By Chance Alone (19 page)

O
n board the
Samaria
, I was housed, along with the other displaced persons, in the hold of the ship. We slept in hammocks that hung from the ceiling, while the paying passengers above us stayed in cabins to which we never had access. We could observe the outside world through the portholes of the liner, and I recall seeing the White Cliffs of Dover as we left the English Channel and sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean. The weather was windy and the waves tossed the ship from side to side. Many people were seasick as the weather got worse, and the foul stench soon became unbearable. The crew was not able to keep up with sanitation issues, and the passengers in the hold became unruly and delirious, shouting that they wanted to get off the ship. Many had to be forcibly restrained. I began to feel nauseated, but a sailor advised me to keep eating because seasickness was worse on an empty stomach. I took his advice and went to the mess hall to eat. There were very few of us at the table.

The storm lasted for approximately eight days and then finally subsided. Afterward, we were stuck in a thick fog, and the ship's horn blared frequently to warn other vessels of our presence. Without radar, the ship had to coast along at a very slow speed to avoid collisions. Eventually, it came to a complete halt and I could see through the portholes that we were in the estuary of what I later learned was the St. Lawrence River. I could see the church spires and the citadel of Quebec City. A boat approached and a pilot came on board to bring the
Samaria
into dock. I had arrived in Canada at last.

The paying passengers were the first to disembark the ship, and then it was our turn. All the displaced persons were escorted to a terminal, and I was handed a tag with the name “Toronto” and told to wear it around my neck. There were many large signs with the names of different Canadian cities, and our destinations were determined by the organization that had sponsored our visas. Our UNRA papers were stamped with a landing certificate—it was October
25
,
1949
. At another table in the terminal, I received a wrapped sandwich and a cup of coffee, and I set off with this in hand to board the train to Toronto, which was ready and waiting. I was hungry and ate the sandwich immediately, not realizing how long the journey would take. The ride lasted overnight and into the next afternoon, with the train stopping at every station along the way. I had no money to purchase food from the porter and I was hungry all the way.

As I rode in the train, I wondered what lay ahead for me in Canada. I knew it would be up to me to put together a life in this country, a sobering thought that made me quite anxious. As the train continued through the night, I saw lights from dwellings and I imagined people living safe and comfortably inside. This
was my dream: to live in a secure environment with a future that was up to me. From the Jack London books I had read as a child, I imagined Canada as a vast land with open skies, a relatively small population, and indigenous people in traditional dress. I wanted to live in the midst of nature, not in a huge American city like New York.

My immigration identification card, which I received when I became a landed immigrant, October 25, 1949.

When I arrived at Union Station in Toronto, I was met by a friend, Alex Weiss, who had landed a few months earlier. I had written to Alex from the DP camp about my impending arrival on the
Samaria
. It was so good to see him. We got into a taxicab and drove to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Cass, an elderly couple who opened their home to newly arrived DPs. Two of my acquaintances from Marienbad were already housed there.

Mrs. Cass showed me around the dwelling and took the time to explain the workings of the pull-chain toilet and the
wall telephone. While Marienbad had modern facilities, this lodging was somewhat wanting. But Mrs. Cass had a heart of gold and she sincerely wanted to help us. From this house, I had a firm base on which to make my adjustment to a new world. I was a ward of the Jewish Family and Child Service, which provided me with a tailor-made suit and a winter coat, paid for my lodging, and even supplied a few dollars of pocket money until I found employment. This service gave me a leg up and I was grateful for it.

From the safety of Canada, I could see that postwar Europe was a tangled web of competing political systems. Countries were rebuilding, and governments were trying to re-establish a sense of normalcy on the shifting sands between totalitarianism and democracy. I had experienced the gamut of political systems, from fascism in Hungary and Nazism in the camps to a short period of democracy in postwar Czechoslovakia and a Communist takeover in
1948
. During my final months in Czechoslovakia, I yearned for a home where I could have security and freedom, space to heal from the horror of the camps, and the ability to live like a normal human being. But I couldn't visualize what my dream of freedom in a new world might look like. I had only a basic knowledge of English and little formal education. For me, Canada was simply a shining bright light, a place where I could finally succeed in my quest for physical and emotional security.

In Marienbad, I'd had three years of training to be a dental technician, and I thought I wouldn't have a problem finding employment in this field. Jewish Vocational Services directed me to three dental laboratories. But none of them would hire me, even though I offered to work unpaid for a few weeks to show
them my capabilities. This rejection shook me—I was trained and confident in the field, but no longer employable. I had to look for other work. Jewish Vocational Services sent me to a little shop that was willing to hire refugees. Art Bookbinding and Novelty Company manufactured wedding albums and other items, and I was hired at a starting wage of twenty-five cents an hour. A bottle of Coke was five cents, a streetcar ticket about the same, but I was happy to have a job and to be able to earn money.

