold in your hands or read on your computer.

image - Making the cover of this special issue, where six stories jump to the inside and the rest of the stories are blurbs that direct readers to pages on the inside, was an organizational challenge. There was no way I could replicate the brevity of the 1930s articles, but I could mimic the style. — Making the cover of this special issue, where six stories jump to the inside and the rest of the stories are blurbs that direct readers to pages on the inside, was an organizational challenge. There was no way I could replicate the brevity of the 1930s articles, but I could mimic the style.

I know I’ve mentioned this fact in previous anniversary issues, that the JI could be considered five years older than the age we have deemed it to be. In looking through so many beginnings – and endings – throughout the years, it struck me again. So many organizations have multiple possibilities for the equivalent of their first edition. For example, the Louis Brier Home and Hospital was organized in 1945, but the idea for it probably came even earlier and the home didn’t open until 1946.

I share this as a caveat because, as I went through the paper’s archives, looking for other community organizations that are celebrating a significant anniversary this year, I no doubt have missed some. But my intent was good – I wanted to share the JI’s “special day” with others.

Unfortunately, I was hampered in my goal because the search function of the online Jewish Western Bulletin archives (newspapers.lib.sfu.ca/jwb-collection) is basically dysfunctional. If I had a 95th birthday wish, it would be to have the funding to have all the newspapers back to 1925 re-digitized and re-indexed, so that this priceless resource could be more accessible. In the meantime, I hope readers can embrace the random smattering of “clippings” that represent my attempt to show how the newspaper has grown with the community – our success being directly attributable to our collective success.

image - I continue to wish that the founders of the newspaper had started counting in 1925, when the “natal issue of the Vancouver Jewish Bulletin” was published. — I continue to wish that the founders of the newspaper had started counting in 1925, when the “natal issue of the Vancouver Jewish Bulletin” was published.

Going through the pages of the newspaper over 95 years is both an inspiring experience and a sobering one. Countless people, organizations, businesses and events no longer exist, but there are always new people coming into the world, coming into the community; new groups being created, new businesses popping up, new ideas being discussed, new events being organized. If the size of the Community Calendar is any indication, there is more happening in the community today than there has ever been.

During my 26 years as publisher – or, one of my other beginnings, 27 years since I was hired by the paper – there have been recessions, wars, a global pandemic, and seemingly inexhaustible antisemitism, which has increased greatly since Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. I am still processing that massacre, the ensuing war and all the other violent conflicts happening in the world, the hate and the anger that threaten to overwhelm. It never ceases to amaze and sadden me, humanity’s ability to be as destructive and cruel as we can be creative and compassionate. I won’t dwell on the negative here.

In running the newspaper, I have tried to maintain a middle ground, to be inclusive but also respect my own boundaries. I think there are concerns that should be played out in public, and others that should be dealt with privately. The JI is not a gossip rag, it is not sensationalist or alarmist. That is a decision I have made, and that our editorial board (Pat Johnson, Basya Laye and me) considers every issue.

While not ignoring the hurtful, the divisions, the controversies in our community or the larger universe, we try to cover stories in a way that doesn’t depress and paralyze action, but rather opens the door for solutions or at least positive attempts at change. We don’t want readers to put down the newspaper in despair, but rather to think about what they can do to contribute to a better world, whatever that means to them. One ad in this paper heralds the JI for being the bearer of good news – it makes me happy that people think that, even as we report the news that’s not so good.

The Jewish Independent has survived so long because of one thing: community support.

In 95 years, there has been much to mourn, that is true, but there also has been so much to celebrate. Personally, during my tenure as publisher, I have benefited from many kindnesses, from generous landlords and donors to loyal subscribers and the people who support the paper through purchasing ads.

I have met, worked with and/or become friends with some truly amazing people. I consider myself lucky to have joined the paper early enough to have met in person several of the visionaries who built the organizational foundations of this community, not to mention those of the province, even of Canada, in some instances. There are afternoon teas, lunches and gala dinners I’ll remember forever, if the mind stays healthy.

The people I work with are smart, talented, dedicated and should be earning a lot more than they are. I might own the paper, but by no means do I run it alone. The people whose names you see on the masthead every issue are integral to publishing the paper. And all the people who have been on that masthead over the years – and the many more who have not been recognized in print – have helped keep the paper going, from its first days to today. I thank you all.

I am not a journalist per se, nor an entrepreneur. I’m trained as an economist, and still make myself chuckle when I think of the most uneconomical choice I have made in my life – to buy this newspaper. But it has kept me clothed and fed, with a roof above my head. It has taught me so many things and, though I’ve not always been a willing student, I am better for the lessons.

