My newsletter is back! There’s a lot to report so I’ll get right to it.

First, let me talk about my unpublished manuscript The Hidden Victims. My agent has been pitching the manuscript to Acquisition Editors at publishing houses with no success. It’s no secret that publishers have been shying away from books with Jewish content since October 7. I wouldn’t call it a blacklist because some are getting published, but not many.

She and I agreed that if she hasn’t found someone by January, then I’ll look at self-publishing. This is all familiar territory for me. The feedback on the manuscript has been very positive so something might happen still. It’s an impressive manuscript.

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I’ve also begun another book. It’s a sequel to my second novel, Loved Mars Hated the Food, a satirical look at space travel and aliens. It’s my most popular novel. The sequel is titled When Martians Come For Dinner and the first chapter is already done. Just picture Martians walking around Time Square.

I just returned this week from the World Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants conference in Philadelphia. Nearly 500 people gathered to hear presentations, network, share stories and experiences, and gain a better understanding of themselves. I was fortunate to be on a panel to discuss “The Weight of Intergenerational Legacy.” It was a powerful and engaging conversation. The weekend ended with participants in a circle singing inspirational Hebrew songs. I hope to return next year in Dallas.

To commemorate October 7, I decided not to attend a large community program. Instead, I organized one for Generations Forward, the support group that I formed in the spring for descendants of Holocaust survivors. About 40 people attended to hear two speakers who were in Israel on October 7 describe the fear and resilience of Israelis under attack. It was a powerful and emotional evening.

I’m back doing podcast interviews. They help a little in getting some exposure. Especially during these frustrating days when nothing is happening with my manuscript. This recent interview was one of the better ones I’ve done.

Next month I’ll be announcing a program I’ve been working on with my colleague Liz Moore dealing with how youth are being exposed to online hate. As you may have guessed, I’m not your typical retiree. In the meantime my family also keeps me busy. Hockey has returned and the boys are back on the ice.

On October 15, 2026, Elon Musk finally unveiled Tesla’s next-generation Tesla Roadster prototype in a live demonstration at a SpaceX facility in Texas. Musk called it the "world's first flying car." The vehicle has specialized SpaceX cold-gas rocket thrusters and a vacuum-suction system, allowing it to perform short mid-air maneuvers, barrel rolls, and even drive upside down along a curved track.

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The vehicle utilizes 10 ultra-high-pressure air nozzles distributed around its frame, fed by onboard carbon-composite pressure vessels but is limited to very short flights as the compressed air tanks empty quickly during hover or continuous flight.

We aren’t going to see this car any time soon because the cold-gas thrusters are not legal on the roads. In addition, I’m not sure it would be safe for pedestrians when those thrusters go off.

The next day, Waymo (a Google company) announced plans to launch driverless robotaxis in Toronto under an Ontario pilot program, starting with high-definition street mapping in late 2026, supervised testing with safety drivers, and a target for full passenger service by 2028. Tesla executives announced plans to deliver its two-seat Cybercab robotaxis to customers by the end of 2026.

The flying car is just a stunt and whether it sees the light of day is pure speculation. But the self-driving taxis are for real. They are coming.

So, let me tell you about my experience with a self-driving vehicle. In 2022, I purchased a Tesla Model Y. I splurged at the time to purchase the self-driving package with the expectation that it would become advanced over the years. And it has indeed.

Now, Tesla has many detractors mostly because of the negative image of Elon Musk, Although in 2022, it wasn’t as much of an issue. There have always been safety concerns, some real and others imagined. But I can tell you that it is one of the cheapest vehicles on the road to operate.

In 4.5 years, I’ve spent money on charging, cabin air filters, windshield wipers, and tires. Nothing else. With no engine, there’s no maintenance, no oil and oil filster changes, no spark plug replacement, no fuel filter service, no exhaust system repairs, and no timing belts. At soem point I will need to get brake work done but brakes last incredibly long because of regenerative braking. I rarely use the brake because the electric engine will slow the car down when you lift your foot off the accelerator pedal. So you are driving mostly using one pedal.

There is no instrument clutter on the dashboard. In fact, there are no gauges or instrument on the dash. Everything is found on a 16-inch touch-screen monitor. There are regular software updates, downloaded as you would for a cellphone. Most recalls are done as a software update.

The other savings are gas. My monthly charging costs arere less than what it costs for some drivers to fill their vehicle with gas. I spent $84 CND or $60 USD in the past 30 days on charging.

The car has 9 cameras (1 in the interior cabin) for 360-degree monitoring of the road. There are no blind spots. The cameras are important for the self-driving functions. When I first purchased the car, it could only drive on its own on highways. Shortly after it was able to drive on city streets. Overtime, it became more reliable and more functional. For example, this year, the updates allowed you to choose whether to pull over, go into a parking spot or a driveway when it arrives at your destination.

You can choose the style of driving to match how you drive, from cautious to aggressive. The latest updates has the car learn your driving pattern and habits. I can tell you the car is a better driver than I am. There are accident avoidance systems that will take control from you.

But there are many quirks when in self-driving mode. First, don’t bother using self-driving when it’s snowing. The snow impairs the cameras. In fact, your road monitoring while you are operating the car is compromised. Even heavy fog will impact on camera visibility.

The car can be very cautious. It is careful with pedestrians. I can be driving down the street and a pedestrian steps off the curb. The car will stop. A pedestrian can be at a crosswalk with their back turned to the road and the car will stop because it can’t tell which way the person is facing. When going through intersections, if another car is making a left turn from the opposite direction, it will slow down to see if that car is going to make the turn. Recently I was driving on a freshly paved road in self-driving mode and I needed to make a left turn. The car became confused where the left turn lane was because the new lines hadn’t been painted yet.

It uses the external cameras for everything. I was driving on a two-lane highway in self-driving mode. There were a group of bicyclists ahead. The car slowed down, checked the traffic on the other side of the road, and slowly went around the cyclists. The cameras view speed limit signs to determine what speed to go. If a truck or bus blocks its view and their is a change of speed, the car can miss it. If you turn onto a road with a different speed, the car won’t know until it spots the next sign even if you have driven that route a hundred times. It only recognizes white speed signs and not yellow one. You need a lot of patience at four-way stops. It will come to a complete stop even when there is no one else at the intersection. When there are other cars, it will wait to see what they do. Just the other day, I made a right turn and the car in front of me came to a stop. The car couldn’t “see” beyond the car ahead and came to a stop too thinking there was backed up traffic.

By stepping on the brake, you immediately disengage the self-driving function. The driver is required to keep an eye the road and I highly recommend it. Little glitches do occur while in self-driving mode. The internal camera watches is a driver. If the driver is not watching the road and on their phone, it will give you a warning. If it persists, the self-driving mode with disengage and you will not be able to use it for a period of time. If there are continued issue with monitoring your car while in self-drive mode, you can lose your self-driving functions altogether.

I’m comfortable with the self-driving mode. I use it between 20%-25% of the time but I don’t fully trust. Unless the functionality is better and the passenger can take control of the vehicle, I would not use a robotaxi. City driving is challenging and the car does get confused.

The October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel triggered a massive and prolonged attack on Hamas in Gaza. Palestinians quickly accused Israel of genocide. As the war dragged on, the media began using the label. It was picked up by Palestinian supporters and eventually by many Western leaders. It was declared a genocide by several UN bodies, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders. They can’t be all wrong, right?

The United Nations’ Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible.

Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:

1. A mental element: the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”; and

2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:

   • Killing members of the group

   • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

   • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

   • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

   • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. This position has been pushed by the Muslim community and progressive politicians and their supporters specifically directed at Israel with respect to the Gaza War.

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If one is to look at the universally accepted cases and Gaza, there is a gapping hole that will swallow many other conflicts.

This chart suggests that every major conflict in the last 100 years could meet the criteria of genocide if the Gaza War was to be included. All wars are horrible because civilians are always killed, many women, children, and the elderly. Many wars could have been avoided if not for leaders who often invite conflicts.

I should mention some conflicts that do not appear on this chart. The atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targeting military and industrial assets but the vast majority of casualties were civilian. No attempt was made to avert civilians and approximately 240,000 were killed. No one has ever suggested that these bombing falls under genocide yet they had major physical and mental impacts on the population that survived. Destroyed were homes, schools, hospital. The cities looked far worse that Gaza does today.

America killed about 2 million South and North Vietnam civilians during the Vietnam War. That works out to about 7% of the population of the two countries. The high civilian death toll is the result of indiscriminate mass warfare and widespread war crimes. The Vietnam War is also not considered genocide because the U.S. military was solely focused on destroying communist forces.

