f11-azrieli

In telling these stories, the writers have liberated themselves. For so many years we did not speak about it, even when we became free people living in a free society. Now, when at last we are writing about what happened to us in this dark period of history, knowing that our stories will be read and live on, it is possible for us to feel truly free. These unique historical documents put a face on what was lost, and allow readers to grasp the enormity of what happened to six million Jews – one story at a time.

David J. Azrieli, C.M., C.Q., M.Arch.Holocaust survivor and founder, The Azrieli Foundation

The Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Publishing Program is a historically and humanly compelling project: it allows the last survivors to tell their personal stories and confer upon them a necessarily universal meaning. Their moral authority in the field of remembrance is incompa-rable and indeed unique.

Elie WieselHolocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

In their own words...

Since the end of World War ii, over 30,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors have immigrated to Canada. Who they are, where they came from, what they experienced and how they built new lives for themselves and their families is an important part of our Canadian heritage. The Azrieli Series of Holo-caust Survivor Memoirs is guided by the conviction that each survivor of the Holocaust has a remarkable story to tell, and that such stories play an important role in education about tolerance and diversity.

Millions of individual stories are lost to us forever. By preserving the sto-ries written by survivors and making them widely available to a broad audi-ence, the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series seeks to sustain the memory of all those who perished at the hands of hatred, abetted by indifference and apathy. The personal accounts of those who survived against all odds are as different as the people who wrote them, but all demonstrate the courage, strength, wit and luck that it took to prevail and survive in such terrible adversity. The memoirs are also moving tributes to people – strangers and friends – who risked their lives to help others, and who, through acts of kindness and decency in the darkest of moments, frequently helped the per-secuted maintain faith in humanity and courage to endure. These accounts offer inspiration to all, as does the survivors’ desire to share their experi-ences so that new generations can learn from them.

Recognizing that most survivor memoirs never find a publisher, the Az-rieli Foundation established the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program to collect, archive and publish these distinctive records.

The Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program is a not-for-profit program. All revenues to the Azrieli Foundation from the sale of the Azrieli Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs go toward continuing the pub-lication and educational work of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program.

New Titles: Series 4

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retirement in 2002. She has two sons and one grandson and divides her time between Montreal and New York. In 2009, she co-edited Remember Us: A Collection of Memories from Hungarian Hidden Children of the Holocaust.

Eva Marx was born in Brno, Czecho-slovakia on October 21, 1937. Her family left Communist Czechoslova-kia in 1949 and also immigrated to Montreal, where she later became an elementary school teacher. Eva has two children and four grandchildren. She and her husband, retired Quebec Superior Court Justice Herbert Marx, live in Montreal.

Tenuous ThreadsJudy Abrams

One of the Lucky Ones Eva Felsenburg Marx

I had always liked to play make-believe, but somehow they made me understand that this game was real. I never gave away my secret.

As Eva Marx writes in her memoir, One of the Lucky Ones, “Almost 1.6 million children were living in Eu-rope at the start of World War ii. By the end of the war, less than 500,000 had survived.” She and Judy Abrams, author of Tenuous Threads, were born just six months apart – Judy in Hun-gary and Eva in Czechoslovakia – two years before World War ii began. Their childhoods were irrevocably marked by the Holocaust and their memoirs are evocative accounts of this fragmented and fearful period in their young lives. Separated at times from their parents, the two authors poignantly describe the insecurities they lived with as hidden children and, as adults, explore the role that memory, innocence and, in hindsight, knowledge, has played in their lives.

About the authorsJudy Abrams, born in Budapest, Hungary on April 28, 1937, immi-grated to Montreal in 1949, where she later taught French. She taught at the United Nations International School in New York City from 1972 until her

6 × 9 paperback · 216 pages with photosisbn 978 1 897470 28 2 · $14.95 · aug 2011

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Little Girl LostBetty Rich

The more we felt the Germans’ heavy boots in our lives, the more I knew that I had to leave … but I was scared. Where was I going to go? What would I live on?

When the Nazis invade her small town of Zdunska Wola, Poland in 1939, sixteen-year-old Betty Rich escapes into Soviet-occupied Po-land. Over the next five years, her journey takes her thousands of ki-lometres from a forced labour camp in the far north of the ussr to the subtropical Soviet Georgian region and back to Poland. After the war, Betty and her husband flee from the Polish Communist regime and eventually immigrate to Toronto. Rich’s poetic memoir, Little Girl Lost, is “a montage of graphic snap-shots and moments in motion … both testimony and a meditation on what it meant to her sense of self to endure and survive as a young woman growing into adulthood in exile.”

