The Back Pages

Marsha Lederman goes looking for signs of her life in The Canadian Jewish News

Iam emerging from a years-long exercise that could have been accomplished in a few days or even hours at my mother’s kitchen table.

But instead of getting the information I needed while sitting with her in her Toronto condo, nursing tea and her famous apple cake, I have travelled to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the U.S. National Archives at College Park, Md., the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York—and, through the internet, all over the world.

Only a pandemic stopped me from going back to Lodz, Poland, and Kaunitz, Germany. I was hours away from my overseas flight when then-president Donald Trump announced the U.S. was closing the borders with Europe and I decided to stay put.

And still, I don’t have all the answers, not even close.

Over the last few years, I have been working on a book about grief and intergenerational trauma, a memoir, and one for which I needed as much information about my parents’ lives as possible, especially their experiences during the Holocaust.

My mother became a forced labourer at 15 in the Radom Ghetto, then a forced labourer in a munitions factory, and was later deported to Auschwitz. After three months, she was transported to a satellite camp of Buchenwald, again to make weapons for her enslavers. At the end of March 1945, she was forced on a death march, and three days later, liberated by the U.S. Army in the village of Kaunitz. My father, from Lodz, and a slave labourer in the Piotrkow-Trybunalski Ghetto, managed to procure false papers and escape into Germany. He spent more than two years on a farm, pretending to be someone else: Tadeusz Rudnicki, Catholic Pole. I knew these basic facts, but there were so many gaps. I started digging to find out whatever I could. Of all the exercises I could have chosen to get me through a pandemic—and some personal grief— maybe this wasn’t the wisest one.

But there was more that I wanted from this pursuit: not just to know about my parents’ traumatic experiences and horrific losses, but to learn more about their lives. The good parts. Their childhoods, but also how they rebuilt their lives in Canada, where they were able to buy a little house, a business. Raise a family of three daughters.

Jacob (Tadek) and Gitla (Jean) Lederman in Germany, after the Second World War. Photo courtesy of Marsha Lederman

My father died in 1984, four days after my 18th birthday. I’d asked him almost nothing about his life.

My mother died in 2006, also unexpectedly. I didn’t ask her everything I should have.

To get a window into their lives, I’ve done an intense amount of reading. Most of it, deeply disturbing. But this year, with my book done and delivered to my publisher, I started a different exercise. I went back and did some reading—though old issues of The Canadian Jewish News weekly paper.

It was a staple in our home, always. The newspaper I would leaf through as a kid, and then, as an adult visiting my mother in the condo where we moved after my father died—a connection to where I came from, and to my parents. I realized for them, this newspaper must have been such an important connection, too—to a community in a new place, in a new language, after the hell they had emerged from. So, I gave myself a project: Learn something about what your parents might have been experiencing in their Toronto world, reading this paper that came to their door for many, many years. Choose dates that would have been monumental for them—to give myself a little bit of context to help me understand theirs, through my three formative decades, starting with my birth. JULY 22, 1966: A BIRTH

This edition of what claimed to be “the largest circulation of any Jewish newspaper in Canada” is dated 10 days after I was born at Mount Sinai Hospital, and named after my two murdered grandfathers: Moshe Aron and Moshe Rafael (I was my parents’ last chance at having a boy to take on their names). My middle name, Estelle, came from the murdered identical twin sister of my father’s mother, Esther. In our Bathurst Manor home, my mother would have been in the midst of postpartum life—the hormones, the sleep deprivation, the (cloth!) diapers. One front-page story may have been triggering for her, headlined “Tarnopol Killers Get Life”.

A West German court had sentenced two former SS guards to life in prison for “murder and complicity in the extermination of Polish Jews during the Hitler era.” Five others received lesser sentences for their roles in the slaughter of thousands of Jews in Tarnopol. Three others were acquitted; two for lack of evidence, and one because the court found he was just following orders.

I looked up Google’s map of the place, which is now in Ukraine. And then I read up on what happened there during the Second World War: according to Yad Vashem, about 11,000 Jews were murdered in Tarnopol itself, and approximately another 6,000 Jews were deported to the Belzec death camp.

Marsha Lederman as a baby with her sisters Rachel (left) and Doris in their home in Bathurst Manor, circa 1966-67. Photo courtesy of Marsha Lederman

 But these statistics, and any details of these horrific slaughters, were omitted from the front page. The CJN’s story was only four paragraphs long.