Here are some undisputed cases of genocide:

Between spring 1915 and autumn 1916, the Ottoman Empire arrested, deported, conducted mass killings, and created conditions intended to cause widespread death among the country’s Armenian Christian citizens, most of whom were living in the territory of modern-day Turkey. Between 664,000 and 1.2 million Armenian men, women, and children died in the genocide.

Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge subjected the country’s citizens to forced labor, persecution, and execution in the name of the regime’s ruthless agrarian ideology. Almost two million people—approximately one third of the country’s population—died in the “killing fields.”

In 1994, between 500,000 and one million Rwandans were massacred in a genocide when the Hutu extremist-led government launched a plan to wipe out the country’s entire Tutsi minority and any others who opposed their policies.

After decades of persecution, Burma’s Rohingya minority suffered attacks at the hands of the Burmese military in August 2017 that included mass killing, rape, torture, arson, arbitrary arrest and detention, and forced displacement of more than 700,000 people. These attacks, which are part of a broader campaign of genocide, are documented in our bearing witness reports. These reports also detail the ongoing threats to the Rohingya and other ethnic groups in Burma.

Of course the Holocaust is also undisputable. In fact, the term genocide was created as a result of the Holocaust. It was first used in 1944 and legally codified in 1948. The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators. Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews using deadly living conditions, brutal mistreatment, mass shootings and gassings, and specially designed killing centers. While other groups were also targeted, the focus of the Nuremberg Race Laws and genocide were Jews.

So what about Gaza? When does a war become genocide?

Let’s look at the UN definition again. The first part (mental element) is an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. The stated goal was to free the hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and to eliminate the military and political infrastructures in Gaza. The former was finally accomplished but the latter was only partially successful. There was never a stated goal to destroy anymore than combatants and infrastructure. The problem encountered was the military infrastructure was imbedded in civilian infrastructure including schools, mosques, hospitals, and homes.

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The second part of the definition (physical element) is:

• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

The group in this case is the Palestinian people. Those who believe in the notion of Palestinian genocide are focused on the first two points. There is no evidence that the birth rates were impacted by the war and that children were forcibly transferred elsewhere. But there will be those who will argue that Israel did inflict physical harm in Gaza.

Let’s look at this closely. About 75,000 Palestinians were killed This is not an insignificant number. But it’s only about 3% of the population and it took three years to get there. There is no record of another genocide with such a low percentage of population killed.

I have seen estimates of between 70% to 80% of the dead were civilians. This is a difficult number to verify. It suggests that only 15,000 to 22,500 Palestinian combatants died. That feels low to me. Who is a combatant? Was everyone who crossed over into Israel on October 7 a combatant? You will say of course. But what if 20 of those attackers were teens? Were they included with the civilians because of their age? What about the people who were holding hostages? Didn’t that make them combatants?

What about Imans? Many high-profile mosques in Gaza were led by Imams who simultaneously held ranks as fighters or commanders within the al-Qassam Brigades. This dual structure goes back to Hamas’s origins. The group's founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, used his religious platform to organize Hamas first militant wings.

What about doctors with active military ranks? Dr. Ahmad Kahlout ,Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital was captured by the IDF. He stated that about 16 members of the hospital's staff—including doctors, nurses, and paramedics—doubled as operational operatives for Hamas's military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades. He admitted that the hospital functioned as a military facility where Hamas leaders hid and operated.

It’s not just the medical profession. The humanitarian aid sector in Gaza has had fingers pointed at them. The IDF and monitoring groups have accused multiple aid workers of holding dual roles as combatants or utilizing international infrastructure to aid Hamas. UNRWA has faced the most intensive scrutiny, with Israel claiming that its local staff has been deeply infiltrated by Hamas. A small number of UNRWA workers have been fired suggesting that there is some validity to the accusations.

On October 4, 2026, the IDF targeted and killed Saqr Nabil Musa Qaisi in a strike in Khan Yunis. The military identified him as an active member of Hamas' elite Nukhba Force who took part in the October 7 attacks. Concurrently, Qaisi served as the Gaza director for Deniz Feneri, a prominent Turkish humanitarian aid organization.

Much of the Gaza public infrastructure was militarized. What I’m trying to say is that since combatants make up a significant number of deaths, the “Gaza Genocide” reduced the population by maybe 2%.

The IDF also took steps to mitigate civilian death. They have been inadequate but the genocide label doesn’t neat fit on a military that told civilians to get out of the way. The IDF used operational tactics, technologies, and communication strategies to reduce civilian casualties while targeting Hamas networks embedded within dense urban areas. Hamas operated within urban infrastructure to magnify civilian deaths.

The IDF introduced an interactive, digitized "smart map" that partitioned the Gaza Strip into 623 numbered blocks. The IDF used this grid to publicly communicate via social media, radio, and flyers which specific localized neighborhoods needed to evacuate, attempting to avoid blanket, city-wide displacement orders.

The IDF distributed tens of millions of Arabic warning leaflets, sent automated SMS text alerts, and broadcast radio alerts instructing civilians to leave targeted combat zones or move toward designated "humanitarian zones"

Drone operators and intelligence coordinators monitor target sites through live video feeds. The IDF has documented instances where missile strikes or artillery barrages were mid-flight diverted or entirely aborted because civilians suddenly entered the blast radius.

Every death is a tragedy, in particular, civilians who are caught in the middle of a conflict. But civilian deaths don’t turn the conflict into a genocide. That’s the purpose of UN definition that even the UN is ignoring. Maybe the world doesn’t like it when Jews fight back.

This week, my cousin Jenny (Jadzia) Eisenstein turned 99. That she lived to this age is not as remarkable as her survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau. She survived 17 months in concentration camp and a death march with just one arm.

My father’s family lived in Bedzin, Poland at the start of the war. Beginning in May 1942, the Germans began deporting those in the Bedzin Ghetto to Auschwitz. The last major deportations from Bedzin took place on August 1, 1943. By this time, the only family members still in the Ghetto was my Uncle Moishe’s wife Machela and her three children Regina (18), Jenny (16), and Lemel (13).

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The deportation began at 4 a.m. with SS and Gestapo personnel dragging people out of their homes to the main square in the Ghetto. Those who had made hiding places hid to avoid the roundup. The Germans went from home to home, searching for hiding places and firing into walls and attics. The Aktion lasted for four days and resulted in the expulsion of 12,000 Jews from Bedzin and neighouring Sosnowiec. Some died in their bunkers under horrible conditions. Those in hiding eventually needed to leave for food and water. Most were captured, and they were either shot or sent to Auschwitz.

Machela and the children were among the final group to be deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. For nine days, they had avoided the deportation order by remaining in their hiding places. They could hear shouting and shots throughout the day and night. Occasionally they would peak outside and see dead bodies and personal possessions littering the streets. They survived on raw potatoes and drank their own urine because there was no water. Eventually, they had to leave their hiding places and were immediately arrested by the SS, who had them transported to Auschwitz.

When my aunt Machela and her children arrived at Birkenau, they were immediately put through a selection on the train platform overseen by Dr. Josef Mengele. Mengele was the chief physician at Birkenau at the time and he was frequently involved in the selection of prisoners to be sent to the gas chambers. He was referred to in Hebrew as the Mal’ach Ha’Mavett, the “Angel of Death.” It was a frightening scene with heavily armed SS guards and vicious dogs. Military trucks were parked next to the train platform that would later be used to transport the elderly and children to Crematorium III and its connected gas chamber. The SS showed no mercy, no compassion or emotion as they systematically processed their victims.

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Lemel, who was her youngest, was separated from the rest of the family during the selection process on the train platform. Machela had told him to line up with the men. However, the officer in charge directed him to join a group of children that were being loaded onto a truck. Following his mother’s instructions, he kept sneaking back to the men’s group. The SS would pull him out of the line and send him back with the other children. This was repeated several times until he was last seen being driven off in a dump truck filled with children headed to the gas chambers. His mother and sister could do nothing but watch helplessly. It was the last time they saw him, and they carried around this profound loss for the rest of their lives.

Those who survived the initial selection on the railway station platform at Birkenau were registered. The intake process at Birkenau was dehumanizing and humiliating. Regina described how they were stripped naked in one barrack, and their clothes taken away. They were marched naked to other barracks where all body hair was shaved off by a male prisoner. They were then handed an ill-fitting striped prison dress with a pair of uncomfortable wooden shoes, but no underwear. Along with the clothing was a small enamel bowl which they learned was needed to get food. Finally, their camp number was tattooed onto their left forearm. My aunt and her daughters were numbers 54090, 54091, and 54092. Finally, the three were taken to a lice-infested block 20, their new home for the next 17 months.