About the authorBetty Rich was born Basia Kohn in Zdunska Wola, Poland on June 10, 1923, the second youngest in a fam-ily of seven children. She spent the war years in the Soviet Union and after the war lived in Lodz, Poland, where she married her husband,

David Recht. They fled the Polish Communist regime in January 1949 and arrived in Toronto later that year. Betty and David have two children and four grandchildren. David became a real estate develop-er and after his untimely death in August 1971, Betty took over man-agement of one of his buildings and continued to work in mortgages and investments until her retire-ment. Now eighty-seven, Betty still lives on her own in Toronto.

6 × 9 paperback · 248 pages with photosisbn 978 1 897470 25 1 · $14.95 · aug 2011

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Gatehouse to HellFelix Opatowski

I was stubborn. I didn’t want to stay in Auschwitz. I didn’t want to go to the gas chambers. I didn’t want to be cremated. I didn’t want to die there, and I kept pushing back.

Felix Opatowski is only fifteen years old when he takes on the perilous job of smuggling goods out of the Lodz ghetto in exchange for food for his starving family. It is a skill that will serve him well as he tries to stay alive in Nazi-occupied Poland. With dogged determination, Felix endures months of harrowing conditions in the ghetto and slave labour camps until he is deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in the spring of 1943. Recognized for his nerve and daring spirit, he is soon recruited as a runner for the Polish Underground inside the camp and is implicated in the infamous plot to blow up the camp crematoria – something for which he pays dearly. Gatehouse to Hell is a candid and heart-rending account of a teenage boy who comes of age in desperate conditions, putting himself at risk to help others, form-ing bonds of friendship and holding onto hope for the future.

About the authorBorn in Lodz, Poland on June 15, 1924, Felix Opatowski came from

a small, close-knit family of four. He was liberated in Austria by the US army on May 9, 1945 and worked at an American army base in Gmunden, where he also met and married his wife, Regina Gnat, in 1949. Felix and Regina arrived in Toronto in 1950, where they have lived ever since. They have four children and five grandchildren.

6 × 9 paperback · 240 pages with photosisbn 978 1 897470 26 8 · $14.95 · nov 2011

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If Home Is Not HereMax Borenstein

I dove into the frigid river, the sudden shock leaving me gasping. By the time that I was two-thirds across the river, my strength was fading…. Somehow, I managed to reach the shore – the unoccupied zone of France and my entry into freedom.

Max Borenstein’s epic account of surviving as a Polish child born into desperate poverty; a boy who lived in Canada for ten years but returned to Europe in 1933, the year that Adolf Hitler came to power; and a stateless refugee in 1930s Paris who managed to escape as France fell to the Nazis only to be interned in a Spanish camp, is breathtaking in scope. Released to a British envoy and relocated to war-time England, forbidden to join the British forces and alone in a strange country without fam-ily, the stress of his traumas lead to an emotional breakdown and admission to a psychiatric facility. Max Borenstein’s unusual candour in recounting his struggles with mental health add powerful dimen-sion to his Holocaust memoir. Rich in details of pre-war life in Poland, France and Canada and life for Jewish refugees in war-time Brit-ain, If Home Is Not Here gives rare insights into the experiences of an

undocumented Jewish boy who is caught up in political forces beyond his control.

About the authorMax Borenstein was born on November 12, 1921, in Warsaw, Poland. After the war, he finally received a Canadian entry permit and arrived in Toronto on June 25, 1947. He and his wife, Min, were married in 1948; they have two children and two grandchildren. After more than sixty years of marriage, Min passed away in 2010. Max Borenstein lives in Toronto.

6 × 9 paperback · 240 pages with photosisbn 978 1 897470 27 5 · $14.95 · nov 2011

Recent Releases

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The Shadows Behind MeWillie Sterner

I was surprised that Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist, would talk to me not as a Jew but as a normal person.... I thought that I must be having a nice dream.