Most importantly, I am better for all the people I have encountered on this journey. I have made many friends and acquaintances. Not all my encounters have been pleasant or easy, but I have come to appreciate more as I’ve gotten older that, behind the organizations serving the community are simply people. Maybe people I don’t always agree with, but people who are undeniably committed. They are people who believe in community so much that they give of their time, either as volunteers or staff or both, working in one place, volunteering in others. Or they give of their financial resources, funding causes in which they believe, choosing to give away some of their money rather than letting it sit in the bank or using it for personal wants and needs.

It is a privilege to do what I do for a living. I am proud to be part of this extraordinary community. Kol hakavod to us all. May we go from strength to strength….

Now let’s party. Happy anniversary to all the other Jewish organizations celebrating a milestone this year!

Leaving something behind

I am human. I share many elements of my nature with other beings on this planet. I laugh, I cry, I aspire to things, hope for things, wish for things, work for things. No different than it is for others, I am the amalgam of what I brought into this world interacting with all the stuff that has been incorporated into me through all the years since I got here.

We don’t get through life without having things stirring around inside our heads. In my head, there have always been issues struggling to get out. I long to express them, if only to myself. Gabby to a fault, I have no trouble vomiting it all out.

But getting it right inside my head before I spit it out is the wise thing to do. I must understand what it is that’s itching, burning, stuck in my craw, before I bring it into the light of day. This process can take some time, even years, even a lifetime.

Part of the issue for me is that I am driven to share my thoughts with others. I have illusions of grandeur. I really believe it matters if my ideas are shared. I believe the ideas can change people’s lives, as they have changed mine. Ultimately, though, it is up to others to make that judgment.

We have the daily issues that are urgent, demanding our focused attention in the now. These things come back to the surface when we have the luxury of time for contemplation. Are we on the right track? The decisions we are making about our careers, our partners, our children – are they the right ones for the people concerned? Such questions rise to the surface like a bad penny. We mostly shove them away again and again, not prepared to confront them. Sometimes, they are just too challenging, disturbing the bases on which we live.

If we are fortunate, we get to enjoy our share of the wonderful things in life that give us pleasure. Something as mundane as a good meal, or even a crust of bread when we are very hungry, a glass of cold, clear water when we are very thirsty. How about realizing the achievement of a goal that we have dreamed of for a long time? How about when something that is very painful stops hurting? Isn’t that a joy and a relief?

Holding a newborn in your arms, sensing the potential of new life, how about that? How about when you feel communion with another creature, human or animal, that takes you out of yourself to a union with them? That can alleviate, at least for a while, the essential loneliness that is our fate as human beings.

So, with all the pleasures and pain we are heir to, with all the wonders and horrors arrayed before our eyes and flooding into our minds, is our function only existential, is that why we are here, simply to live? Can we find some comfort and purpose in the belief in a deity that has concern for us personally? Or are we simply another life form improbably trial-and-errored successfully on this one planet out of countless more in the cosmos. The mind reels with the possibilities if we abandon our human-centred hypothesis of a caring life-force paying attention to our minuscule spot in our galaxy.

I had such simple goals when I was younger. I was going to sacrifice myself to achieve something much larger, greater, than myself. Martyrdom was my method, blood and sweat cast upon the dry soil, watering it so that flowers would bloom. So many die for no purpose. My sacrifice would have a purpose, I thought. Wasn’t that a worthy price to pay for the gift of life? Thankfully, I grew up!

Still, surely life must have a purpose beyond just breathing in and out, shouldn’t it? Is it just to be a matter of surviving? Should it be? Don’t we have a responsibility to do something about improving the world around us? These were the thoughts in my head as a young man. So many other men and women have left something behind – invention, industry, music, art, literature, leadership. We read about them. Surely, we ourselves can make a mark upon the wall of time like they did, can’t we?

I went off, like Don Quixote, to do battle, trying to subdue all the windmills I came across for the betterment of my fellow man, and to make my mark, of course. I am looking back now, very much closer to the end of my journey than to my beginning. It is not too soon to assess the results of my crusade. I did all the ordinary things, worked at several jobs I believe contained value, got married, had children. All of these were important in their way. But have they built an immortal edifice to my passage on this earth?

I face my life partner and my children and tell them that my aspirations were elsewhere and essentially were for naught. How much of the attention that I owed to them was spent on pursuing my ego-driven drive to find the building blocks of the Giza-like edifice I was determined to construct? And how ironic! My only long-term claims to fame and immortality reside in the lives I was privileged to be a part of. All my vaunted achievements with which I had consoled myself, labeling them as being worthy of merit, have vanished like dust scattered by the wind.