Jenny was 16 when she arrived at Auschwitz. She had lost her left arm prior to the war in an accident. When the family first arrived at Auschwitz, Machela had a large shawl draped around her shoulders which she used to cover up Jenny’s missing arm.

The subsequent 17 months was a cat and mouse game to avoid being noticed by the SS officers. A common practice for concentration camp survivors was to avoid standing out or being noticed. Obscurity was important to survival and Jenny became quite good at it. During the roll calls twice a day, Machela would crowd in next to her and concealed her missing arm. During selections, Jenny would sometimes slip away to hide in another block. Jenny being a gifted singer likely contributed to her survival at Auschwitz. She entertained the women in her block, keeping their spirits up and in return, they protected her. After the war she continued singing at charitable events, radio shows, and family gatherings, including my wedding.

There was one frightening encounter with Dr. Mengele involving Jenny. Jenny was working in the delousing and disinfection building, which was created in December 1943, to control the spread of typhus. Dr. Mengele showed up unannounced to conduct a selection of female prisoners. When he was done, he returned to his car and realized that he had left his briefcase in the building. Mengele sent a female prisoner who was serving as his aide to go back and get it. But instead of grabbing the briefcase, she asked Jenny to bring it out to the car. The woman explained that she did not want to be blamed if something was missing from the briefcase. Naively, Jenny walked out with the woman and handed over the briefcase. After Jenny left, Mengele realized that there was something unusual about her. He asked the aide whether the girl had only one arm. The woman said no, and they drove off. Later, the woman returned and slapped Jenny across the face. She was livid that Jenny had put them both in danger of being killed. It was remarkable that she survived over a year in the camp with her impairment.

Machela and Jenny were forced to go on a death march in January 1945 when the Nazis evacuated Auschwitz-Birkenau. Regina hid and avoided joining a death march They were fortunate in that they only marched to a train station in Wodzisław where they were crammed into freight trains and transported to Ravensbrück.

After the war the Red Cross sent her to Sweden. In Sweden she studied voice, becoming a professional singer. She married Jacob Eisenstein in 1946. After briefly living in Israel Jenny immigrated to Canada in 1950. The raised two sons, Michael and Larry.

Jenny and her sister, Regina, married two brothers, Jacob and Ben Eisenstein, who had also survived the war. When the families arrived in Canada, they initially rented a cramped home together on Wales Avenue in Kensington Market. Seeking economic independence, the two couples partnered to establish themselves as prominent merchants in the local Jewish community.

Within two years, Jack and Ben pooled their resources to buy a permanent building on nearby Spadina Avenue. Jacob Eisenstein took over managing a street-level grocery store out of this location. Both families moved out of their cramped rentals and lived directly in the two floors above the Spadina Avenue grocery store. It became a bustling household where the business down below and family life up above were seamlessly intertwined

In Canada, Jenny used her musical talents to perform at numerous Jewish cultural events, largely for charitable causes. Passionate about Holocaust remembrance, she became a founding member of Holocaust Education Week and actively raised funds for the Holocaust Museum in Toronto.

You can read more about my family’s story in my memoir Out From the Shadows.

As most people already know, at the start of Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, there was a terror attack thwarted in Belleville, Ontario. It’s a community of about 55,000 two hours east of Toronto, on Lake Ontario. It’s the most unlikely place for a terror attack on a Jewish community as it consists of less that 200 Jews and just one small synagogue.

About an hour after the terror attack, Avi Lewis, leader of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP), released a Yom Kippur message. The NDP is a democratic socialist party found by Avi Lewis’ grandfather David Lewis. The message (below) suggests that the Jewish people have failed to stop on going genocide. He is of course referring to Gaza. He more or less is saying the Jews, including this in Canada, collectively responsible for was has been taking place in Gaza.

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Yom Kippur was a difficult time for me and I decided to share what I experienced because it might resonate with others. This article may appear to be a stream of consciousness but it also has some purpose.

I was born on the day before Yom Kippur and, this year my birthday again aligned with the day preceding the holiday. My birth story has always made me feel uneasy but when the dates align with Yom Kippur it produces a lot of anxiety.

My parents arrived in Canada, at the end of March 1953. My mother was already expecting me when they came to Toronto. On September 20 of that year, which was also a Sunday, my mother showed up at Mount Sinai to deliver me. Because she could not speak English, the staff did not understand why she showed up. They wanted to send her home, explaining that no clinics were open on Sunday. Finally, they located a Yiddish-speaking doctor and she was taken to the Maternity Ward.

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She had not received any prenatal care and likely did not appear to be pregnant. Because they were new immigrants, and based on what I know about my parents, my mother likely wasn’t eating enough. I turned out to be underweight, likely for the same reason, and was placed in an incubator for six weeks. This and several other events created my abandonment anxiety.

Back to the present. As we took our seats at our synagogue on Sunday for Kol Nidre services at the start of Yom Kippur, for some reason I didn’t choose our usual seats. Being hypervigilant (a manifestation of my intergenerational trauma), I always sit next to the an emergency exit. This has been my habit over the past three years. Throughout the service, I kept looking at the exit and chastising myself for sitting elsewhere while my anxiety grew.

When we left the synagogue, we learnt about the Belleville synagogue shooting. I was shaken. I was so badly triggered that I couldn’t return to services the next day. Instead, I spent the day reading and trying to ground myself.

To recap, a man approached the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville, Ontario. This is a small congregations with fewer than 100 families. A police officer was stationed in front of the building as is now the case for most synagogues. He fired a shotgun at the officer who returned fire. Both were hit. The police officer Belleville Police Service Const. Jeff Smith is in serious condition. The shooter has since passed away. Kol Nidre services were just underway when the shooting began. The building was sprayed with gunfire as those inside hit the floor. No one inside was injured. This is why most synagogues have security and police officers posted outside when the synagogues are in use.

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The shooter was Sean Ward, the 29-year-old and a former Canadian Armed Forces member. Nothing more is known about his background but it’s obvious that he was a virulent antisemite.

Around the same time this attack was taking place, a separate incident in Durham Region resulted in a 19-year-old Alexander Parfitt being arrested and charged after threatening to commit a shooting at a a Durham synagogue (a region just west of Belleville). He had posted online threats to a message board. The posts detailed plans to commit a shooting at a synagogue. Again, not all Jew haters are "immigrants".

Some synagogue congregations rent larger facilities to manage the demand from people who wish to attend High Holy Day services. The Meridian Arts Centre in North Toronto was used this year for this purpose. This is who greeted people coming to services. At least they weren't armed.

Why has it gotten this bad in Canada? There is no political will to protect Jewish Canadians. In fact, many politicians seem to echo scripts provided by Hamas through intermediaries insisting that genocide is taking place in Gaza. The most shocking statement came from Avi Lewis, leader of the New Democratic Party, which leans heavily to the left. Lewis is Jewish and a limousine socialist. At the start of Yom Kippur and one hour after the Sons of Jacob synagogue shooting, he shared responsibility for genocide on Canadian Jews. Naturally, many people were outraged. This would be equivalent to blaming Canadian Muslims for 9/11.

About a day and a half later, following a storm of negative feedback, Lewis suddenly denies that he ever blamed the Jewish community for Israel’s actions. Maybe he should take down his post if he is going stick to his denial.

This tragic three-ring circus was my Yom Kippur. One triggering event after another. The world feels so much different than two days ago when I wrote my Yom Kippur message.

I have not given up on Canada but it’s not the Canada I grew up in. My parents would be in shock if they were alive. They survived European antisemitism and the Holocaust and came to Canada because it was considered a open and tolerant country. Now Canada feels less tolerant, kind, polite and inclusive.

Thank you to Const. Jeff Smith and all the other police officers who protect our community and possibly put their lives on the line. I know I speak for the entire community when I say that you are so very much appreciated.

You can read about how my parents survived in my memoir Out From the Shadows.

As Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) approaches, I have found myself thinking differently about what it means to forgive. 

Many Jews find themselves becoming retrospective. We reflect on our past actions, our relationships, things that we have said, and things we should have said. We ask for forgiveness and, in turn, and find a way to do the same for others.

But I wonder if reflection should be about the past? It seems like a redundant exercise if we do not reflect on the future.