Meanwhile, all of page three was devoted to promoting family vacations in Holland—with a lengthy article and several ads (surely not a coincidence). The report began by telling readers that “The Jewish traveller feels at home in Holland because it is one of the very few countries where there is absolutely no antisemitism.” OK, if you say so.

Holland also offered kosher restaurants and synagogues. The stewardesses took great care of the writer’s children, especially the baby. When they arrived at customs, they had nothing to declare, and “the courteous official took our word for it.” (And this was possibly the longest article in the entire issue; a slow midsummer news week, perhaps.)

An ad for KLM offered 15 points of interest to Jewish visitors in Amsterdam, including Anne Frank House and the memorial site of the Dutch playhouse. “It was in this theatre that Amsterdam Jews were locked up before deportation to concentration camps.” Many more front-page inches were devoted to a World Council on Jewish Education vote supporting Jewish day schools. Did my parents read that and consider sending me to one? Or did they want me to be as integrated, as Canadian, as possible—to help ensure what had happened to them would never happen to me?

There seemed to be some concern that a day school education would remove Jewish youngsters “from the mainstream of democratic life.” (For the record, they ended up sending me to public school, with part-time Hebrew school three days a week.) On the second page there were a bunch of photographs and a report from the recent capacity-filled annual dinner of the Associated Hebrew Schools of Toronto (shortened, when I was growing up, to simply “Associated”). The president of Associated, Joseph Levine, warned the more than 500 guests that extensive high-quality Jewish education was essential to “halt the exodus from Jewish identity.” The article referred to the growing Jewish population in North Toronto’s Sheppard to Steeles area. My family was part of that.

An article on page four caught my eye; it reported on a “new denomination” or, as the headline read, Judaism Without the Synagogue. It quoted Labour Zionist movement leader Samuel Lapin: “One does not have to think of the synagogue as being the focal point of Jewish survival,” he said. What should be stressed: “language, literature, cultural aspects, the observance of customs and holidays and the bringing of religious observances into the home. All those things are part of our ethnic identification.” Cultural Judaism, essentially.

Funny, this was my experience growing up in a Jewish home: we observed all the holidays—quite religiously. Passover was strictly kosher, we were kosher in our house, two sets of dishes, the whole megillah.

And yet, we didn’t attend synagogue other than during the High

Holidays and for yizkor services. I had wondered why we almost never went; certainly it would have been something my mother had done growing up—or at least her father and brothers—and possibly my father, too. At one time, maybe to earn points at Hebrew school, I started going to shul on Saturday mornings—but I went alone.

Neither parent joined me. Had they read this article?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the same page, the Sermon for the Week called for the synagogue to be the central focus of the community, “the meeting place of the community of souls.” The following week was the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, Tisha b’Av.

One page was dominated by an ad which was quite something to see in big bold letters in the year 2022: “Important notice to everyone born in 1898: you should apply for your old age security pension immediately.”

Did my parents come across that and think about their own parents? Was there a pang for a moment, knowing that their parents were not able to live to collect social security? My father’s mother, Sara Sierpinski, was born in 1889. She would have qualified nine years earlier.

On the back page of this slim eight-page paper, a short article was headlined “Austria Reopens Case of Infamous Hitlerite”. It was actually about two people; brothers who had been Polish Army officers and became Austrian citizens after the war. They had been acquitted by a Salzburg jury on charges in the mass murder of Jews in Stanislav, Poland. The judge refused to accept the verdict.

And in the classifieds, there were ads for homes for sale—in our Bathurst Manor and beyond: Bathurst and Finch, Betty Ann Drive, Bathurst and Glencairn, Forest Hill. The description of many of the homes in my area exactly matched the one I came home to as an infant: bungalow with L-shaped living and dining room; natural wood kitchen with breakfast area; attached garage; basement apartment. For my parents, Holocaust survivors from Poland, a castle.

JUNE 4, 1971: A WEDDING

Next, I went looking for an issue from around the time of my first significant memory: the wedding of my oldest sister, Rachel, to her husband, Jack, in June 1971. I was four. (They’re still married!) The newspaper, dated two days before their June 6 wedding, was filled with news about a visit to Toronto from Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek. A state dinner was to be held for him on June 10.