For six desperate years, Willie Sterner’s skill as a painter saves him from death at the hands of the Nazis. Faced with inhumane conditions in slave labour camps and grieving the loss of his close-knit family, Sterner relies on cour-age and ingenuity to hold onto his dignity. Through almost random luck, he comes under the protection of the famed Oskar Schindler and becomes his personal art restorer. An unvarnished account of what he experienced and what he lost, The Shadows Behind Me also follows the story of Willie and Eva – the woman he meets on a death march – as they rebuild their lives and regain hope in Canada. Gripping and moving, this is a tribute to one man’s remarkable determination to survive.

About the authorWillie Sterner was born in Wolbrom, Poland on September 15, 1919. The eldest of seven children, he was the only one to survive the Holocaust. Throughout the war Willie worked

in his trade as a painter in various labour and concentration camps, including one year when he worked for the celebrated Oskar Schindler. After the war, Willie Sterner lived in Displaced Persons camps in Austria, first in Wels, where he became chief of the Jewish police and courted his wife, Eva, and then in Linz-Binder-michl. They immigrated to Canada in 1948 and settled in Montreal, where their two sons were born. Willie and Eva Sterner currently live in Montreal.

6 × 9 paperback · 240 pages with photosisbn 978 1 897470 18 3 · $14.95

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From Generation to GenerationAgnes Tomasov

The mountains were almost 3,000 metres high….We had to climb to the peaks, where it was frozen and slippery. One single misstep could mean certain death.

Hiding from the Nazis in the forests of Slovakia’s Low Tatra Mountains in the fall of 1944, in constant dan-ger from the Germans occupying nearby villages, fourteen-year-old Agnes Grossmann and her family make the daring decision to escape high into the mountains and hike along treacherous ice-covered peaks to safety. Twenty-four years later, Agnes Tomasov – now married with two children – finds herself on the run from post-war Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime and defects to Canada with her family, carrying only what they can fit in two suit-cases. Her sweeping memoir of life under two totalitarian regimes is an extraordinary and inspiring tale of courage, love and hope in the face of tragedy. Imbued with the au-thor’s warmth, unflagging resilience and determined independence, From Generation to Generation is a true testament to the strength of the human spirit.

2011 Independent Publishers Book Award Silver Medal winner

About the authorAgnes Tomasov was born Bardejov, in the Slovakian region of Czecho-slovakia, on June 16, 1930. Between 1949 and 1968, she lived in Prague and Kosice, Czechoslovakia, now in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, respectively. In 1968, following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, she immigrated to Canada with her husband, Joe, and their two children. Agnes and her husband currently live in Toronto and enjoy spending time with their children, grandchil-dren and great-grandchildren.

6 × 9 paperback · 240 pages with photosisbn 978 1 897470 19 0 · $14.95also available in french · nov 2011isbn 978 1 897470 29 9 · $14.95

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Fleeing from the HunterMarian Domanski

I asked myself, Am I a criminal doomed for execution? I was deter-mined to run away … that thought never left my mind.

On the run in Nazi-occupied Po-land, thirteen-year-old orphan Marian Finkelman – later Doman-ski – must fend for himself in a desperate search for safety. Forced to grow up much too early, the dar-ing young boy risks his life over and over again to slip in and out of the ghetto in his hometown of Otwock to find food. When he fi-nally escapes the ghetto, alone and living by his wits, Marian’s perfect Polish and fair complexion help him narrowly escape death as he travels through the Polish country-side “passing” as a Polish-Catholic farmhand. A heart-rending tale of lost youth, Fleeing from the Hunter poignantly describes the quick thinking and extraordinary will to live that are Marian Domanski’s greatest strengths as he manages to survive against all odds.

2011 Independent Publishers Book Award Silver Medal winner

About the authorMarian Domanski was born Marian Finkelman in Otwock, Poland in 1928. After the war,

Marian Domanski remained in Poland, where he joined the Polish air force and then worked as a photographer. He married his wife, Cesia, in 1964 and his daughter was born a year later. They moved to Denmark in 1968 and immigrated to Canada two years later. Marian Domanski worked in the print-ing business in Toronto and still lives there. He is very active in the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada and has had a number of exhibits of his photography in his hometown of Otwock, Poland.


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Knocking on Every DoorAnka Voticky

There was a feeling of imminent danger…. we were all subject to the mad and ever-changing rules of Hitler’s Germany. We were desperate to find a safe haven.

