Mary Anne Chambers is someone who understands the power of community involvement. After emigrating from Jamaica with her family, she succeeded in the worlds of business and politics, first as a vice-president with Scotiabank, and then as an MPP and cabinet minister in Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet. All the while, she has worked tirelessly as a […]
Archives: Oral History Project
Zimmerman, Rose
Rose Zimmerman comes from Poland, where she and her family were living a normal life before 1939. The advent of the war saw all of that turned upside down; she and her family experienced the full weight of the Shoah, and Rose herself ended up a slave labourer in Auschwitz, before ending the war in […]
Willinger, Gershon
Gershon Willinger was born in Holland, in 1942. His experience in the Holocaust is a very different story because he was a very young boy who was unaware of his environment, and did not know what to do. Guido and Edith, his parents, were German Jews. They were both murdered in 1943, in a Polish […]
Weisz, Rachel
Rachel Weisz was living in Budapest when the war began. Both Rachel’s mother and father were originally from Poland. Her father and uncles owned a textile factory, though Rachel’s family was the only one with Hungarian citizenship. When Rachel was in grade 6 her family hit hard times. Her father and uncles were arrested because […]
Weiss, Allen
Allen Weiss was born in Romania in 1929. Allen had loving parents along with two sisters and a brother. He grew up in a small village where his family owned a grocery store. Allen was 14 years old when the Nazis forced him out of his village. Allen was taken to Auschwitz – Birkenau with […]
Waldner, Mia
Mia Frank survived the war as a hidden child in Belgium. Her stepmother’s quick thinking did save Mia, but both her stepmother and father were killed during the Holocaust. Mia was interviewed by Crestwood student Hayley Goldsand on a Baycrest field trip in early 2009. […]
Turk, Harry
Harry was born in a small town known as Sernike, in Pinsk, Poland on May 10, 1935. He was the youngest of his ten siblings. His father was an owner of a lumber business and his mother was a busy home maker. Harry was 4 years old at the outbreak of World War Two. When […]
Silverberg, Elisabeth
Elisabeth Silverberg is a Holocaust Survivor we met at Baycrest’s Cafe Europa. Before the war she was living an ideal life, with family, and going to school. As the war and the Holocaust began, she was deported to a number of camps, including Auschwitz, where she was a forced labourer. She speaks compellingly of her […]
Silberzweig, Eileen
Eileen Silberzweig is a Holocaust Survivor from Poland. Though she was only child and her specific memories are limited, she was able to tell Jessica Kelly, Jessica Seger, Katherine Charness, and Ellen McPhadden about the German invasion and about how she and many family members escaped the ghetto and made it into the woods. This […]
Segalowitz, Leah
Leah Segalowitz survived the Nazi invasion and occupation of the Netherlands. She went into hiding, working as a nurse, though she was an active member of the Dutch Resistance. When the war concluded, she emigrated to Palestine, spending a number of years in British detention camps and working in a hospital in Cyprus before arriving […]
Rybowski, David
David Rybowski is a survivor from Lodz, Poland. He experienced the full weight of the Holocaust, living in the ghetto before being deported to a series of camps and subjected to slave labour before surviving death marches at the war’s end. He spoke to Crestwood students Gabi Sandler, Sam Wasserman, So Hee Pyo, and Dov […]
Rosenberg, Fay
Fay Rosenberg lived in Poland before the Second World War, and as she says, she and her family were living a good life. But when the war began, Fay says that as the parents began to show their fears, the children did as well. Fay and her family found themselves in eastern Poland at the […]
Perl, Margaret
Margaret Perl is a Holocaust Survivor who went through the full horros of the Nazi onslaught, surviving the deportations, the ghetto, starvation, Auschwitz, and a death march at the end of the war. She shared her thoughts at Baycrest’s Cafe Europa, sitting down with Crestwood students Kaily Wise, Steph Tanz, and Madi Brown in February […]
Pagelson, Edith
Edith Pagelson’s personal story of survival began in Germany. She and her family were victims of Hitler’s Nazi regime well before the war began, feeling the sting of the Nuremberg Laws and Kristallnacht all through the 1930s. She and her family were deported from Duisberg to the Terezin Ghetto, where Edith’s father died. After spending […]
Ohori, Joe
On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. This would mark the beginning of the final days of the war, ultimately leading to an unconditional Japanese surrender and VJ Day. The hibakusha are the surviving victims of the atomic bombs […]