But it was preceded by a fundraiser for Israel Bonds, which merited a lengthy paragraph listing the attendees. I scoured it for familiar names, people I knew growing up. I didn’t find a single one.

The wedding of Rachel and Jack Brass, June 6, 1971. Also in photo: Jacob and Gitla Lederman and their two other daughters, Doris (in peach dress) and Marsha (in green). Photo by Ben Adler

This was not the crowd my parents ran with.

But there was a lot of anguish in this issue. The big front page headline was “Terrorists Waging Sadat’s War”. There was a lot of coverage of troubles in the Middle East. Also, uncertainty for Jews in Latin America.

And several pieces focused on concerns over the treatment and fate of Soviet Jews: worldwide protests denouncing show trials; concerns over Soviet political influence in the Middle East—in Egypt and Jordan. A front-page commentary by The CJN’s editor and publisher M.J. Nurenberger referenced statements Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau made about similarities between Canadian democracy and Soviet political structure.

“We ask ourselves: Have we all been wrong to fear Communism as practiced in the U.S.S.R.?,” wrote Nurenberger. “Is it really true that American television and American business are more dangerous to our future as free men than propaganda emanating from the Kremlin?”

This thread appears throughout the edition, right until the last page, with a headline reading “Moscow Mobilizing Anti-Zionist Jews”. There was concern about the handling of the so-called “Jewish Question.” And comparisons made to activities before the Second World War.

Were my parents worried about what kind of world their daughters were growing up into; what kind of world their oldest daughter, about to marry, would bring her own children into?

Elsewhere, two side-by-side features concerning marriage were particularly disturbing for me, especially an advice column.

The woman seeking advice was complaining that her husband’s sister kept calling and asking for help with her own husband, who was beating her. The sister-in-law had started drinking to deal with her unhappy, abusive marriage. The advice, from Dr. Rose N. Franzblau, was not great:

“When she calls to complain… she is not asking for help, but trying to adulterate her brother’s happiness. She is also envious of you for becoming the first woman in your brother’s life.” Dr. Franzblau said the writer and her husband cannot take responsibility for this abused wife’s marital issues or her psychological problems. “In any unhappy marriage,” the column concluded, “each of the partners contributes a share to the tensions and dissentions that follow.” This appeared next to the syndicated column A Woman’s World by “Ruthie” (no last name). I take it this was supposed to be a humour column, but… oh my goodness. Ruthie started by pointing out that men commonly die at a younger age than their wives, and often by heart attack. Consider, she advised, how rough men have it: having to help with the children in the morning, taking emergency phone calls from the frantic wife while at work, being asked to perform tasks upon arrival home such as starting the barbecue. And on weekends, picking up the slack while the wife takes her “beauty nap” or the part-time help doesn’t show because they must attend a funeral. “Is it any wonder that he drops dead one day?” Ruthie asks.

She urges her readers to be a little more considerate of their men. “After all, they DO support us, or at least try to. Why can’t we let them be when they come home from work? They have their job, and we have ours… Let him help you, only when he wants to.” That, Ruthie says, will lead to a happier marriage, and a longer life for hubby.

 JULY 19, 1984: A DEATH

On July 11, 1984, my parents flew to Stockholm, where my middle sister, Doris, and her husband, Sam, were about to have their first child. Before they left, they gave me a triple-strand freshwater pearl bracelet for my birthday. Five days after their departure, my father died—heart attack. He did not live to see his granddaughter, Melissa, born 12 days later. Thursday, July 19, was the day my mother returned home to Toronto, with a casket in the cargo hold, carrying my father’s body. Did she have the energy to even glance at the Jewish newspaper which had been such good company for her over the years?

If she did, she may have received some comfort from the banner at the top of the front page: “Zundel Committed”.

On page seven, the details: the German-born, Toronto-based Holocaust denier would be going to trial on charges of unlawfully publishing false information about the Holocaust in written works that included Did Six Million Really Die? Other materials offered by his publishing company, according to the article, were The Hitler We Loved and Why, The Six Million Swindle and Auschwitz: Truth or Lie? No, my mother, survivor of Auschwitz, would have taken no comfort from any of that.

On another page, an article quoted the president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Milton E. Harris, as saying the best way to deal with Nazi war criminals in Canada was to strip them of their citizenship and deport them. Did my mother get any satisfaction reading this? Or was it impossible for her to care about anything? Or to even manage to get through a single article about the first big tragedy in her life?