As Hitler’s army sweeps into Czechoslovakia in 1940, Anka Voticky, a twenty-five-year-old mother of two, her husband, Arnold, and her family flee halfway around the world to an unlikely refuge – the Chinese port of Shanghai. Estranged from all that is familiar, their security is threatened yet again when the Japanese oc-cupying the city force the Jewish refugees into a ghetto. After the war, the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia sends the Votickys on another harrowing journey out of Europe, this time to safety in Canada. Global in scope, Anka Voticky’s memoir provides a rare glimpse of the far-reaching impact of World War ii. At the same time, Knocking on Every Door is an inspiring story of love, family com-mitment and Anka’s willingness to cross oceans in search of freedom and a better future for her children.

About the AuthorAnka Voticky was born in the small town of Brandýs nad Labem in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

in 1913 and her family moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1918. She survived the war years with her family in Shanghai, China and moved back to Prague in 1946. In 1948 Anka, her husband, Arnold, and their two children, Milan and Vera, immigrated to Canada to escape the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. They settled in Montreal, where their younger son, Michael, was born. Now 97, Anka lives in a seniors’ residence in Montreal.


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moved to Hamilton, where William Tannenzapf worked for the Westing-house Electric Company, inventing several new technologies. He passed away in March 2011 at one hun-dred years old. Renate Krakauer obtained a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy, a Masters of Environ-mental Studies, and a doctorate in education. She has worked in the fields of pharmacy, education, and human resources, and was president and ceo of the Michener Institute of Applied Health Sciences. She lives in Toronto with her husband and has written and published numer-ous short stories and essays.

Memories from the AbyssWilliam Tannenzapf

But I Had a Happy Childhood Renate Krakauer

William Tannenzapf never wavers in his determination to survive and save his wife and baby girl from the evil gripping his home town of Stanisławów. Blond, cherubic, Re-nate Krakauer was a “miracle baby” born as the world descended into war and soon surrounded by misery and death. Starving and enslaved, Tan-nenzapf entrusts his daughter to a Polish family so that little Renate can live in “childhood oblivion” – yet still under the eyes of her loving parents. Later reunited and thrown into the trials of refugee and immigrant life, Krakauer’s thoughtful observations provide fascinating insight into the perceptions of a child survivor and offer a poignant counterpoint to Tan-nenzapf’s adult reflections on the same events. This gripping volume offers the reader the rare opportu-nity to read survival stories from two members of the same family.

About the authorsWilliam Tannenzapf was born in Stanisławów, Poland in 1911 and his daughter, Renate, was born in the midst of occupation in March 1941. After the war, the family made their way to a Displaced Persons camp in Germany before they immigrated to Canada in 1948. The Tannenza-pfs first lived in Montreal and then

6 × 9 paperback · 176 pages with photosisbn 978 1 897470 06 0 · $14.95also available in frenchisbn 978 1 897470 24 4 · $14.95

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A Drastic Turn of Destiny Fred Mann

In Germany I was “Jewboy”; in Brussels I was “boche”; in France I was “undesirable”; in Portugal I was a “refugee”; and in Jamaica I was simply a non-entity…. I was a pariah in an exploding world.

Fred Mann’s compelling memoir is at once the nerve-wracking account of his family’s efforts to stay one step ahead of the Nazi death ma-chinery and the captivating story of one boy’s rapid entry into man-hood. Using the biblical theme of Exodus to give shape to his story, Fred Mann traces his family’s exile through Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Jamaica and finally to a new home in Canada. It is both a story of persecution and exile and the narrative of a boy who found himself taking on adult respon-sibilities while only beginning to explore the adult world. Proud as he is of his success in helping his family in a time of desperate need, Fred Mann’s story is also a lament for a lost childhood, for having to grow up far too fast.

About the authorFred Mann was born in 1926 in Leipzig, Germany. In 1939, he and his parents fled first to Belgium, spent five months in Vichy France and then travelled through Franco’s

Spain to Lisbon, Portugal. From there they sailed to Jamaica, where they remained until 1948. After the war, Fred Mann travelled through-out the US and Europe. He met and married his wife, Veronica, in Salzburg, Austria, where their son, Larry, was born. The family im-migrated to Toronto in 1952, where Fred continued his professional career in the import/export business that had begun in Jamaica. He then became a financial-market consul-tant and international financier. Fred Mann passed away in Toronto in March 2008.


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Album of My Life Ann Szedlecki

I am the daughter of nobody. I have no sisters. I am nobody’s grand-daughter or daughter-in-law, aunt or cousin. Who am I? My past is all gone. It disappeared….