Forgiveness doesn’t change what happened in the past. It doesn’t make hurt and pain vanish. Shouldn’t there be responsibility for improving relationships in the future instead of following the same flawed path? The future is yours to decide. You can replace anger with listening understanding. Once you forgive, many new opportunities can arise.

The Jewish community has carried so much these past few years. Many people’s response has been hate which is understandable. But hate leads to more hate. In the news today, a man in Toronto attacked another person draped in a Palestinian flag. He also directed anti-immigrant curses at this person. The police are investigating this a hate crime.

The reaction of the Jewish community is not surprising. Some people are applauding the racist and even suggesting raising money for his legal defense. For all we know this man may hate Jews as well. This is on the Erev Yom Kippur. Not exactly consistent with the theme of this Holy Day.

The willingness to believe in a different path feels especially important now. For me it means speaking up, challenging politicians, institutional leaders, and all decision-makers to do better and to make changes to make lives better for everyone. Speaking the truth. Not a version of the truth, but the actual truth. Our community is not always right. We are also flawed. We should atone and do better.

Wishing those of you who observe Yom Kippur a meaningful one, and for those fast to have an easy fast.

G’mar chatima tova.

Season 5 of Fauda is now in Netflix’s Top 10 in 63 countries and #1 in both Israel and Lebanon. As a result, the story of October 7 is reaching audiences around the world.

For those not familiar with the Netflix series, Fauda (chaos in Arabic) follows Israeli undercover agents in the conflict with the Palestinians and usually refuses the comfortable distinction between pure heroes and villains. No one stays completely clean. No one stays at a safe distance. Fauda has always been an uncomfortable series.

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The creators, Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, know the world they describe from the inside. The show draws heavily from their real-life experiences in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) elite undercover counter-terrorism unit known as the Mista'arvim. The story centers on Doron Kavillio, played by Lior Raz, a fiercely dedicated commander who repeatedly comes out of retirement to track down high-profile militants.

But season 5 is of a different order. It's a sledgehammer blow. Especially episodes 7 and 8. There, the terror of October 7, 2023, is reconstructed—and from that moment on, it's virtually impossible to watch Fauda as ordinary fiction anymore.

Season 5 is also very personal to the cast and crew. Idan Amedi, an actor from Fauda, was seriously injured while fighting in Gaza. Matan Meir, a production member, died in the war.

The photo above is Lior Weizman, he was part of the Fauda crew, working in sound.
On the morning of October 7, he went out for a bike ride near Sderot. He was shot and murdered. He was 32, a husband and a father.

Many of us have seen the real footage: the kibbutzim, the houses, the fleeing people, the abductions, and the murders. Horribly enough, much of the footage was made by the terrorists themselves. But fiction can sometimes do something that news images can't: not only make you watch, but place you right in the middle of the events. While watching season 5, you are not a bystander but right there with the horrific events around you.

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The photo above shows Yaakov Zada-Daniel, who plays Eli, as he enters a house in a kibbutz attacked by Hamas. It's breathtaking. Here, no distant historical tragedy is being re-enacted. The creators are reconstructing something that struck their own country, families, friends, and colleagues. The creators no longer need to invent the horror. They only need to reconstruct it.

Let’s go back to October 7, 2023. Israel was caught off guard and unprepared. It took the IDF three days to take control of southern Israel. By then 1200 Israelis were killed and 251 taken hostage. On October 8, the Palestinian propaganda machine was in full operation. Around the globe, pro-Palestinian rallies sprung up chanting “River to Sea” and “Free Palestine.” Before a shot was fired by the IDF, there were already accusations of genocide.

The Israeli government declared war on Hamas and began to mobilize the army reservists. Other than that, it was mostly silent, handing the narrative over to their enemies. This partly to protect the families of the victims and hostages. Within days and weeks, whatever sympathy for Israel that had existed, quickly disappeared. Nightly news reported on the war in Gaza relying on reports from Hamas who easily manipulated the media. Instead of playing for some positive media reporting, right wing Israeli politicians sounded like rabid animals. As the war progressed and expanded, Israel become more and more isolated and despised.

Then season 5 of Fauda was released. In episodes 7 and 8, it re-enacted with chilling camera work, the terror of the October 7 attack. Although there is plenty of real footage of the attack courtesy of Hamas, for the first time, many people learned about the savagery and brutality that took place that day. This was the case for viewers in the Middle East who only received filtered news reports. Just as Stephen Spielberg created worldwide awareness of the Holocaust with Schindler’s List, so have Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff with this season of Fauda.

Netflix did what the Israeli government should have taken on three years ago. Make the world understand why the war against Hamas was the right thing to do.

Need I say, Fauda is a must watch.

I have spoken and written about my personal journey on numerous occasions. As a child of Holocaust survivors, I have traits and behaviours that reflect my upbringing and my family’s trauma. I consider myself to be a “typical” descendant of survivors.

I have been in survival mode for my entire life. So, what does that look like?

I have issues with trust. I have abandonment anxiety, a complicated condition where I push people away to avoid being hurt. I have bottled up emotions for much of my life behind a wall that few can penetrate. My humour is my shield to hide my fears and pain. But the most powerful manifestation of my trauma has been my work ethics and compulsive need to keep busy. Why? Because of a fear that something bad will happen otherwise.

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That all changed in 2020. Early in the pandemic period, I developed cancerous growths on my head. Because of the lockdown, I had to wait months to have it looked at by my dermatologist. It was squamous cell carcinoma which is highly treatable but spreads rapidly if ignored. I was a classic candidate as I am bald, have fair skin, and have a weakened immune system.

I had to undergo a skin graft and radiation therapy in the height of the pandemic with no vaccine available. The healing process was long and painful. It was a scary time without cancer but with my survival instincts kicking in, I got through it.

Waiting each day at the Odette Cancer Centre for my radiation treatment gave me a lot of time to think. I went through how I got there, my life up to that point, and, most importantly, what I wanted to with my life going forward. I know understand that I was contemplating my own legacy.

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The first thing that I did after completing treatment was to work on my family’s Holocaust story. That was a daunting task because my parents had told me very little. They were no longer around so I was on my own. My Dad he mentioned certain things but was generally extremely uncomfortable talking about his past. My Mom did say more but her stories were often just a jumble of memories. So, I started searching to see what information I could find to fill in the huge gaps. That search quickly became an obsession.

When I sat down to write the memoir, I approached it like every other book I had written. But it didn’t work out that way. It took me on a journey that I’m still on. I never expected it to be transformational. It forced me to re-examine how I felt about my parents, my relationships, my priorities in life, and how I would use my remaining time. It was not an easy journey, but I had a lot of help along the way. The book was not just about my family’s story but, more importantly, my own.

I searched everywhere for information – in archives, databases, books, essays, and oral testimony from survivors. Mary Anne and I travelled to Poland in 2022 to see where my father came from. Places he never told me about. This is why I sometimes refer to the book as an investigative memoir. Some of what I learned was truly shocking.

As I’ve already mentioned, I learned to bury the negative memories and my own trauma. I built a wall around myself and kept people from getting too close. It worked for me until I wrote the memoir. Then all those things I had buried came flooding back, sending me to seek therapy.

As the healing progressed, another book began to take form in my mind. Just as my memoir Out From the Shadows put a spotlight on the legacy of the Holocaust, I decided that the next book would speak to the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. How many were like me? Did they also fail to recognize that they were struggling alone and that their experience was shared by their cohort?

I decided to interview several dozen 2G and 3G descendants in different situations, upbringing, and socioeconomic status, to determine whether there are a common thread in the survivor community. When I was done my research, I had interviewed over 100 people. I am currently working with my agent to find a publisher for this book.

I was driven to two directions. The first was to get involved in Holocaust awareness and education. The other was to find ways to connect and support other descendants. This had become my legacy. But as I’m always in survival mode, I was buried myself in both activities.

On the first track, I became a volunteer at the Toronto Holocaust Museum, spoke online and in person about family’s story, the Holocaust, antisemitism, and intergenerational trauma. It involved stepping into the spotlight which was something I had avoided by entire life.

The second part involved my work to support other descendants. Since October 7, many descendants have found themselves feeling more triggered, more unsettled, and less able to make sense of what they are feeling – and why. What I soon discovered is that there is little being done in the Toronto community to support this cohort. So, this year I decided to do something about it.

With the help of Karen Lasky, another second generation descendant and Aliza Neger, a third generation descendant social worker, we created Generations Forward. Generations Forward is a safe place to connect and share. Sessions are free and typically held monthly at the Bernard Betel Centre in North Toronto. We made it open to all descendants - children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of survivors.