I retain my nostalgia for those breathless instants at the barricades. I am one of the lucky ones. I believe I have left something worthwhile behind.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Determined to help others

Photos from the book include Joy Karp speaking to a group of people at a Terry Fox Run in Whitehorse. (photo from Rick Karp)

Creating a Lasting Impact: The Amazing Life of Joy Esther Karp was recently published.

Written by Rick Karp, who was married to Joy for 49 years – many of them spent in the Yukon – the account tells of her determination to make a difference and how she made numerous contributions to society, while having to overcome life-threatening issues every few years.

Joy Karp died in 2017.

“I promised Joy a few weeks before she passed that I would ‘tell her story,’ and that is what I have done. People need to know who she was, what she accomplished throughout her life, how caring and supportive she was for others,” Rick Karp told the Independent.

Two of the setbacks Joy Karp faced were a heart attack, after giving birth to twins in her early 20s, and a car accident, in which she was thrown from the vehicle onto a frozen Lake Ontario, smashing the bones in her left foot; she had to wear specially made shoes thereafter.

In 1986, the Karps moved from Ottawa to Whitehorse, where they brought the first McDonald’s to the North and were deeply involved in the economic, social and cultural fabric of the Yukon. But this didn’t protect the couple from life’s vicissitudes.

Joy was kidnapped in 1992 and buried in her car for close to 17 hours. The kidnappers shackled her wrists and ankles, blindfolded her, put a bag over her head and left her there without needed medication, despite knowing she had heart issues.

“After the kidnapping, Joy suffered horribly for years from PTSD and, a couple of years later, her heart gave out and she had to have a quadruple bypass operation,” Rick Karp said.

In addition, Joy’s foot was severely damaged after the kidnapping, and doctors considered amputation. The Karps, though, demanded that the doctors pursue another course, which allowed her to keep her foot.

A few years later, Joy had her first case of cancer and required operations, chemotherapy and radiation. The cancer returned after several years and proved incurable.

“The doctors thought it was a heart issue and all that Joy needed was a pacemaker,” Karp said. “The X-rays that they did to determine the positioning of the pacemaker showed that the issue was a cancerous growth that had developed in her right lung and had reached out and attached to her heart.

photo - Rick Karp’s book about his wife, Joy, was recently released — Rick Karp’s book about his wife, Joy, was recently released. (photo from Rick Karp)

“They said that it was inoperable and that Joy only had about three months left, but she survived for close to 11 months.”

Despite all these adversities, Joy had an innate ability to understand and see the potential in others, to learn what they needed, and then make things happen for them, said Karp. People were always drawn to her, he said.

“This was one of the amazing things about Joy. She thought of others. She was a great listener. As a student, she helped her fellow students with assignments, and she had the ability to resolve issues.”

One of Joy Karp’s legacies is the McDonald’s Hands-On Business Training Program. The story begins in Ontario in the 1970s, with a job she had helping an owner-operator grow to five stores, and managing the head office. Confronted with a high turnover rate in some towns, the owner approached Joy for a solution.

She created a training program in 1978 and implemented it at local McDonald’s restaurants. By the early 1980s, according to Karp, the program was used throughout the fast-food chain.

“This is a three-year program that takes employees, or others that apply, through training and development that solidifies their knowledge of all of the stations in McDonald’s, training in customer service, and all aspects of how the restaurant operates,” he said.

“Then, to the right people, the program offers the chance to rise from crew person to crew trainer, to swing manager, to assistant manager and to manager – it offers career opportunities. Also, embedded in the program is the concept of ‘promote from within,’ which has been adopted by businesses, well, everywhere.”

Among other accomplishments, Joy organized service and customer satisfaction workshops for the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce when the city played host to the Canada Winter Games in 2007. Her efforts, Karp said, were recognized by the event’s organizers.

Additionally, she played a key role in bringing the Special Olympics to Whitehorse, helped arrange for an outdoor play area and training computers at the Yukon Child Development Centre, and was pivotal in obtaining funding to make the Yukon Arts Centre wheelchair accessible. In 2013, she wrote The Power of Service: Service Through the Eyes of Customers, a book that emphasizes the importance for businesses to develop relationships and trust with those they serve.

Creating a Lasting Impact can be purchased on the Bookstore page at rwkarp.ca. A signed copy can be ordered by emailing Karp at [email protected].

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

Light as a metaphor for life

Itai Erdal, with his mom, Mery Erdal, z”l, on screen, in How to Disappear Completely, which opens at the Historic Theatre in Vancouver March 15. (photo from The Chop Theatre)

Itai Erdal’s award-winning How to Disappear Completely, which has toured the globe, will be at the Historic Theatre in Vancouver March 15-22.