The forewoman of the company, Rose Cosman, was very accommodating to new immigrants. She called me Max instead of Tibor, which I accepted because it fit better in the Canadian context and also corresponded closely to my Hebrew name, Mordecai. Rose became my mother-in-law when I married her daughter, Ivy, in
1952
. She and her husband, Samuel, had first introduced us, and we have been happily married for over sixty years and have two sons, two grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

I am indebted to my in-laws for making my adjustment to Canada much easier. Indeed, my new extended family welcomed me so openly that I was able to integrate into the new environment and quickly adopt Canadian values of family, hard work, free expression, and leisure.

After a few years at Art Bookbinding and also trying my hand at a wholesale clothing business, I was able to start a successful manufacturing company related to bookbinding, while Ivy worked at home caring for our two sons.

At fifteen years of age, I entered Auschwitz and lost everyone I loved in a matter of months. Today, at eighty-six years of age, my heart is full again. Although I'm retired from business, I seem
to work harder than ever as a Holocaust educator in schools and other institutions throughout the country. I also accompany groups to Poland for the March of the Living and on Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center missions in order to enlighten people about the realities of the Holocaust and keep historical memory alive. It is in this way that I have fulfilled my final promise to my father: telling the story of our collective suffering so it will never be forgotten.

My wife, Ivy, and my two sons, Edmund (left) and Larry.

M
y new life in Canada was difficult in many ways. I had to learn a new language, new customs, new values. I was very fortunate to connect with people who were helpful in this journey. Soon after my arrival, I met my wife-to-be and her family, and they helped me to settle and participate more fully in my new world. I endured many challenges in those early years—juggling night school and work, dealing with the rejection of my trade skills, and labouring at menial jobs to earn money for my needs. But I always had my goal before me, which was to succeed in my quest for security.

It was not until I retired in
1988
that I had time to reflect on my past as a Holocaust survivor. Without the daily demands of work, I was able to spend time as a speaker–educator and make frequent presentations to students and adults. Going back to Holocaust sites in Europe with groups is also part of my journey. By sharing my experiences with organizations such as the local police, the provincial police, and the Canadian Forces College, I have been able to impart my knowledge of the years from
1933
to
1945
in Europe.

Johnnie Stevens of the 761st Black Panther Tank Battalion and I in New Jersey, 1999.

Now, years later, when I recount my story to young people, I often tell them how on that fateful night of Passover in April 1944, our family gathered around the Seder table in relative peace and freedom to sing songs of redemption from slavery in Egypt. Ironically, within a few hours we were reduced to a state of abject defenselessness and robbed of every single human right.

On a brighter note, in addition to keeping up a rigorous speaking schedule, I find time to relax at my cottage, where I have a CL-
16
sailboat. In some way, it may have been inspired by the beautiful lake I saw during the three-day march from Linz to Ebensee concentration camp in
1945
. The sight of that German airman rowing a boat with his young lady was so powerful, I told myself that if I survived, I would one day have a boat of my own.

After years of speaking as a survivor, I viewed writing my memoir as the next logical step. I was very relieved to complete
a draft of the manuscript just before I left for another trip to Poland for the
2015
March of the Living. Immediately after describing my survival in Auschwitz to a group of adults, I travelled to Lüneburg, Germany, on April
21
,
2015
, to act as a witness in the trial of Oskar Groening, who served as an SS guard at Auschwitz II–Birkenau. Groening was accused of being present at the arrival platform in Birkenau, and of knowingly assisting in the deliberate murder of at least three hundred thousand Jews from Hungary between May
16
,
1944
, and July
11
,
1944
. Before I left the group in Auschwitz, they asked me how I would be able to face this perpetrator seventy-one years after my arrival in Birkenau. This question prompted much introspection.

Prior to the trial, I tried to visualize the defendant back in
1944
, with his SS regalia and the skull-and-crossbones emblem on his hat. I knew that he would look older now, perhaps like an ordinary senior citizen. I wondered how I would feel when I first got a glimpse of him. I felt nervous and was aware of the irony of my situation—I was coming from an educational visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau to a German court with German judges guarded by German police. I felt like the ghosts of the past were with me again.

Once in Germany, I was met by lawyers and other witnesses who went over the court proceedings, and I felt more at ease. The following morning, a bus picked us up and drove us to the courthouse, where a crowd had gathered. There was a large compliment of police and press from all over Europe. To enter the courtroom, everyone had to be searched by the police, and our wallets, purses, bottles of water, and any other items were put into containers and placed into lockers. We had to show our passports, and our names were checked off a list of people
permitted to enter the courtroom. There were journalists inside, along with a hundred or so members of the public. They were directed to sit in the centre of the room. Five judges sat on an elevated platform, and the four lawyers for the co-plaintiffs sat below and to the right. We, the witnesses, were seated behind our lawyers. And to the left of the judges sat the defendant, Oskar Groening, with his two lawyers. Everyone had earphones with simultaneous translation in German, English, and Hungarian.