Am I pleased with myself? Not really. I’m still in survival mode and feel the need to do more. I can’t slow down. Just the other day I had a lengthy discussion to my therapist about this issue. We have yet to find a way out for me.

With the Rosh Hashanah approaching, the festive dinner table will more than likely include a challah or two. Second to the bagel, challah is perhaps the best-known and most-enjoyed North American Jewish food among non-Jews.

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Challah has a long history and has evolved over time. The first appearance of the word “challah” appears in the Bible (Numbers 15:18-21) as follows:

...When you enter the land where I bring you, it shall be that when you eat of the bread of the land, you shall set aside a portion for God. Of the first of your dough you shall set aside a loaf as an offering; as the offering of the threshing-floor, so you shall set it aside. From the first of your dough you shall give to God an offering throughout your generations.

The name “challah” was given applied to the bread in South Germany in the Middle Ages when it was adopted by Jews for Shabbat and holidays. It was first mentioned in the 15th century. The term was coined in Austria. Before, the bread was called “berches,” a name still used by Jews in some places today.

The braided challah is the Jewish Sabbath and holiday bread. It is surrounded by folklore and tradition and loaded with symbolism. On festive occasions a blessing is said over two loaves, symbolizing the two portions of the manna that was distributed on Fridays to the children of Israel during their Exodus from Egypt.

The breads are covered on the table by a decorative challah cover or a white napkin, which represents the dew that collected on the manna in the morning. Poppy and sesame seeds sprinkled on the bread also symbolize the manna that fell from heaven.

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Challah is made in various sizes and shapes, all of which have a meaning. Braided ones, which may have three, four, or six strands, are the most common, and because they look like arms intertwined, symbolize love. Three braids symbolize truth, peace, and justice. Twelve humps from two small or one large braided bread recall the miracle of the 12 loaves for the 12 tribes of Israel. Round loaves (called Crown Challahs), where there is no beginning and no end, are baked for Rosh Hashanah to symbolize continuity. Ladder and hand shapes are served at the meal before the fast of Yom Kippur, the ladder signifying that we should ascend to great heights, the hand that we may be inscribed for a good year. Sweet challahs with honey or raisins are baked during the festive season to bring joy and happiness.

There are a couple key characteristics that distinguish challah from other enriched breads, beyond the different shapes.

Unlike other enriched breads, a truly kosher challah is made without dairy or meat derivatives, relying on vegetable oils for fat and a number of eggs—which are considered pareve, or neither dairy nor meat, in the kosher laws known as kashrut. This means challah can be served alongside a dairy brunch or a roast-brisket dinner with equal flexibility.

What makes a challah a challah in the first place? Despite challah’s ubiquity in North American Jewish baking, its recipes, it turns out, are far from uniform, with the most ingredient variation appearing around enrichment options and quantities:

Fat: usually some form of oil, but vegetable shortening as did margarine are used.

Number of eggs: Recipes start with as few as one whole egg plus one yolk all the way up to four whole eggs (or more).

Water challah: omits the eggs, making it suitable for those on a vegan diet.

And should you have challah left over from a Sabbath of holiday meal, it makes for a rich French toast.

I was named after my maternal grandfather Wolf Zlozcower. We share the same Hebrew name (זְאֵב) and Yiddish name Velvel (װעלװעל). He died in typical tragic circumstances during the Holocaust on September 6, 1941.

My mother’s family lived in Comanesti, a tiny village in Romania about 20 kilometers from Suceava. Everyone in the village called my grandfather by his Yiddish name Velvel. My grandfather operated a brandy distillery. The business mostly catered to the small Jewish community in Comanesti and the surrounding villages. The cherry brandy called vishnik was sold in barrels along with homemade wine. He did quite well, and the family lived comfortably until the 1930s when the Great Depression and rising antisemitism significantly impacted his business.

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My grandfather and the rest of the family were observant Orthodox Jews, although not Hassidic. I was surprised to learn that her small village of Comanesti with about 20 Jewish families had two synagogues. One was used by the Hassidic Jews, while the non-Hassidic Jews prayed at the Alte Shul [Old Synagogue], which was across the street from my mother’s house. The shul [synagogue] was managed by my grandfather who served as its shamas [the person responsible for its day-to-day functioning].

One Friday evening in 1938, my mother heard voices outside their home. It was late in the evening, and she was the only person awake in the household. Flames appeared at the window and when she looked out she saw gentile villagers setting fire to their house. She leaped to her feet, shouting everyone awake, and they fled the house. The arsonists wouldn’t allow them to extinguish the flames, but my grandfather got hold of the local priest with whom he had a good relationship. The priest convinced the villagers to put out the fire. There was only minimal damage to the exterior of the house, but the incident traumatized the family.

Just two years later on Friday evening August 2, 1940 as the Sabbath was beginning, a pogroms took place in Comanesti. Romanian soldiers and civilians destroyed all Jewish homes and attacked its residents. Fortunately, my mother and her family fled from their home and managed to hide in a nearby field. The home and all their possessions were destroyed.

The Jews in the villages were now homeless. They were ordered to move to Suceava where Jewish citizens were expected to house them. In Suceava, life became difficult. As was the case in other Nazi-occupied communities, there was a 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew for Jews and a requirement that they wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing.

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In early 1941, the Romanian authorities initiated a policy of taking Jewish hostages. My mother avoided getting arrested, but her brother and sister were incarcerated. The practice of incarcerating Jews was employed to extract exorbitant ransom payments from the Jewish community. My grandfather attempted to get his children released. The family was most concerned about Uncle David who had several health conditions. Eventually David was released but the police beat my grandfather, and in September 6,1941, he died at the age of 78 from his injuries.

He was given a proper burial in Suceava’s Jewish cemetery, and his gravestone still exists. This is why his date of death is known. He is the only family member who had an actual grave during the Holocaust.

More about my family can be found in my memoir Out From the Shadows.

A letter written by the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL) is urging Trump to establish an expedited method of entry into the U.S. for Jewish Canadians “who are experiencing persecution or who credibly fear for their safety because they are Jewish.”

It points to “an alarming climate of harassment, intimidation, vandalism, threats, and violence” that Jewish Canadian families have faced since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, adding that “advocates working directly with these families report that more than 2,000 Jewish Canadians have expressed interest in relocating because of growing concerns for their safety.”

This is really more about President Trump trolling Prime Minister Carney as part of the “Trade War“. It’s more about embarrassing Canada than concern for antisemitism in Canada.

I can see some people leaving for economic reasons but stating antisemitism is what pushed them over the edge. There have always been Canadians who choose to move to the US for lower taxes and greater opportunities. Some have been Jewish. I’m sure the numbers have grown in the past year.

Tulsa Tomorrow has been offering relocation grants and other support for Canadian Jews that which to move to Oklahoma. They have had about 800 families contact them for information.

But there is plenty of antisemitism in the US. It’s on college campuses and in the Democratic Socialists of America. Jewish American is not immune to attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools. Sureyou can settle in a red state but what happens if Zohran Mamdani or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets into the White House? Anything is possible.

I’ve given this a lot of thought.

When I was interviewing descendants of Holocaust survivors for a future book, I would ask if the participants had experienced any antisemitism growing up. I expected people to rant about vile racist acts. But that’s not what happened. Most people told me that they had not experienced any antisemitism. This included Jews who lived in communities that were largely not Jewish.

Post war survivors quickly assimilated into life in Canada and the United States free from the hate that had spread across Europe. They enjoyed freedom, acceptance, and prosperity without losing their ethnic identity – something that was difficult to achieve in Europe. Jews are disproportionally represented in business, academia, and politics.

It has been referred to as the Golden Age for Jews in North America. While antisemitism existed, it rarely came to the surface. So, it should come as no surprise that those I interviewed stated that they were never exposed to antisemitism. That all changed after October 7. The next day there was an explosion of hate towards Jews that has not subsided. We are now in what I refer to as a Post-Holocaust Era where empathy for Holocaust survivors and descendants has disappeared. We are now seeing traumatic invalidation where traumatic pain experienced by Jews since October 7 has been dismissed or minimized. The October 7 attack traumatized many in the Jewish community, but the silence, blaming, ignoring, and denial has further traumatized the community. Trauma invalidation has been defined as extreme or repetitive invalidation of individuals’ significant private experience, characteristics identify an important aspect of themselves, or reactions to themselves or to the world.