Created by Erdal, with James Long, Anita Rochon and Emelia Symington Fedy, How to Disappear Completely premiered at the 2011 Chutzpah! Festival. The one-man show then toured internationally, being performed in more than two dozen cities around the world before COVID hit. The March run marks its first remount since the pandemic.

“It’s been a dream come true,” said Erdal about traveling with the production. “Performing this show is the closest thing I have to hanging out with my mom, so being able to introduce my mom to so many people around the world has been wonderful. I also got to do it in Hebrew – I performed the show in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and many of the people in the audience knew my mom so that was really special.”

Erdal immigrated to Canada from Israel in 1999. The following year, he found out his mother had been diagnosed with lung cancer and only had months to live. He returned to Israel to be with her as much as possible and, during that time, encouraged by his mother to do so, he shot hours of film and took hundreds of photos.

“We laughed a lot, and you can see it in the show,” Erdal told the Independent in 2012, when How to Disappear Completely had its first remount. “It’s a tragedy turned to joyful memories,” he said about the piece, which also focuses on his approach to theatrical lighting. Erdal is a multiple-award-winning expert in lighting design.

“This was the first show I wrote and the first time I performed, so we had to come up with a theatrical device to explain why a lighting designer is standing on stage and telling this story,” Erdal told the Independent in an email interview earlier this month. “So, the premise was that this was a lecture about lighting design, and I ran all the lights from the stage. The connection between my mother’s story and lighting design wasn’t obvious at first, but when we started doing workshops, the audience loved all the lighting stuff and responded very strongly to it. I wanted to show how a PAR [parabolic aluminized reflector] can get warmer as it dims, so I took it down one percent at a time, and people got emotional because they thought about the life leaving my mom’s body. The show is full of these accidental metaphors, and the lighting became the emotional heartbeat of the show.”

Over the 14 years since he first wrote and performed How to Disappear Completely, Erdal – who founded the Elbow Theatre – has co-written and performed several other works: Soldiers of Tomorrow, Hyperlink, This is Not a Conversation and A Very Narrow Bridge. So, while How to Disappear Completely hasn’t changed much since it was written, Erdal said, “I am much more relaxed as a performer, so the show got better.”

He added, “The main thing that’s changed in the past 14 years is that I have become a father and I understand better why my mother said it was so important to be a parent. I often think about what a great grandmother my mom would’ve been and I wonder how she would’ve handled some tough parenting moments.”

Erdal doesn’t tire of performing How to Disappear Completely, and he sees how affected audiences continue to be.

“Creating this show has been the most exciting and rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “You would think that reliving the hardest moment of your life on stage every night would be a daunting task, but it’s a joyful experience. My mother was smart and funny and her personality really shines through. Every time I perform the show, there is a lineup of people waiting to talk to me after, wanting to tell me their stories about finding love and about losing their parents, and I love connecting with them and feeling that my show might help them a bit with their grief.”

And that’s what makes this very personal show widely popular.

“Unfortunately, almost everyone in the world knows someone who died from cancer, and the grief of losing a parent is something almost everyone can relate to, so the show has many universal themes,” said Erdal. “It also deals with loneliness and the search for love, which are also very relatable themes.”

For tickets to How to Disappear Completely, visit thecultch.com/event/how-to-disappear-completely or call 604-251-1363.

Moving into our new condo

Living in a condominium steps away from the Seawall and the marina is surreal. (photo from flickr.com/photos/nuntz)

Nobody would deny that the concept of a new home is exhilarating. It’s the packing up a lifetime of belongings, and having to sell and give away a plethora of things that plunges you into ice-cold reality. And let’s not forget the joys of the actual move.

A therapist once advised me to “get comfortable with uncertainty.” Hmmm. That’s like saying, “Learn to enjoy having hot oil poured down your back.” I think not. Much as I strive to embrace that pithy advice (and, on occasion, even succeed), I am just not cut out for it. You can only imagine how well I did with our recent move to a new condo.

It’s been almost a month and I still can’t find my passport or oven mitts. Not that I’m planning to travel anytime soon. But I would like to cook.

Without exaggeration, I packed at least 75 boxes and countless bags of belongings to shlep from our two-bedroom apartment to our new place. And lest you assume that we did what most retirees do and downsized – our collective wisdom ushered us into a bigger space. It is a condo with a kitchen large enough to land an aircraft carrier – which has always been a dream of mine (the size, not the aircraft carrier part). But the dream turned into a miniature nightmare when we moved in and I realized that I had next to no general storage space. Hall closet? Big enough to house a miniature turtle. Bathroom cupboards? Spacious enough for an extra roll of toilet paper and some air freshener. But I do have my humongous kitchen, and you can bet that I plan to cook and bake till the cows come home.