Ann Szedlecki was a Hollywood-film-loving fourteen-year-old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and she fled to the Soviet Union with her older brother, hoping to re-turn for the rest of her family later. Instead, she ends up spending most of the next six and a half years alone in the Soviet Union, enduring the harsh conditions of northern Siberia under Stalin’s Communist regime. Szedlecki’s beautifully written story, which lovingly re-constructs her pre-war childhood in Lodz, is also compelling for its candour about her experiences as a woman in the Soviet Union during World War ii. As a very young wom-an without family, living largely by her wits, she is only too aware of her own vulnerability and meets ev-ery challenge she faces with a fierce determination to survive. Through-out her ordeals she hears the echo of her mother’s last words to her: “Be decent.”

About the author Ann Szedlecki was born Chana Fraijlich in Lodz, Poland in 1925.

After spending the war in the Soviet Union, she returned to Lodz to find that every member of her family had perished. In 1950, she met and married Abraham Szedlecki. They emigrated first to Israel and then, in 1953, to Toronto, where their daugh-ter, Lynda, was born. Ann worked in the garment district, but eventually opened her own successful ladies’ clothing store, which she operated for twenty-five years. She became an avid community volunteer, discover-ing her natural talent as a storytell-er. Ann Szedlecki passed away in 2005.


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the Soviet border. In 1944, after the re-gion was liberated by the Red Army, Alex Levin was sent to the USSR as a war orphan and enrolled in military cadet school. He became a profes-sional engineer in the Soviet army until he was forced out for being a Jew. He married his wife in 1957 and their daughter was born in 1961. Alex decided to build a new life for himself and his family in Canada in 1975, where he worked first as an engineer and then as a successful builder. He continues to live in Toronto and speaks tirelessly to students about his experiences in the Holocaust.

Under the Yellow & Red Stars Alex Levin

I feel my brother’s hand, trembling but strong, grab onto mine. I hear his words, urging me to run, take hold of my body and move my legs. We run, his hand holding mine … to me it feels like freedom.

Under the Yellow & Red Stars is a remarkable story of survival, com-ing of age and homecoming after years as a stranger in a strange land. Alex Levin was only ten years old when he ran deep into the forest after the Germans invaded his hometown of Rokitno and only twelve when he emerged from hiding to find that he had neither parents nor a community to return to. A harrowing tale of escape, en-durance and exceptional emotional resilience, Levin’s story also draws us into his later life as an officer and eventual outcast in the ussr, and as an immigrant who success-fully builds a new life in Canada. This poetically written memoir is imbued with loss and pain, but also with the optimistic spirit of a boy determined to survive.

Winner of the 2010 Pearson Prize Teen Choice Award

About the author Alex Levin was born in 1932 in the shtetl of Rokitno, Poland, not far from


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the son of a diamond merchant in Antwerp’s famous diamond ex-change. He was ten years old when the Nazis invaded Belgium in May 1940 and ended his golden childhood forever. After the war Paul-Henri Rips continued to live in Antwerp, where he worked in the diamond in-dustry. He left in 1950 and moved to the Belgian Congo for ten years and then to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he met and married his wife, Lily, and their two children were born. In 1997, the couple immigrated to Toronto to join their children and grandchildren, where Paul-Henri lives with his wife.

The son of a diamond merchant in Antwerp’s famous diamond ex-change, Paul-Henri Rips was ten years old when the Nazis invaded Belgium in May 1940 and ended what he calls his “golden childhood” forever. Vividly told from a child’s perspective, this fascinating ac-count explores the diverse cast of characters who inhabited Belgium and France during the Nazi occupa-tion and the experiences of one fam-ily against the backdrop of large-scale events. Guided throughout by his father’s words of wisdom – “A klapt vargayt, a wort bestayt” (A blow will go away again, but a word lasts forever) and “Sei a mensch” (Be a decent human being) – Rips conveys his unwavering belief in the importance of holding on to one’s own humanity in the face of unfathomable inhumanity.

2009 Gold Medal winner from the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award

About the author Paul-Henri Rips was born in 1929,

“Don’t move. Don’t open the door.” My knees had turned to jelly and I was trembling uncontrollably…. Sina grabbed her raincoat and declared, “I’m leaving. They’ll be back and I don’t want to end up in a camp.”

E/96: Fate UndecidedPaul-Henri Rips


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My family and I were in hiding. Sud-denly I heard someone panting on the stairs … we didn’t breathe. Who was coming now?