Invalidation includes behaviors including emotional neglect (your suffering doesn’t matter), criticism (Jews are baby killers), unequal treatment (the need for security for synagogues and Jewish schools), excluding (Zionist not welcome), blaming (being held responsible for actions of Israeli Government), and controlling (you should hide your Jewish identity). Traumatic invalidation has a negative impact on emotions, relationships, and self-esteem. I’ve spoken to many community members who have lost friends and clients, employment opportunities, and marginalization. Ongoing traumatic invalidation can lead to PTSD.

Many descendants (and others in the Jewish community) have commented that they were surprised by the silence and indifference they received from people they thought were allies. They have been called Zionists which quickly became a negative stereotype. Also, Diaspora Jews are being victimized for the actions of the Israeli government or for just complaining about antisemitism. It has been most noticeable on university campuses where Jewish students have been isolated, felt abandoned, and even been subject to verbal and physical attacks.

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What we are experiencing is not new. We have suffered centuries of persecution, violence and annihilation.

We left when we were forced to leave. Only then did we need to look for a place to live.

We have always managed to exist in an environment of hate because it has always been the status quo except brief periods of time. There have been countless numbers of pogroms and massacres directed at Jewish communities. Our genetic makeup has created a built-in response to these threats and a sense of familiarity. Here are just a few events in our history:

• The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096, were a series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of French and German Christians of the People’s Crusade in the year.

• In the Second Crusade (1147), Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds’ Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by expulsions. All English Jews were banished in 1290. 100,000 Jews were expelled from France in 1396. In 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland.

• As the Black Death epidemics devastated Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half of the population, Jews were taken as scapegoats. Rumors spread that they caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by violence in the Black Death persecutions.

• The Almohads wreaked enormous destruction on both the Jewish and Christian populations in Spain and North Africa. This devastation, massacre, captivity, and forced conversion was described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham ibn Daud and the poet Abraham ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim “inquisitors” took children from their families and placed them in the care of Muslim educators.

• The Kishinev pogrom or Kishinev massacre was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Kishinev, then part of the Russian Empire, on April 19–21, 1903.During the pogrom, which began on Easter Day, between 40 and 49 Jews were killed, 92 were gravely injured, over 500 were slightly injured, and 1,500 homes were damaged.

• The Hebron massacre was the killing of 67 Jews on August 24, 1929, in Hebron, Mandatory Palestine. The event also left scores seriously wounded or maimed. Jewish homes were pillaged, and synagogues were ransacked. The massacre was perpetrated by Arabs incited to violence by rumors that Jews were planning to seize control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

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Who doesn’t want to live in the U.S. South where the weather is better and the taxes are lower, that’s great. If you a strong Zionist and want to make aliyah, it’s always a good time. But it makes no sense to keep looking for another place and have to rely on government and neighbours who will not necessarily have your back next year or after. We should stay and live as open and proud Jews.

Our ancestors didn’t flee when things got tough. They dug in. They leaned on each other. They continued to strength the community by building shuls, schools and Jewish institutions. They only left when thrown out.

Toronto has a large vibrant Jewish community. More Jews than lived in Berlin, Vilna, Paris, Vilna, and Budapest prior to the Holocaust. There 120 synagogues, over 30 Jewish day schools, 12 Jewish cemeteries, and 3 Jew community centres in the Greater Toronto area. We hold annual Jewish film, music, and book festivals.

It’s taken over 150 years to build this. It makes no sense to abandon this because some racists decide to shoot at a few synagogues. I’m staying right here and standing my ground and demand accountability.

As summer comes to a close, I bid goodbye to the many of air quality alerts and heat advisories. The hottest day of the summer was July 14 when it reached 36.2C (97.2F) and in the mid 40s on the humidex. But that was nothing compared to the air quality reading two days later. Because of forest fires in Northern Ontario, we had the worst [cough] air quality [cough] on the planet.

I avoided the extreme weather but parking myself at my desk to update my book proposal and manuscript for The Hidden Victims. The first significant work on books since February. With travel, moving, and illnesses, I couldn’t even keep up with my Newsletter for the first half of the year.

I am pleased to announce that at the annual World Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants conference, I will be part of a panel discussing Transmission of Intergenerational Legacy. The other panel members will be Dorit Eckstein from Toronto and Bernie Fuhrspan from New York. For those subscribers who plan to attend, it will be an opportunity to meet. A link to the conference site is below.

WFJHSD Link

Last year, my colleague Liz Moore did a virtual townhall on the topic of Holocaust Denial in the Digital Age. The recording of that program is available online. If your organization (you don’t need to be Jewish) is interested in something similar, we would love to part of it. This is an thoughtful program on stopping online hate.

A reminder that I am also an author fiction novels. Other ways to support my writing career is to consider becoming a paid subscriber to my Substack articles.

Looking forward to the fall colours and moderate temperatures.

Take care

Willie

One of the things I wanted to explore while working on my book on intergenerational trauma was the differences between second generations (2G) and third generation (3G) descendants of Holocaust survivors. I had been under the impression that intergenerational trauma diminishes with each generation. I began by reviewing the literature on 3Gs, a group that became the focus of clinicians for the past 15 to 20 years ago.

An article in The Guardian included an interview with a 3G researcher who found that other grandchildren of survivors experienced clinical depression, anxiety, addiction, and eating disorders, which they blame on the impact of their families constantly retelling stories of the horrific events their relatives endured.^[1]

Dr. Eva Fogelman found that compared to the 2Gs, the 3Gs have a more balanced view. They did not grow up with the belief that “Jews went like sheep to the slaughter.” This was a narrative that 2Gs heard many times from the non-survivors around them. Many had parents who were ostracized and shunned early on from the larger Jewish community. The 3Gs also lack deep-seated fears of antisemitism, fears that are generally more pervasive in the lives of Holocaust survivors and 2Gs.^[2]

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One of the fuzzier parts of my father’s past was his first family. He told us that the Nazis killed his first wife, Estera, and four-year-old daughter, Laja. Just mentioning their names brought him to tears.

I didn’t know when he married or when Laja was born, but I assumed both took place before start of the war. I never asked because it was obviously too painful to talk about. I also never asked about the circumstance in which they died.

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When I received a package of scanned documents from the Arolsen Archives (the most comprehensive repository on victims and survivors of Nazi persecution) in late 2021, they included my dad’s Buchenwald prisoner registration form dated February 10, 1945. The form indicated that he had two children (ages two and four years old) but provided no names.

It was my understanding that my father had just one daughter. While the handwritten card caught my attention, I assumed it was an error and didn’t give it any further thought. From the registration card, I learned that his wife’s maiden name was Sledzik, which allowed me to search for information using her family name.

A few months later I received information that had me shaking. I had already received birth, death, and marriage records from Jewish Records Indexing (JRI) Poland for the Oksenhendler family in Wislica. That information helped me assemble a family tree. I decided to also request any family records that were archived in Bedzin. I didn’t expect much information because the family had only lived in Bedzin for about a dozen years. JRI Poland sent me several spreadsheets extracted from records with the surname Oksenhendler. One spreadsheet indicated my father and Estera were married in 1940. Another spreadsheet indicated they had registered the birth of two children: Laja, born in 1940, and Jenta, born in 1941.

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It turned out that the Buchenwald record was correct. I was stunned to learn that my dad had a second daughter. I couldn’t understand why he had never mentioned her.

My first thought was that he wasn’t aware that he had a second daughter. I reasoned that maybe she was born after he was deported from Bedzin. But slowly I uncovered information suggesting that he did know.

Some time later, I retrieved a box of old family photos from my sister that she had been holding onto after my parents passed away. It took me considerable time to identify several people in the photos. There was one photo that caught me by surprise. It included my grandmother and two of her daughters (Jentla and Mariem), as well as my father’s first wife (Estera), and their two daughters (Jenta and Laja). The younger one, Jenta, looked so much like her mother. The girls appeared to be about one and two years old in the photo.

Now I had faces to match the names. I don’t know how the photo survived the Holocaust or how my father got hold of it. I am sure the photo was taken in the summer of 1942 after my father was deported from the Bedzin Ghetto, based on the ages of the girls and the weather.

My father had never mentioned Jenta to us. He had this photo but had not shared it. It had just collected dust in a shoebox. I’m quite positive that not even my mother knew. There were sleepless nights as I tried to make sense of this information. No one just forgets that they had a second child. The Buchenwald record was dated February 10, 1945. It listed the girls’ ages, but they couldn’t have still been alive in 1945. Dad had no idea what their fate had been.