If I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned that you can’t have it all. You prioritize and maybe get 80% of what you originally wanted. Then, you just have to swallow the 20% and move forward. And get creative. Despite my apparent whining, I am truly feeling blessed and in awe of where we live now. We are mere steps from the Seawall and the marina, flanked by gorgeous condos. We are forced to peer daily at the spectacular mountains and sparkling lights of downtown. I keep asking myself, “Is this really my new neighbourhood?” When I come home and walk down the hall to our place, I feel like I’m in a hotel. Surreal, to say the least.

I had always been fiercely protective of our rental apartment and South Granville – we had great neighbours, little coffee shops where I was a regular, we were walking distance to grocery stores, drugstores, restaurants and the beach. Having lived in that apartment building for 37 years, I was their longest tenant. It was really all I knew. I had not lived in a house since I left home in 1974 to go away to university. Owning a home was always something I aspired to do. Until it became an unreachable reality. Being a single librarian until I was 53, owning a home was a pipe dream.

Then, I married, and we enjoyed our little love nest until October 2023, when we learned that our building (along with half the neighbourhood) was going to be torn down so high-rises could be built. Thank you, Broadway Plan! At first, I freaked out. And then, I started packing. I knew not where we would end up, but the writing was on the wall. Actually, the first indicator was in the summer of 2023, when men started hammering little metal plaques on the trees in our area and spray-painting the sidewalks. It was cryptic, for sure, but the mystery didn’t last long.

In February 2024, the company hired to “transition” renters into new homes held a Zoom meeting with all the tenants in our building. No promises were made, but the starkness of the facts hit us like ice water in the face. Right of first refusal. Financial compensation. Rent top-up. Blah, blah, blah. The one phrase that stuck with me though was TRPP – Tenant Relocation and Protection Policy. Luckily, tenants do have some protection, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental issue of unaffordable housing that plagues this city.

Time passed, we considered our options, I fretted over everything. It was a maelstrom of emotions. It took me awhile to wrap my head around the possibility that buying something could actually be within reach. But, events collaborated, luck joined the party, I took my head out of my nether regions, and, voilà, the unimaginable happened! We bought a condo!

Now, I am trying to “get comfortable with uncertainty” and change (as though change is a dirty word). I got my first test when I figured out that my lovely oak desk, which my beloved father, alav ha-shalom, bought me, wouldn’t fit in our condo. Our second bedroom has a Murphy bed and, well, let’s just say that my oak desk is the size of a blue whale. Living in that big river in Egypt (denial), I hoped against hope that something would happen and either the desk or the bed would miraculously shrink overnight. Not a chance. So, I paid movers to move the desk into the condo and, two weeks later, I paid them to move it to the SPCA Thrift Store. And, while I tried to heed my late father’s advice to “cry over people, not things,” I failed miserably. I had a full-on, deep-dish cry-fest after dropping off the desk. All I could do on my drive home was to talk to my father’s spirit and tell him I love him, and tell him how much I miss him, and how much it meant to me that he got that desk for me specially.

I had to do something to honour my father. So, I decided to toast him. Knowing he liked Cutty Sark Scotch, I spent the next hour driving to three different liquor stores to find it, and was finally successful. It was only then that a sense of calm came over me. Maybe it was the Scotch. Maybe it was my dad telling me it was OK to cry over him. Whatever it was, the desk is now in its new home. And so am I. And both of us are very happy.

And I finally have a big kitchen, in-suite laundry, hardwood floors and I don’t face south.

Shelley Civkin, aka the Accidental Balabusta, is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review. She’s currently a freelance writer and volunteer.

Enthralling must-read

We Are Here! We Are Alive! The Diary of Alfredo Sarano, with historical commentary by Roberto Mazzoli and translated from the Italian by Avigayil Diana Kelman, is a book of double magnitude.

We Are Here! We Are Alive! is a riveting diary, with fiction-like suspense and drama, written in northern Italy during the Second World War under Mussolini’s fascist regime and Nazi German occupation, combined with an outside scholar’s comments, which set the diary into its day-to-day historical events. To make the reading easier, the diary is astutely printed as though typewritten, while the commentary is in regular book font.

Originally published in 2017 by noted Italian publishing house Edizioni San Paolo, in Milan, We Are Here! We Are Alive! garnered wide praise in Italy’s general press and from the country’s leading officials and public figures.

