By Doris Strub Epstein
Tribune Correspondent
The David Azrieli Foundation, in partnership with Concordia University’s Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies, has established a program to collect, publish and distribute unpublished memoirs and diaries of Canadian survivors of the Holocaust.
Much has been done in the past several years to record the lives of those who survived the Holocaust. They have taken the form mostly, of taped, audio or video, interviews. While it is critical that the stories get documented and preserved, the interviews remain in archives or libraries, read mostly by students and scholars, out of view of the general public.
The Memoirs of Canadian Holocaust Survivors Publishing Program intends to actually publish in book form, the memories and diaries of the survivors, making their lives and the Holocaust, vastly more accessible to people, both Jews and non Jews.
The project to collect unpublished autobiographical material from Canadian survivors, began some years ago by Professors Mervin (Mesh) Butovsky and Kurt Jonassohn at Concordia University in Montreal. They thought it was important that these documents be preserved as a valuable part of the historical record because their contents would differ in significant ways from interview testimonies. Norman Ravven, chair of the Institute for Canadian Jewish studies at Concordia is also involved.
“They are our mentors and guides,” said Dr. Naomi Azrieli, executive director of the Foundation.
The decision to create a publishing project that would bring the personal testimonies of survivors to a wider audience, is the brainchild of Montreal builder and developer David Azrieli, who got the idea when he returned to Canada after visiting his birthplace in Poland and the places where he escaped to survive the war. He took two of his daughters, Naomi and Danna with him.
The Jewish Tribune spoke with Naomi Azrieli, who lives in Toronto, and Tamara Feder, the program manager of the project, in their new office still smelling of paint, but already looking good with light spilling though the large windows onto the dark-stained wood floor.
“The idea of the trip was to retrace his route during the war, starting in Poland in the town he was born,” Naomi said. “We actually did it, except for the part when he walked over land from Uzbekistan to Baghdad, because the Gulf War was happening then and Saddam was invading Kuwait. Until then, he had never talked much about what had happened to him, just bits and pieces.
“After that trip he decided to write his memoirs. My younger sister, Danna, who is a lawyer and an extremely good writer, helped him write it.”
Published by Yad Vashem in Israel in 2000, it is called One Step Ahead and is an account of his life from l939 to l950. It was published in English, Hebrew and Russian.
David Azrieli (Azrylewicz) was born in l922 in Makow Mazowiechi, Poland a town about 80 kilometres north of Warsaw. He was just l7 when the war broke out. His parents decided to send their three boys to Russia for safety. There they were separated until David found his older brother after the war. The younger brother did not survive. His parents, little sister and extended family were all murdered. He arrived in Israel in l942 and fought in the War of Independence in l948.
Even with all the resources he had at his disposal, it was an enormously difficult undertaking for him. Naomi recalls him saying, “What about all those people who put themselves through this, writing about their experiences during the war, that don’t have the resources and are not published?”
Azrieli said his motivation was to let his family of four children and six grandchildren know what happened to him during the war. That goal expanded in the telling, to the world. “Out of three million, only 300,000 Jews survived in Poland,” he said. He urges other survivors to come forward and do the same. “It’s almost midnight,” he said emotionally. “There’s not much time left. It’s a story that should be told. It’s a story that I’m proud of. Every Jew wants to know. The world wants to know.”
“There is a permanency and validation of their lives in being published,” said Tamara, who is also a child of a survivor. “The idea is not just to preserve and record, but to disseminate to the public beyond the Jewish community.”
“It’s impossible for people to grasp the enormity of what happened,” added Naomi who has a doctorate in European history. Through the memoirs and diaries, through an individual, you put a human face on history.”
She gave the example of Anne Frank and how powerfully her story has reached people. “But she has overshadowed other stories. Everyone has a unique story.”
Both women are 40 years old. They met when they were five in the kindergarten at the Solomon Shechter Jewish day school in Montreal and “bonded”. Despite going their separate ways – Naomi taught history and Tamara worked for human rights organizations – they remained close friends. Now working together, they communicate a sense of mission and passion for this project that is palpable.
“I am committed to making the foundation a force for creative philanthropy, for tikun olam,” said Naomi who is named for her father’s mother. They are focusing on Canada first, on creating a sound infrastructure for the publishing project and then will expand to make it worldwide. “This is part of my father’s legacy to the world.”
They will accept memoirs in any language, handwritten or typed, electronic or hardcopy.
For information, call (416) 322-5928, fax (416) 322-5930, or via email at memoirs@azrielifoundation.org.
Index | Letters to the Editor | Main Page | Op Ed | Photos
Send Letters To The Editor:
editor@jewishtribune.ca
This site hosted by:
vex.net