What I determined was that my father married Estera Sledzik, the sister-in-law of his older sister, Jentla. Estera’s family was from Pinczow and had moved to Bedzin several years before the start of the war. They met before the war and were married before a rabbi in 1940, the same year that Laja was born. Jenta was born a year later.

In 2022, I visited Bedzin and obtained copies of the girls’ birth registration from the city’s archives. It revealed that my father and signed both documents which confirmed that he always known about poor Jenta.

I was also able to determine that during the selection and mass deportation that took place in Bedzin Ghetto on August 12, 1942, my grandparents, Estera, Laja, and Jenta were shipped by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. I was able to confirm the timing with my cousin Jadzia who witnessed and survived that selection.

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My poor family was unloaded on a newly built platform between Auschwitz I (the Main Camp) and Auschwitz II (the Birkenau killing center) for a selection. They were most probably led to a provisional gas chamber in a former farmhouse. At the time, the SS camp administration was still in the process of building integrated gas chambers and crematoria. As a result, the bodies of the victims were dumped into a pit.

The only time my half-sisters left the ghetto was to travel in a cattle car to Birkenau. The girls never got to experience things like eating an ice cream cone, going to the movies, or falling in love. Their last experience was hearing the screams of the victims in the gas chamber. It was not unusual for children to be crushed by panicking adults trying to avoid the gas. It breaks my heart every time I think about it.

These images continue to haunt me. They also inspired me to support others like me and to stand up to hate.

To find out more, read my family’s history check out my memoir Out From the Shadows.

This past weekend I spent at Camp Northland in Haliburton, Ontario. They have an alumni weekend each August except for those pandemic years. I try to make it as often as I can. I usually go up with my childhood friend Ted who I met as a 10-year-old in Section 2 at Camp Northland in 1964. We both continued to come to up each summer as campers, staff and head staff. Until we had to get real jobs.

I brought with my two grandsons for the second year. Both were campers in this past summer. For Jordan it was his fourth summer at the camp. They spent the past weekend on the water. I mostly spent the day reading.

It was the first summer that I didn’t go canoeing because my joint issues have become a barrier for many types of physical activity. I even had difficulty climbing the steps to the cabin we were staying in. Still, I will continue to come up each summer. Walk around the beautiful landscape owned by the camp. Eat the dreadful camp food. Sleep in rustic cabins on thin foam mattresses.

Stopping for ice cream at Kawartha Dairy in Minden. attle what is left of a summer crop of mosquitos.

Sit around a campfire exchanges stories and while those with guitars play songs from the past - Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Neil Young, etc. Tradition has it that we burn a NBB (Northland-B’nai Brith) made out of wood on the last night of camp. It is always a moving experience. We are clearly reliving our past for 48 hours.

The camp has quickly become my grandsons’ happy place. Just as it is for me. They talk about it year round, People can tell they will be lifers.

So, why does the camp still tug at me?

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My brother Irv and I were sent to Camp Northland-B’nai Brith in 1963 when Irv was old enough to attend. The camp is located on Moose Lake near Haliburton, Ontario, about a three-hour drive from Toronto. I was excited and anxious upon leaving the city for the first time without parents. The camp rented school buses to take us to camp, which left early in the morning from the Bloor Jewish Community Centre. As we got closer to the camp, the landscape changed from farmland to rolling hills. Parts of the highway had been blasted through rock formations of the Canadian Shield, and sections of the road had massive cliff walls on either side. The full school buses that took us to the camp sometimes had difficulty climbing the larger hills. You could hear buses groan and the gears grind getting to the top of some of those hills. During the last hour, I found myself getting queasy. I wasn’t alone. Other kids tried hard not to vomit, but that wasn’t always possible. Our luggage was picked up a day or two earlier in trucks and was waiting for us at camp, all of it sorted in the main field. It was still chaotic sorting through all the duffel bags.

The camp has a long history in the Jewish community. A Jewish summer camp was first established in 1909 by several of Toronto’s Jewish philanthropies, but Camp Northland didn’t move to the existing Moose Lake site until 1944. The Jewish Camp Council owns 750 acres of property around Moose Lake, where Camp Northland is located. Much of the lake is camp property, and there are only about 100 cottages on the far end of the lake, so it is quiet, with few motorboats.

When I first attended as a camper, it was bursting at the seams because of the baby boom. There were four boys’ units and four girls’ units. They squeezed up to 15 campers and three staff in a cabin that had poor ventilation and no electricity.

Back then there were three periods, each consisting of 20 days. The third period was the least desirable, because the weather wasn’t nearly as nice in late August. The evenings and mornings were often chilly, and the lake temperature would begin to fall. Most campers chose either first or second periods. Some stayed for both. My parents couldn’t afford to pay the full fees and applied for subsidies. They paid a total of $125 for the two of us. The subsidy was provided because my parents were Holocaust survivors. The catch was that we had to attend the third period. Few of my friends came for a third period, so I didn’t know many campers. Still, I loved the experience – being outdoors, having cookouts, hiking, taking canoe trips, playing sports. I wasn’t a good swimmer, and you needed to pass a swim test to go water skiing. I didn’t pass the swim test until several years in, but I loved sports and the all-day programs, such as the color wars when the entire camp was divided into four groups. For an entire day, you competed in events and accumulated points for your team.

At the end of the period, we were once again loaded onto the school buses and returned to the city, where we were dropped off at the Bloor Jewish Community Centre. The buses would pull up behind the building and we were led to the auditorium and onto the stage where parents were waiting in the audience. It was a bizarre setup and rather disorienting.

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Most of all, I enjoyed being out of the house and away from the parents, along with the tension, guilt, and boredom. It felt so liberating. Camp counselors were all about having fun, while my parents were focused on work and money. There was nothing fun about my parents. We never traveled or went on vacations, so going to camp was our equivalent to being on vacation. I returned each summer for three weeks while the rest of the summer was spent working in the family business. These were among my best memories as a child.

When I reached my early teens I stopped going to camp as a camper to earn money. For a couple of years, I landed a job at the Canadian National Exhibition (also called The Ex or CNE), an annual fair with amusement rides, a midway, exhibits, concerts, and the always popular Food Building. Someone I knew got me a job at the Shopsy’s booth, which was operated by Shopsy’s Delicatessen, the most popular deli in Toronto at the time.

When Camp Northland expanded to a third location in 1971, the camp still needed staff just weeks before the start of the season. I can’t remember who it was, but someone had suggested I would be interested in working as a counselor. I received a call from the camp office just days before the campers were to arrive, offering me a position. I was paid $150, which was less than what I could earn in the city, but I didn’t care. I jumped at the offer and quickly packed my things. The next day I was picked up by the camp driver.

I spent the next six summers at camp, first as a counselor and later as a unit head. Being on staff was an extension of a favorite childhood experience – only better. Although the money was horrible, it got me out of the city. Since we never took any vacations, this became my annual holiday. I made a lot of friends at camp that have continued for decades.

As a counselor I would spend the day with the campers, taking them from one activity to another. Evening time was when the staff would unwind. Evenings were for socializing, which might include sitting around a campfire, playing music, or “illegal” activities such drinking, drugs, or taking a boat out onto the lake. There were always members of staff awake and hanging out well past midnight, despite the early wakeup times. In late summer, when there was sunspot activity, I would just sit by the lake at night to watch the Northern Lights. The waves of dancing lights across the night sky were spectacular.

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In 1974 when I was promoted to unit head camp life got even better. Although there were new responsibilities, I no longer stayed in a cabin with campers, but instead in head staff cabins that had electricity and bathrooms. Electricity meant a coffee maker, heaters for the cold nights, fans for the hot days, and stereos.

I felt a strong connection to camp people because many were children of Holocaust survivors. As was the case in the city, it’s not something that was ever discussed. It was just the sense of belonging that existed.

When I heard about the alumni weekend, I decided to sign up with Ted. We stayed together in a cabin, reliving a world that no longer exists. Now, I bring up Jordan and Zachary to our happy place. To share this with the boys is indescribable.

Jews were persecuted long before the Holocaust. Oppressed since ancient times for their religious beliefs, antisemitic theories developed in the late 19th century that targeted them as a race. Including blood libel that has evolved and persisted for centuries.

For the longest time, Christians accused Jews of crucifying and rejecting Jesus. Violent Crusades, blood libels, forced conversions and expulsions marked the medieval era and beyond. Jews were barred from numerous professions, forced to wear special badges, often yellow, or required to live in ghettos. Anti-Judaism continued into the modern era, when antisemitism, including North America, added a racial dimension to Jew-hatred.