It must be accented that first-person Holocaust memoirs were usually written after the war, and the memoirist had to choose from past events and sort them out in the calm of peace time. A diary like this, composed in situ, while in hiding, is rather rare – and likely more reliable than one written with the fluidity of memory after events.

“This is the story of how this chapter of the history of Italian Jewry unfolded, which I experienced day by day,” writes Sarano. Kept for more than 70 years in a drawer by his daughters Matilde, Vittoria and Miriam, Sarano’s diary reemerges from the past, adding new, precious pages of history to the record of the genocide of the Jewish people.

We Are Here! We Are Alive! is the result of Mazzoli’s research, the Italian literary scholar who brought Sarano’s diary to light, placing it in the historical context of the time. The book accents the heroism of Sarano, who portrays himself humbly and with modesty. Yet, he was the farsighted secretary of the Milan Jewish community, the man who saved thousands of lives by hiding from the occupying Germans the lists of community members. The fact that he knew the entire list by heart, names and addresses, bore heavily on Sarano, and he realized he would have to escape detection by the Germans for the safety of the entire community.

The Germans relied thoroughly on these communal lists in various cities for their roundups and deportation of all known Jews to the death camps.

One tragic incident revolves around the Venice list. When the Germans came, they ordered the president of the Jewish community, Giuseppe Jona, to hand over the list. He quickly found a secure place to hide it and then committed suicide before the Germans could get to him.

In Sarano’s diary, we also learn about, and take joy with, the Jewish soldiers from the Land of Israel who fought the Germans in Italy during the Second World War as members of the Jewish Brigade, and helped save countless Jewish lives.

In his introduction, Mazzoli describes the fascinating background as to how this remarkable book came to be written. It is the combination of persistence, good luck and serendipity.

Mazzoli had been looking for information about a good-hearted Nazi officer, Erich Eder, who, in 1944, when the German army had already occupied northern Italy, had at great risk disobeyed orders and helped save local refugees, including Jews, from deportation. Mazzoli had read a few details in a memoir written by an Italian friar and wanted to contact Eder, but in vain.

Then, through a series of coincidences, he ran across the three Sarano sisters and learned about their father’s diary. It is here that Mazzoli learned more about the humane German officer, whose family back home in Bavaria had also saved a Jewish woman by hiding her in their house.

When the Sarano sisters became acquainted with Mazzoli, they entrusted him with their father’s precious manuscript with the touching words, “These pages have been waiting for you.” And then Mazzoli spent several years reading and notating the diary.

In We Are Here! We Are Alive!, we learn how ordinary peasants and kindly friars in the small town of Mambroccio and other places were able to thwart the Nazi plan of total annihilation of the Jews by hiding them in remote villages and sustaining them until liberation. There is even a moving description of how the Sarano family, with the help of the villagers, was able to celebrate a seder while in hiding.

Sarano served for decades as the secretary of the Milan Jewish community, until he made aliyah in 1969. That year, some 25 years after the events, in the town of Bnei Brak (near Tel Aviv), a memorable, emotional reunion took place, when Padre Sante Raffaelli, the friar who was instrumental in saving the family, visited the Saranos.

We Are Here! We Are Alive! is a must-read, enthralling book. It is so beautifully translated from the Italian by Kelman that one would think this diary was originally written in English.

Curt Leviant’s most recent novels are Tinocchia: The Adventures of a Jewish Puppetta and The Woman Who Looked Like Sophia L.

Campbell’s art at Zack

Artist Olga Campbell and her grandson Arlo, for whom Campbell wrote her memoir, Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson. (photo from Olga Campbell)

Recently, Olga Campbell published her third book, a memoir, Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson. Campbell’s new solo show with the same name opened at the Zack Gallery on Jan. 9. It features a selection of paintings and sculptures from the book, as well as a short film.

“The film starts the exhibition,” Campbell told the Independent. “It contains my photographs of Vancouver and its people. It is called Everybody Has a Story. The show and the book portray one of those stories – my story. But millions of other people have their stories, too, and, in the film, in my photos, I tried to tell some of those stories.”

Campbell said, “The book and the show are my answers to the questions my grandson asks. He is interested in our family’s past. We are very close, he and I. We just went to Nepal together. I thought I would write this book for him, as my legacy.”

The book does not concentrate exclusively on pain and tragedy, on the deaths of her family members in the Holocaust. It also celebrates the power of art and writing as a transformational and healing tool. Besides letters to her grandson, the book includes Campbell’s poetry and art, essays written by the artist, and her family’s traditional recipes. (See jewishindependent.ca/a-multidimensional-memoir.)