The front page also compared the three federal party leaders— Conservative Brian Mulroney, Liberal John Turner, New Democrat Ed Broadbent—on their stances toward Israel; there was an election coming up Sept. 4. “As Canadians get ready for a summer of picnics and politics…” the article began. Not us.

Still in shock, my mother and I would travel to the school gym in my former elementary school to cast our ballots. My first election as a voter. It felt wrong that my father didn’t get a say.

Under different ownership, The CJN had grown exponentially since 1971, when it was still eight pages long. Now, at 44 pages, it was filled with news about Canada, Israel and elsewhere—including an article by a certain Wolf Blitzer in Washington, about Ariel Sharon’s $50-million (US) libel lawsuit against Time magazine.

An editorial called on the federal government to issue an official apology to Japanese-Canadians interned during the Second World War. There were columns like Living Halacha by Rabbi Moses Burak, the rabbi at the synagogue we attended, Beth Jacob. And there were Toronto event listings, including one that looked extraordinary: a walking tour co-led by Ed Mirvish and Jane Jacobs, beginning at Bloor and Markham streets. Not far from where my parents owned their first house.

Things must have been going well in the weekly Jewish newspaper industry back then, because The CJN was filled with ads. An ad from General Foods explaining (and apologizing for) a problem with erroneous kosher certifications on certain Jell-O products. An ad for Sunnybrook, where we did our grocery shopping. A jewelry store promoting, oh, freshwater pearls. An ad for Steeles-College Memorial Chapel, where my father’s funeral was held that week. An ad encouraging readers to give Jewish National Fund trees “for all occasions.” We later planted a grove of 1,000 trees in a place called Zippori in the Lower Galilee in my father’s name.

On page 43, I read through a list of obituaries. My father’s name was not there. He died too late for that week’s deadline.

Marsha Lederman. Photo by Ben Nelms

Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust Once Removed by Marsha Lederman, published by McClelland & Stewart on May 3, 2022. Learn more at thecjn.ca/marsha Does history repeat itself? Or do the same horrible things just never stop happening, in one form or another, in one place or another? In February 2022, I was preparing to moderate a virtual event for the Jewish Book Festival in Vancouver, my home for the past 15 years.

The guests were the authors of two terrific, provocative books: American writer Dara Horn with People Love Dead Jews: Notes from a Haunted Presence, and British comedian/writer/football-anthem guy David Baddiel, whose book is called Jews Don’t Count.

The discussion would address how and why antisemitism is somehow tolerated in today’s world when other kinds of racism are not, how allies are silent and how conflating Jews with the actions of Israel is, in Baddiel’s opinion, in and of itself racist. And often a red herring.

I was also flipping through The CJN archives that morning. And I came upon, in the issue dated June 4, 1971, coverage of a huge controversy brewing at the time involving the United Church’s stance on Israel. The piece referenced an op-ed that ran in the Globe and Mail, the newspaper I now (with great pride) work for. The article was headlined: “Is Antizionism A Coverup For Antisemitism?”

The CJN’s commentary noted that “those involved in propaganda against Israel, and her defensive position against smear and slur, only have changed the term antisemitism to antizionism because in the post-Auschwitz era, to speak against Jews would be too shocking.”

The editorial made the case that there was a fine distinction between antisemitism and antizionism. “Those who raise a hand against Israel, battling for survival, are the enemies of the Jewish people and are out to destroy us.”

This article at first made me chuckle at the coincidence, the irony of me reading this 50 years later, as I was about to moderate a panel on the “new” antisemitism. And then, it made me feel tired. So tired. And then it made me resolved. I have been worried about releasing my book into the world. Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed is extremely personal, it makes me feel incredibly vulnerable, and I have suffered antisemitic and misogynistic attacks already in a harrowing way, mostly over social media. How would releasing this book into the world exacerbate all of that? People kept asking me: was I excited? And my stomach was in constant knots. Instead of enjoying this accomplishment, savouring it, I was terrified.

Reading this 50-year-old commentary clarified to me why I am doing this, something my editor at McClelland & Stewart has been reminding me regularly during our editorial/therapy sessions: I wrote this book to help people, and to share information that might in some way galvanize people to ensure that this never happens again. Even as, in different ways in different places all over the place, it is still happening again. n

The CJN Circle

thecjn.ca/circle