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The Catholic Church officially rejected the position that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus. In 1965, the Vatican released a document stating that there was no basis for collective Jewish responsibility for the crucifixion. Yet, many Christians cling to the belief.

The First Crusade

Medieval popes sanctioned Crusades, holy wars, against “enemies of Christendom.”

The first Crusade set out to liberate the Byzantine Empire from “infidels” - Muslims in Anatolia (today Turkey) and the Holy Land (today Israel). These military expeditions captured Jerusalem in 1099 and divided the Holy Land into the Kingdom of Jerusalem and other Crusader states.

Before even leaving Europe, forces from the First Crusade perpetrated the Rhineland massacres. They targeted prosperous Jewish communities along the Rhine River, viewing them as "infidels" closer to home. An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 Jews were slaughtered or driven to mass suicide to avoid forced baptism. Jewish liturgy refers to this as Gzerot Tatnu. It marks the beginning of theological anti-Semitism and the rise of blood libel myths in Europe.

In 1099, Jerusalem fell to the Crusaders. They trapped Jewish residents inside their main synagogues, piled wood around the structures, and burned them alive. Those that survived the massacre were either sold into slavery or completely expelled .

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We missed the mark when it comes to Holocaust education.

As it turns out it was always wrong.

It was built on a premise, that if humanity would remember what happened, if they viewed enough evidence and first-hand testimony, people would learn that hate can be lead to social catastrophe and this would never happen again.

But history teaches the exact opposite.

The Holocaust was not the first time Jews were persecuted, expelled, massacred, or abandoned by the society. There were the Crusaders, The Black Death persecutions, and the Spanish Inquisition.

And it was never going to be the last. October 7 laid this fallacy to rest once and for all.

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Jews are now being accused of persecution, expulsion, and genocide. Young people are not learning about the lessons from the Holocaust but instead are being indoctrinated with blood libels, Holocaust denial, and antisemitism. People are being led to believe that the Jews are the Nazis and have been committing genocide. Anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism. Whether you live in Israel or the Diaspora, we are colonizers, baby-killers, and practice apartheid.

What went wrong?

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Teaching the Holocaust as a lesson in history means it is taught alongside lessons about Alexander the Great’s empire, the Roman Empire, the Mongol’s invasion of Asia and Europe, and Napoleon’s conquest of Europe. But Germany’s racial policies and the Holocaust are not merely history lessons but speak to the impact of the destruction of social order and morality. History memory fades but moral issues are always relevant. We have been lost in a flawed narrative.

And the message should not have been: Never Again!

Two thousand years of persecution, expulsion, and murder is a strong indicator that it will happen again. That is why I’ve always said, Never Forget.

So, here we are. Jews again face hatred. They are being singled out again. Jews believed that their government would protect them are discovering that it’s not happening in earnest.

We should have been known that our acceptance in our adopted country could be temporary, our allies may be unreliable, and public opinion can change with shocking speed.

We should have been taught how to prepare ourselves.

Because a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.

And history has shown, time and again, that those who hate Jews rarely care what kind of Jew you are.

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What can we do to protect ourselves?

1. How about pushing the government to enforce the hate crime laws that already exist?

2. How about mandatory education for police on antisemitism and the Holocaust? In the US, there are Holocaust centres that have been designated to provide police personnel with mandatory education.

3. How about treating violent attacks against Jewish institutions as domestic terrorism and national security threats? Until someone fired shots at the US consulate in Toronto on March 10, 2026, no one cared that much about synagogues being targeted.

4. How about a Royal Commission on the root cases of antisemitism including antizionism? This would be a much better than the weak advisory body that has been proposed.

5. How about withholding public funds to universities and schools that do not protect Jewish students from discrimination, harassment, and other forms of hate?

6. How about reviewing our immigration policies to ensure we are not importing hate from other parts of the world?

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I only recently realized that I haven’t written a newsletter since May. These past three month have been a blur. We sold our house in May. We purged and moved in June. Then we spent July unpacking. We are finally settled in.

I loved this place because I finally got a corner office. It has a view of the southeast from way up here in Richmond Hill. But it was also distressing to look out two weeks ago when the smoke from fires in northwest Ontario came rolling in.

I decided I wasn’t ready to give up grilling. We can book one of four BBQs on the 8th floor Terrace or find an alternative. That is not a little electric grill you are looking at below. It’s really a planter for the balcony.

In May, I reported that I launched Generations Forward, a support group for descendants of Holocaust survivors. Last week, I posted an update. I am pleased to report that the next session is a few days away and the number of registrations has continued to grow. I’m very excited about where this might lead to.

Now that I’m settled, I’m returning to writing. I’m doing a read through of my manuscript The Hidden Victims before strategizing with my agent this fall. This month I also plan to begin work on a new novel. I’ve promised many readers that I would do a sequel to Love Mars Hated the Food. I promise it will be as absurd and satirical as the first book. More about the plot in a future newsletter.

August is going to be a fun month. The boys finish camp and I plan various activities for them including a weekend at Camp Northland for alumni and families.

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On August 23, I’ll be a book vendor at a summer Shuk (an open-air market in the Middle East) at the Prosserman JCC.

If you are looking for a light and fun summer read, please take a look at some of my fiction novels. Other ways to support my writing career is to consider becoming a paid subscriber to my Substack articles.

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

This past winter it began to gnaw away it me how descendants of Hoocaust survivors are virtually unacknowledged by the Jewish community. Virtually no programs or support for this large segment of Toronto’s Jewish enclave.

It reminded me when my parents came to Toronto and were largely avoided by the established Jews. So, Holocaust survivors who came here created their own synagogues, social groups and charities. Now, their children although assimilated into Canadian society, are also not supported. From discussions and interviews with descendants I knew there was a need.

I remembered the line by the character Ray Kinsella in the Field of Dreams, “if you build it, he will come”.

So, I decided to do something about it.

I began chatting with my friend Karen Lasky who volunteers with me at the Toronto Holocaust Museum about starting a support group for descendants. She was ready to help. She referred to herself a nuch schlepper (someone who tags along). Those early discussions were the genesis of Generations Forward.

My first need was to find an organization who would be willing to host the group on a monthly basis at no cost. I had no funding and it was important to make this a free service. That essentially eliminated synagogues because into today’s climate, synagogues now have high security costs. Any event at a synagogue essentially requites paying for security. I needed a venue that would not have to incur additional security costs.

I reached out to a number of organizations including the Bernard Betel Centre where I received an immediate positive response. Sharon Chodirker, who is responsible for Intergenerational programs, was onboard and would also help with promotions. At this point, I knew that this was going to happen.

From my past experiences, I knew better than to facilitate these group meetings on my own. I needed to find a clinician with the skills to manage this type of group. I posted a notice on a Facebook group about the proposed group and the need for a professional to assist to facilitate. An angel responded by the name of Aliza Neger. Aliza is a 3G (third generation descendant) of a survivor and social worker who is passionate about intergenerational trauma. I now had a team to deliver the program.

We sat down to hammer out a description of the program and ground rules for participants. It was important that the program be accessible to those who wanted to attend. We also wanted it to be clear that this was not group therapy but only a safe forum for people to express their experiences, fears, and anything else that was on their mind.

Our first session was in May and over 25 people attended. We had no idea what to expect. Neither did the participants. We spoke to the group trying to explain the rationale behind this initiative. I’m not sure we did a great job. Some people spoke up about things on their mind. It was all over the place. A portion of the room just listened which is normal from my experience. Four people walked out at one point. At the end of the evening we thanked people and asked for their feedback. I also requested written by email and six people responded.

The team gathered to review what people had to say. It was important that we incorporate the vision of the participants with ours. We made a number of changes. One of the more significant changes was to include a brief presentation on a topic related to trauma for people to reflect on. Aliza quickly produced a list of possible topics and we included them in our promotions.

The next session had a similar turnout although about half the participants were new. I viewed this as a positive sign. Some people gave this a second try while our outreach was finding new participants. The revised format and seating arrangements were an improvement. The feedback we received was more encouraging.

The next session is set for two weeks from now and the registration has grown substantially, again with returnees and new people. In addition, we are attracting a mix of 2Gs, 3Gs and a few 4Gs. The program will evolve as we learn and listen to the participants. Funding is an issue and identifying sponsors will become a priority.

If you are a descendant of Holocaust survivors in the Toronto and feel you might benefit from participate, feel free to register with the link below. The sessions take place the first Wednesday of the month at 7 pm. They will always be free.

Register for August 5

If you know someone who might also be interested, please share this article with them.

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What I’ve learned so far from this experience is that if you build it he (or she) will come.