The Zack Gallery show is a subset of the book, a selection of paintings and sculptures the memoir highlights. The paintings are mostly collages based on the artist’s photographs. Each photo is Photoshopped into infinity, so none of the faces in the paintings have any resemblance to their origins. Campbell likes to experiment with images, looking at them from different perspectives, applying different approaches. Like her inner child who never grew up, she plays with them, making up different stories for different levels of perception.

One of the paintings, “Corridor of Memories,” has a couple of faces looking at the viewer with thoughtful, slightly anxious expressions. Behind those faces, a long corridor stretches into an unknown distance. The memories that come from that distance seem diverse and unsettling, a mix of positive and negative, but different for everyone.

image - “Corridor of Memories” by Olga Campbell — “Corridor of Memories” by Olga Campbell. (photo by Olga Livshin)

“There is bad there but there is also some good stuff there,” she said. “I played with the faces in that painting. I thought it would be interesting to make them three-dimensional. That’s how I came up with the sculptures in the show. They are the result of the images unfolding from 2D to 3D.”

Another painting that underwent a similar metamorphosis is “Shall We Dance? – self meeting Self.” Campbell explained: “I took this image from the confines of a frame and brought it to life by making it three-dimensional. The title, ‘self meeting Self,’ refers to the small self, the individual, the ego, meeting the Universal Self, and the ensuing dance of Self-discovery, joy and wonder of life.”

The 3D dancers – a thickened silhouette of the flat painted image beside it – rotate. They are accompanied by the song “Shall We Dance,” played by a tiny music box, when someone winds it up.

image - “The Sky is Falling” by Olga Campbell — “The Sky is Falling” by Olga Campbell. *(photo by Olga Livshin)*

Sometimes Campbell’s reconstruction of images results not in an additional dimension but in a deepening complexity of the original idea. In “The Sky is Falling,” she took a person’s outline from the painting beside it and embellished it with everything that she felt was relevant to our hectic lives. Unlike most of the other paintings in the gallery, there is no face in this one. The grey danger hangs over all of us, regardless of our facial features or skin colour.

“There are lots of similarities in our world today and the one that preceded WWII,” said Campbell. “That’s why I put a crow in that painting. A crow is a traditional symbol of death, but also of transformation, of change and the future.”

Like the book it is based on, the show is not linear. It reflects the artist’s response to various events in her life, both happy and sad, from her coming of age, to the current war in Ukraine. Both the memoir and the show emphasize Campbell’s personal journey through the beauty and the trauma of life, so inextricably entangled together.

At the gallery on Jan. 23, 7 p.m., Campbell will discuss her book and her art in an event co-presented by the Zack Gallery and the JCC Jewish Book Festival. Campbell’s exhibit will be on display until Jan. 27. To learn more, check out the artist’s website, olgacampbell.com.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Robinson kicks off book fest

The JCC Jewish Book Festival opens Feb. 22 with Selina Robinson talking about her memoir, Truth Be Told. (photo from JCC Jewish Book Festival)

This year’s JCC Jewish Book Festival opens Feb. 22 with Selina Robinson talking about her recently published memoir, Truth Be Told.

Most Jewish Independent readers will be familiar with the events that propelled Robinson to write this book. The first chapter, called “Four Fateful Words,” starts at what some people may think is the beginning – when, during a Jan. 30, 2024, webinar, Robinson said the state of Israel was reestablished on a “crappy piece of land.” But she believes she had been targeted for months.

“It was sloppy language, nothing more, but it provided the Gotcha! for anti-Israel extremists to build a case that I was racist, Islamophobic, intolerant and an evil monster that needed to be canceled,” she writes.

“In an ideal world, it would have been the extremists who were dismissed, not me. In an ideal world, we would be blessed with leaders who can differentiate between right and wrong.”

Truth Be Told covers the fallout from her comments. Premier David Eby initially seemed prepared to stand by Robinson, but the political pressure – including from a group of Muslim clergy who threatened the NDP’s access to Muslim voters unless Robinson was dismissed – soon led to him firing her from cabinet, though he never used the word.

“I told the premier that if he wanted my resignation, I would give it to him, but he needed to ask for it,” writes Robinson.

“In the end, he didn’t fire me and I didn’t resign, although the undeniable conclusion of the call was that I was no longer in cabinet.”

After taking some time to absorb the situation, Robinson rallied.

“As part of my t’shuvah [repentance], the premier asked that I make a series of calls to Muslim community leaders,” she shares. “I began to think: What if I could engage with these groups and bring the Jewish community and the Arab and Muslim communities together in some way? These two heartbroken communities, both fearful for their families overseas and feeling powerless to effect change, could find commonality in that shared experience, at the very least. Action is always an antidote to hopelessness and helplessness. I could do this as part of my role as an MLA and the government could take credit for doing something meaningful that makes a positive difference for both these aching communities. For me, this would be a profound form of redemption, of t’shuvah, and also of tikkun olam [repair of the world].”