Lodz, Poland, 1944. As teenaged Henia Rosenfarb sits with her fam-ily in a small, secret room, hiding from Nazi soldiers while the net tightens around them, she makes herself two promises: that she will one day travel to Paris and that she will become a teacher. With the support of her family and the Bund, a political movement dedicated to social justice, Henia keeps her focus on those promises. Little can the fiery redhead imagine that her path will take her from wartime Poland to faraway Canada. These “bits and pieces” of her life give us a glimpse of a tumultuous past and a faith in the future.

Winner of the 2008 Canadian So-ciety for Yad Vashem Award in Holocaust Memoir and Literature, Canadian Jewish Book Awards

2008 Independent Publishers Book Award Gold Medal winner

About the authorBorn in 1926 in Lodz, Poland, Henia Reinhartz endured the Nazi occu-pation in the Lodz ghetto and then

survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Following the war, she lived briefly in Belgium and then moved to Paris where she graduated as a professionally trained Yiddish and Hebrew teacher and where she met her husband, Nochem. Henia im-migrated to Canada in 1951 and initially lived in Montreal. She mar-ried Nochem in 1952 and soon after moved to Toronto. Henia and her husband have two children, Adele and Avrom.

Bits and PiecesHenia Reinhartz


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The ViolinRachel Shtibel

A Child’s TestimonyAdam Shtibel

Rachel Milbauer, a vivacious and outgoing music lover, lay hidden and silent with her family and a family friend in an underground bunker in Nazi-occupied Poland for nearly two years. Adam Shtibel, only eight years old when the war broke out, sur-vived in the forest with other Jewish children until he was taken in by a gentile couple and “passed” as a non-Jew. After the war, the recovered violin, case and photos hidden away by her beloved Uncle Velvel became cherished symbols of survival and continuity. Saved by inner fortitude, luck, and the courage and caring of friends and strangers, Rachel and Adam met and fell in love, and set about building a new life together. Half a century later, a chance re-mark inspired Rachel to explore her memories. Always at her side, Adam found himself compelled to break his long self-imposed silence in the only way he could.


About the authorsRachel Milbauer was born in East-ern Galicia, Poland in 1935. After the war, her family settled in Wroclaw, where she married Adam Shtibel

in 1956. Adam was born in 1928 in the small Polish town of Komarow. After liberation, he joined the Pol-ish air force. With the situation for Jews in Poland worsening in the mid-1950s, the Shtibels moved to Israel, where Adam worked in the aircraft industry. In 1964, Rachel obtained a master’s degree in mi-crobiology from Tel Aviv University and worked as a senior scientist in bacteriology. In 1968, Rachel and Adam moved to Toronto with their two daughters and continued their successful careers in their respective fields. They live in Toronto and have five granddaughters.


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Into a new world I was brought by a dream

Never to see blood spilled againBut can I really throw awayThe dreams that soiled my youth?

A young boy who loved soccer as much as he loved to write, Spring’s End tells how John Freund’s joy-ful childhood is shattered by the German invasion of his homeland, Czechoslovakia. Hoping at first that the conflict and persecution would soon blow over, John’s Jewish fam-ily suffers through the systematic erosion of their rights only to be deported to Theresienstadt – en route to the Auschwitz death camp. John’s loss of innocence and suffer-ing are made all the more poignant as his vivid words reveal an unwav-ering faith in humanity, determined optimism and commitment to rebuilding his life in Canada.

About the authorJohn Freund was born in 1930 in Ceské Budejovice, a town located south of Prague, in Czechoslova-kia. At the age of twelve, he was deported with his family to the Theresienstadt camp in the Czech garrison town of Terezin and then, in December 1943, to Auschwitz. In January 1945, the Nazis evacuated the camp and John was forced on a

death march ahead of the advanc-ing Soviet army from January to April 1945. He was liberated by American troops in 1945. In March 1948, John immigrated to Toronto. He became a chartered accountant and, in 1959, married his wife, Nora. They raised three daughters and are proud grandparents who still travel the world.

Spring’s EndJohn Freund


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He pointed his gun and bayonet at me and ordered me to stop, my jaw was bleeding, hanging down. I could not speak and I was shivering.

