Robert Reichmann was born on January 11,1938 in Budapest, Hungary. He later decided to change his name to Robert (Bob) Ratonyi, hoping to escape the name-associated antisemitism that was prevalent even in postwar Hungary. In the early part of the war, Bob mentioned that Hungarian Jews were an insulated group: in November 1940 Hungary’s Horthy […]
Irene Solnick was born August 22, 1937 in Przemyśl, Poland. Her name at birth was Ruth, but Irene was the Christian name she was given in wartime Poland – to help her to survive the Shoah. She was raised in a mixed Jewish family, where her grandfather and father were Orthodox, Yiddish-speaking successful merchants, while […]
Vivian Stockhamer was born in Lida, Poland in 1936 to Leibel Litovitz and Charna (Boyarski) Litovitz. Her father had 10 siblings and her mother had 3 siblings, all of whom were married with children and many of whom were living in Lida prior to the outbreak of World War II. From 1939 to 1941 Lida […]
On Wednesday, November 16, a Holocaust survivor named Eva Meisels shared her testimony with the Grade 6’s in a Zoom assembly. Mrs. Meisels was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1939, and was forced into the Budapest Ghetto with her mother and other family members until Liberation in 1945. She emigrated to Montreal with her […]
Angi Orosz was born December 21, 1944, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of a handful of Jewish babies born in the camp who was able to survive. Her mother Vera Bein gave birth to Angela in that terrible place, and as Angi says in her testimony she speaks to honour her mother’s determination and fight to survive, […]
Mila Mesner was born November 22, 1923 in Zalishchyky, Poland (now Ukraine). She recalls a positive childhood, full of family and good memories. All of that changed with the beginning of the war: Mila’s town was in the Soviet zone of occupation, and she remembers that arrests and deprivation began right away. Mila’s father chose […]
Judith Nemes Black was born November 15, 1941 in Budapest, Hungary. She grew up against the backdrop of the war and the mounting restrictions that Hungarian Jews were forced to endure, including the conscription of her father into forced labour. In 1944 the situation deteriorated for Hungarian Jews; Nazi Germany invaded and the fascist Arrow […]
Last week, Crestwood School’s Grade 6 students had the amazing opportunity to hear the story of a Holocaust survivor. This man’s name is Andy Réti, and I hope to be able to share his incredible journey that we all got to hear and see about on Thursday. I hope you can recognize the significance […]
Eva Kuper was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1940, into a world that had just been catapulted into war. Her parents were from Sandomierz, born into families with well-tempered expectations that had been shattered with the Nazi occupation. They ended up in the Warsaw Ghetto, where they endured the brutality and deprivation of the Shoah. […]
Ted Bolgar was born September 12, 1924 in Sarospatak, a small town in Hungary. The Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944, and in April, the Jews of Sarospatak were forced into the ghetto of a nearby town. When the ghetto was liquidated in June, all the inhabitants were deported to Auschwitz. Upon arrival, Ted and […]
Tswi Herschel was born December 29, 1942 in Zwolle, a small town in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. In January 1943, the family was forced to leave Zwolle and moved to the Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam, where Tswi’s father contacted non-Jewish Dutch friends and asked them to help his newborn son. In March 1943, a Protestant Dutch […]
Fishel Goldig was born in 1933 in Mielnica, in eastern Poland. In 1939 the family found itself under Soviet occupation, following the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. With Operation Barbarossa and the arrival of the Germans in 1941, Fishel and his family were forced into the ghetto in the nearby town of Borszczow. Conditions deteriorated, and rumours […]
Margaret Newman (nee Kaufman) was born March 29, 1923 in Satu Mare, Romania. She was the second child in a family of eight children, and as the eldest daughter it was her job to maintain a respectable and observant household. When Satu Mare and the surrounding region were annexed by Hungary, life became more complicated […]
Avraham Peter grew up in the city of Lodz, Poland, where he was born August 12, 1926. His parents had their own factory/business and the family was living a good, observant life, and the young Abe attended a Jewish school, and was raised in part by his grandparents. Anti-Semitism was a reality in 1930s Lodz […]
Max Smart was born June 1, 1930 in Buczacz, Poland (now Ukraine). He and his family were living a good life in the 1930s, and Max remembers well the idyllic nature of life in that time. Even as events around Poland began to move towards war, Max and his family felt safe, unaware of what […]