But this ray of light was soon extinguished, the idea being deemed “too political.”

“I knew in that moment that this was no longer my place, no longer my government, no longer my political party,” writes Robinson. “A place and a party where I belonged would recognize the opportunity for someone who was seen to have transgressed to do some good. My place, my party, would recognize the value of bringing people together. A place where I belonged would not be afraid to try something unique and potentially powerful.”

Robinson quit the NDP and finished her term as an MLA as an independent. She was going to retire anyway, but this was not how she wanted her political career to end.

And it was quite a career. With a master’s degree in counseling psychology, Robinson spent most of her working life as a family counselor and in senior roles in various social service agencies.

“I never planned to enter politics,” she writes. “The first real engagement I had was speaking to Coquitlam City Council, my hands shaking, in support of an emergency cold weather refuge for homeless people proposed by a church in my neighbourhood.”

One of the councilors suggested she run for council, and she did. She was elected to Coquitlam City Council in 2008 and reelected in 2011. Truth Be Told gives readers a glimpse of what that experience was like, what Robinson accomplished as a councilor, and more. We find out how and why she made the leap to provincial politics in 2013 – a decision in which the late John Horgan played a pivotal role. The memoir is dedicated to Horgan, for whom Robinson had great respect and a close relationship. As premier, Horgan was the one who appointed Robinson minister of finance after the 2020 election that gave the NDP a majority government. She held that position through COVID, the government managing to file budget surpluses despite the challenges the pandemic brought.

“What saddens me right now is that people are losing faith in government,” writes Robinson. “That is especially distressing because if anything should have renewed people’s faith in government, it was the collective response to the pandemic.”

When Horgan stepped down as premier in 2022 because of the toll his cancer treatments were taking on him, Robinson began to more seriously reflect on her own future. She had been in public service for so long, she wanted to spend more time with her family. In Truth Be Told, we learn more of her own fight against cancer – a fight that started in 2006, a fight she seems to have won, finding out on Oct. 6, 2023, that her cancer had disappeared. The celebration was short-lived. That evening, news started coming in of Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel.

Robinson’s ambivalence about running for reelection was one of the reasons she didn’t pursue the party leadership vacancy Horgan’s departure opened. Other candidates bowed out, and Eby was anointed the new leader of the BC NDP and became premier in November 2022.

Robinson calls herself an “eternal optimist,” and that attitude has served her well. Despite being effectively demoted by Eby after he became premier, Robinson threw herself into the position of post-secondary education and future skills minister. It is interesting to read about some of the issues in that sector, and of the other portfolios Robinson held, as well as get some insider knowledge of how politics works and about the personalities of the people who represent us.

The crux of Truth Be Told is Robinson’s “four fateful words,” the reactions to them, and what was said and done – or, more importantly, what was not said and what was not done. Many of her colleagues were “quiet allies,” not willing to speak out.

“There are lessons from my experience that transcend my personal story,” she writes. “There are lessons for our democracy about the necessity to stand up to coercion from interest groups and harassment from mobs. There are lessons for leaders about how to act (and how not to act) when presented with choices between what is easy but wrong and difficult but right. There are lessons about speaking up rather than remaining silent.”

Truth Be Told is about a person doing what they passionately believe in, a person living their values – some of which were instilled at Camp Miriam, where Robinson was a counselor in her youth – and trying to make what they feel are positive contributions to the world.

Given what happened to her, Robinson could be forgiven for giving up and going quietly into obscure retirement. But that’s not who she is. She asks Canadians to have the courage to speak up, while recognizing that we should not “kid ourselves that a millennia-old problem will be resolved in a day.” She ends her book with calls to action, suggestions of what we each can do to counter antisemitism, as Jews (for example, don’t hide, “engage respectfully or not at all” and don’t give up) and non-Jews (speak up and engage with Jews, among other things), and as a society (for instance, protect students and nurture real inclusion). She includes some resources for readers wanting to explore various topics more.

In the “Final Reflections” chapter, Robinson writes, “We will never be perfect. The world will never be faultless. But repairing the world must always be our guiding star. Our reach must always exceed our grasp.”

Profits from the sale of Truth Be Told will be donated to the Parents Circle-Families Forum (theparentscircle.org/en) and Upstanders Canada (upstanderscanada.com).

The JCC Jewish Book Festival runs Feb. 22-27. For the full list of events and participating authors, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.