Lessons from Holocaust survivors

Re My history is a legacy for future generations, Opinion, Nov. 7

Judy Cohen’s gripping and powerful article of her personal trauma and sisters’ deaths in the Holocaust brought back a few painful memories.

My late wife Helen LaFountaine was a Holocaust survivor and Jewish war orphan from Budapest, Hungary. Her parents were among the 1.5 million murdered, including 600,000 Hungarians, in Auschwitz.

With brother Imre, Helen was smuggled out of Hungary through the underground and arrived in Montreal with 1,000 other European Jewish war orphans in 1947, when she was 7. In Toronto for many years, she became a leading feminist speaking out against sexism and sexual assault.

Many thousands of other Jewish war orphans and refugees were not so fortunate, they were flatly denied entry to Canada and the United States before and during the Second World War, most were tortured and murdered in Nazi death camps.

This cruel denial of Jewish war orphans into Canada was perpetrated by the anti-Semitic policies of Canada’s Immigration Minister F.C. Blair and Liberal prime minister Mackenzie King. This is a very dark and shameful chapter in the history of Canadian anti-Semitism and racism that still exists. I hope there are many college and university courses on the Holocaust, genocide of the Indigenous peoples and racism across Canada. The legacy of Judy Cohen and millions of other survivors of the Holocaust and genocide must be learned and never forgotten — not just during Holocaust Education Week. Don Weitz, Toronto Judy Cohen’s story was almost identical to mine: deported with my whole family from Miskolc, Hungary, I went right through all the sufferings she did. She is the very same age as I am.

I was born in 1928. I spent my 16th birthday in the Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp in Poland. All other events in her life were similar as mine, except lucky Judy ended up in beautiful Canada in 1948. I was liberated by Russians in 1945 and sent back to Budapest, one month short of my 17th birthday. After frantically searching for family members in Miskolc, I found no one — all 37 parents, grandparents, younger brother, countless aunts, uncles and young cousins were gone.

In Budapest, I got low-paying jobs. The government made it possible to attend high school and I went college to get my librarianship and also a job in a public library. It was great, except having my tattooed number (A18568) was a handicap. I encountered anti-Semitism all those years, some even vicious, so I always wore long sleeves.

The Hungarian uprising happened on Oct. 23, 1956. It was glorious for 10 days. Then the Russian tanks came and all hell broke loose. We escaped and our arrival in this beautiful land with our 10-month-old girl was a dream.

I have encountered anti-Semitism here, too, but rarely and not really vicious. I am frightened by recent happenings but hope people with better sense will guard our freedom. Eve Gabori, Toronto Send email to lettertoed@thestar.ca; via Web at thestar.ca/letters. Include full name, address, phone numbers of sender; only name and city will be published. Letter writers should disclose any personal interest they have in the subject matter. We reserve the right to edit letters, which run 50-150 words.