Nussbaum, Aaron
Aaron Nussbaum was born in Sandomierz in Poland. He stayed here until he could not hide from the Nazis anymore. He spent 8 months in Bergen Belsen where he was rescued by American troops. Aaron was sent to Palestine at the age of 13, until he joined his mother and brother in Canada. He fought […]
Newman, Anna
Anna was born in Poland.; she is a survivor of the Holocaust. She spent three years in concentration camps, being sent there when she was only 22 years old. She was in Auschwitz-Birkenau for much of this time. When the war was over, she got married and moved to the United States where she had […]
Mussmand, Bernard
Bernard’s family originally came from Poland, but Bernard grew up in France not far from the Luxembourg border. When his father became concerned about the state of affairs in Germany, the family moved to southern France, in what would become the Vichy zone. When the family learned that the Gestapo was looking for Bernard’s father, […]
Muskat, Jack
Jack was born in a small and impoverished village in Poland on the White Russian boarder. The name of this town was Sharkazhena. He attended a Polish public school until 1939, when the Russians came in and occupied Jack’s small village. Despite undergoing the horrors of the Holocaust, Jack is now living a happy and […]
Meister, Ernie
Ernie Meister was separated fom his family and sent to a work camp for the majority of World War Two, first in Transylvania and later in the Ukraine. He was forced into slave labour, digging ditches and other defenses for the German military. In late 1944 he escaped the camp and made his way back […]
Lysy, George
George Lysy was born February 1, 1916 on a farm near Nove Zamky in Czechoslovakia. From an early age, George worked on the family’s dairy farm. He graduated from the College of Agriculture before the war. In 1938, when the Hungarians took over the region, George applied for a farmer’s visa to Canada but was […]
Lysy, Judy
Judy Lysy came to Crestwood with her husband George. Both are Hungarian Survivors of the Shoah, and they shared their stories with Chase Farbstein, Kyle Seigel, and Zack Martin in a dual interview. Judy grew up in wartime Hungary, and when many Jewish men were taken to the Russian front, she and other women fended […]
Levin, Alex
We met Alex Levin courtesy of the Memory Project and the Azrieli Foundation, where he is a keynote speaker and author. Alex’s story is one of the most compelling ones we have heard; his family was from Poland, and they experienced the full weight of the war’s early years, invaded first by the USSR and […]
Lang, Eva
Eva Lang is a child survivor from Belgium. When the war began she and her family found themselves in southern France, soon arrested under the Vichy regime. While her parents succeeded in getting most of their children to safety through the OSE, her parents and many family members were deported to Auschwitz. Eva spent most […]
Kurtz, Irene
Irene Kurtz was born February 2, 1928 in Warsaw, Poland. She grew up with lots of extended family, and was living a happy life, going to school and celebrating shabbat. The coming of war in 1939 would shatter that life; it began with restrictions and shortages, and it quickly escalated as the Nazis and their […]
Kuritski, Ella
Ella Kuritski is from Lithuania. After the German invasion in 1941, her father was taken and murdered by the Nazis, and she and her family were relocated to the Kovno ghetto. She was fortunate to survive the deportations and ultimate liquidation of the ghetto and was sent instead to a work camp, where she forced […]
Kleinberg, Nancy
Nancy and Howard Kleinberg are survivors of the Holocaust. They have witnessed the terror, the tears, and pain, and have experienced emotions that are inexplicable. They lost their friends and their families, but managed to open their hearts to one other. Nancy comes from a small town in Poland where she grew up with five […]
Kleinberg, Howard
Howard and Nancy Kleinberg are survivors of the Holocaust. They have witnessed the terror, the tears, and pain, and have experienced emotions that are inexplicable. They lost their friends and their families, but have managed to open their hearts to one other. Howard was born in Poland, in 1926 and was the youngest in a […]
Kieffer, Faye
Faye Wolpianska was born in Bieniekonie, Poland, in 1928. Her childhood came to an end in June 1941 when the Nazis came to her village. With the war underway, Faye and her family were quickly moved into a ghetto. As conditions worsened, the family made the decision to leave, ending up in the larger Vilna […]
Katz, Sylvia
Sylvia Katz is a Holocaust Survivor from Poland. She was living an ideal life, with a great family, when the war broke out; she was 13 at the time. Sylvia was placed in her first camp in 1941, where she was selected to work. She spent the remainder of the war as a slave labourer […]