Nineteen-year-old Tommy Dick is killed, only to resurface. Born into a Hungarian family who had con-verted from Judaism, Tommy soon finds out that in the eyes of the Na-zis, he’s still a Jew, still a target for extermination. On the run and in disguise, Tommy is chased by death as much as he is by luck. A vivid and gripping account of how the courageous acts of others, unshake-able friendships and Tommy’s own extraordinary quick-wit conspired to save the life of an adventurous and determined young man in the cruellest of times.


About the authorTommy Dick was born in 1925 in Budapest, Hungary. Following the Soviet liberation of Hungary in 1945, he made his way to a Displaced Persons camp in Austria and then, in 1948, immigrated to Canada. He worked as a labourer on a hydro-electric dam in Stewartville, near Ottawa, after which he lived in Montreal for three years. He moved

west, settling in Calgary, where he started his own business manufac-turing aluminum windows. He met and married Lilian in 1954 and they had two daughters. At the age of thirty-six, Tommy enrolled in law school and was called to the bar in 1967 at the age of forty-two. He prac-ticed law in Calgary for thirty years. Tommy Dick passed away in 1999.

Getting Out AliveTommy Dick


How to submit a memoir

Submissions may be made in any language, typed or handwritten. Memoirs written in a language other than English or French will be translated into English and/or French. Memoirs may be edited for clarity, grammar and ac-curacy. Authors or their heirs will be requested to review the final text for approval before it goes to print. Photos, documents and other images may be submitted for consideration with a written memoir. Please do not send original documents – copies only.

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The Azrieli FoundationHolocaust Survivor Memoirs Program22 St. Clair Avenue East, Suite 202Toronto, Ontario, m4t 2s3Telephone: 416 322 5928 Fax: 416 322 5930Email: [email protected]

PRICE LIST

New Releases

Comme un lièvre traqué / Domanski 978 1 897470 31 2 $14.95 pbFrapper à toutes les portes / Voticky978 1 897470 30 5 $14.95 pbGatehouse to Hell / Opatowski 978 1 897470 26 8 $14.95 pbDe génération en génération / Tomasov978 1 897470 29 9 $14.95 pbIf Home Is Not Here / Borenstein 978 1 897470 27 5 $14.95 pbLittle Girl Lost / Rich 978 1 897470 25 1 $14.95 pbTenuous Threads / One of the Lucky Ones/ Abrams/ Marx978 1 897470 28 2 $14.95 pbUn terrible revers de fortune / Mann978 1 897470 22 0 $14.95 pb

Recent Releases

Album of My Life / Szedlecki978 1 897470 10 7 $14.95 pbL’Album de ma vie / Szedlecki 978 1 897470 23 7 $14.95 pbBits and Pieces / Reinhartz978 1 897470 00 8 $14.95 pbCachée / Quddus978 1 897470 02 2 $14.95 pbA Drastic Turn of Destiny / Mann978 1 897470 08 4 $14.95 pbE/96: Fate Undecided / Rips978 1 897470 09 1 $14.95 pbÉtoile jaune, étoile rouge / Levin

978 1 897470 21 3 $14.95 pbLa fin du printemps / Freund978 1 897470 13 8 $14.95 pbFleeing from the Hunter / Domanski 978 1 897470 17 6 $14.95 pbFragments de ma vie / Reinhartz978 1 897470 11 4 $14.95 pbFrom Generation to Generation / Tomasov 978 1 897470 19 0 $14.95 pbGetting Out Alive / Dick978 1 897470 01 5 $14.95 pbKnocking on Every Door/ Voticky 978 1 897470 20 6 $14.95 pbMatricule E /96 / Rips978 1 897470 16 9 $14.95 pbMemories from the Abyss / But I Had a Happy Childhood / Tannenzapf / Krakauer978 1 897470 06 0 $14.95 pbObjectif : survivre / Dick978 1 897470 12 1 $14.95 pbThe Shadows Behind Me / Sterner978 1 897470 18 3 $14.95 pbSouvenirs de l’abîme / Le bonheur de l’innocence / Tannenzapf / Krakauer978 1 897470 24 4 $14.95 pbSpring’s End / Freund978 1 897470 03 9 $14.95 pbUnder the Yellow & Red Stars / Levin978 1 897470 07 7 $14.95 pbThe Violin / A Child’s Testimony / Shtibel978 1 897470 05 3 $14.95 pbLe Violon / Témoignage d’un enfant / Shtibel978 1 897470 14 5 $14.95 pb

Documents

f11-azrieli