March 19, 1944 marked a turning point in Hungary’s wartime history; it was the day that Nazi Germany began a direct military occupation of its onetime ally, Hungary. Life for Hungarian Jews, which had been deteriorating under the previous regime, took a dramatic turn for the worse as discriminatory laws gave way to ghettos and […]
Over the past two weekends the Crestwood Oral History Project has continued its Sunday sessions, introducing students to members of the wartime generation. On Sunday, February 21 and again Sunday, February 28, we did zoom sessions with Holocaust survivors in Israel, and each time Mr. Masters and Mr. Hawkins welcomed approximately 20 students to listen […]
Rena Quint was born in 1935 and 1936, depending on the source. This is because of her early life circumstances, before and after the Shoah. Her birth family, her two parents and her two brothers, did not survive, and her adoptive mother in Sweden changed Rena’s birthdate to match that of her own deceased daughter. […]
Daniel Gold was born in Lithuania on February 10, 1937. When the war began for Lithuania – in 1941 – the country was quickly overrun by the Germans, and Lithuanian Jews were placed in ghettos, and not longer after the mass murder began. Daniel remembers having to be quiet while Lithuanian neighbours were initiating the […]
Judit Fulop was born in the small city of Debrecen, Hungary on September 23, 1928. She grew up an only child in a comfortable middle class environment, attending a Jewish school and then her local high school until the war broke out in 1944, when Jewish students were prohibited from attending public schools. Despite these […]
Leslie Fazekas was born on September 28, 1925, in Debrecen, Hungary. He grew up in a middle class family in the well-assimilated Jewish community, alongside his younger brother. He did well in school, and was preparing to go to university, just as wartime anti-Semitic restrictions were beginning to be felt in Hungary. But his […]
Yolanda Engel (nee Lebovics) was born December 11, 1937. She grew up in wartime Hungary, sheltered from events until the German occupation of 1944. Her father had been conscripted into the labour battalions by that time, and the remaining family members were taken into the ghetto. Shortly after that, Yolanda’s mother was taken away to […]
Sonia Ger grew up in Pinsk, Poland. Her family had their own house with a bakery in the front, run by the father and his brother. When the Nazis invaded Poland, they were moved into a ghetto. Sonia’s father opened up another bakery in the ghetto. He made friends with the German soldiers by selling […]
Mary Speare was born in Budapest, Hungary but has lived in Canada for over 60 years. She went through WW2 and experienced Nazis persecution against Jews. Her father was taken to a labour camp early on, as the family’s fortunes began to unravel. Mary was fortunate to be spared deportation to Auschwitz as her mother put […]
Lidia Gasper was born in 1928 in Szekszard, Hungary. Before the Holocaust, she had a good life. She had other Jewish friends in her town, her father had a mill that gave them water, and she had a bat mitzvah. She had to go to another town to go to school, and this is where […]
Marian Bensimon was born in Czechoslovakia; she was 6 years old in 1942 when her family moved to Budapest, Hungary. Marian’s parents sensed the danger on the way; her father was taken to a labour camp and the family placed in a ghetto, so Marian’s mother arranged to have her daughters taken to a convent, where they were hidden […]
Marvin Woznicki was born in Silesia, Poland in 1925. Marvin grew up there in a house with his parents, his brother and his two sisters. Marvin attended grade school in Poland up to Grade 4. He had a happy childhood in his early years growing up, until all of that changed. Marvin was only fourteen […]
Renate Krakauer is a child survivor from Poland. She was born in Stanislawow, Poland just as the war began, in what was at that time the Soviet zone of occupation. Life was relatively normal until 1941, when the Nazis broke the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact and headed east into the USSR. Suddenly the Jews of Stanislawow […]
Andrew Tylman was born in November 1933, and he grew up in the town of Sochaczew, Poland. His early life took place in a largely Jewish milieu,and the family was prosperous, vacationing in Glowno and prominent in the community. The onset of the war changed the situation dramatically; as violence in his small town began […]
Eva Olsson grew up in Hungary, born into a Jewish family in Satu Mare, Hungary. She remembers the family’s Hasidic traditions, and the poverty and simplicity of her early life. Like other Hungarian Jews, Eva was comparatively isolated from the war raging all around them; they heard rumours and such, but as Hungary was allied […]