Aided by his two lawyers, the defendant entered through a side door using a walker. I was completely fixated on him. He wore a beige pullover and an open white shirt with dark trousers. His face was sallow, his posture bent; he was both sickly looking and entirely ordinary. Once the judges entered, the chief judge, Franz Kompisch, ordered a moment of silence and then allowed us all to sit down. One of the other judges laid out the case and explained the procedural ground rules.

In
1944
, when I arrived with the Hungarian transports, I could never have imagined facing off in a courtroom with a trained SS guard. Groening was charged as an accessory to the genocide at Auschwitz. In his defence, he claimed that while he was morally guilty, he was not guilty of any actual crimes. When he was asked if he was in the Hitler Youth, he answered in the affirmative. When he was asked why he later joined the SS, he said that the Führer had called the Jews a threat to Germany and he felt obliged to help the fatherland. He also mentioned that wearing the SS uniform gave him prestige and stature. He explained that after his SS training, he was assigned to camp duty in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was known as the Bookkeeper and he was in charge of gathering valuables such as currency, jewellery, and gold crowns pulled from the mouths of gassed Hungarian
Jews. He accumulated any valuables that were collected from victims and carried it all in a metal suitcase to a bank in Berlin, twice or sometimes three times per week. When he was asked if he ever received a delivery receipt for these valuables, he said he did not. When he was asked if he ever removed any monies for his own personal use, he answered no. The prosecutors asked if he recalled giving an interview to the BBC some years earlier, during which he stated that he did in fact remove some funds to buy a pistol on the black market. When reminded of this, he replied, “Ah! I had forgotten that.”

A cattle car at Auschwitz II–Birkenau.

Asked to describe his typical day on the job in
1944
, he said, “That was a very busy time, when Hungarian Jews were arriving nonstop around the clock.” One time, he served a twenty-four-
hour shift on the ramp. Three transports were waiting to be processed, and everything had to be done speedily and in an orderly fashion. After the first transport disembarked and people were selected out, most of them were sent to the gas chambers because there was no need for slave labour at the time. He described how the Kapos and other inmates removed the luggage from the cattle cars and piled it on the platform to be loaded onto trucks and taken to the barracks known as Kanada. The cattle cars were cleaned of all debris and excrement, and left to bring more people from Hungary. Groening stated that he was on the platform to make sure nothing was stolen by the Kapos, whom he called “crooks.” In a shocking piece of testimony, he volunteered that he and his comrade heard crying from one of the piles of belongings. When they walked over, his comrade uncovered a baby under a blanket. He grabbed it by the ankles and smashed its head against the metal siding of the loading truck. The “crying stopped.” After this incident, Groening immediately asked for a transfer but was refused. Hearing him speak about this crime infuriated me because he described it so dispassionately. When the prosecutor asked him if a Jewish person had a chance of leaving Auschwitz-Birkenau alive, he answered in a loud, assertive tone, “Absolutely not.”

On the third day of the trial, April
23
,
2015
, I was asked to testify about my incarceration in Auschwitz I and other camps. I told the court how my entire family was lost during the war years—my maternal family in
1942
in Majdanek, and my paternal family in Birkenau in
1944
. I concluded by turning to Oskar Groening and saying: “You—who wore the uniform of the SS with the skull and crossbones on your cap, and who swore a blood oath to Hitler—you thought you were ten feet tall and
could simply grind us away. Now, at ninety-three years of age, can you not do the right thing and say what needs to be said, the simple truth—that you were a part of the crimes committed?”

I felt drained after my testimony, but I was satisfied that it was part of the official record. Even after seventy-one years, a perpetrator can be judged for his or her involvement in crimes of this magnitude. The press and TV crews from Europe were all present to record the court proceedings and disseminate them for all to see. Groening wholeheartedly believed in the propaganda of the Nazi supremacist ideology, and although he was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison, he maintains that he was simply following orders and is not guilty of any crime. As Chief Justice Franz Kompisch stated, any SS man or officer who served as part of the operations in Auschwitz should be considered an accomplice to murder. After listening to Oskar Groening and observing his demeanour at the trial, I have a great deal of concern for humanity should a supremacist ideology take hold again. It will be a threat to our way of life and our freedom.

***

On May
8
,
2015
, the world commemorated the seventieth anniversary of VE day (Victory in Europe day), the Allied triumph over Nazism and fascism. I thought that the world would have heeded the lessons of the past, and that the remains of the death camps and the mass graves would be a constant reminder. However, with anti-Semitism on the rise—and so blatantly expressed in contemporary Europe—many Jews are again feeling threatened.

In my presentations, I speak about the lessons that each individual must internalize, and the need for vigilance to prevent hate from disrupting, distorting, and endangering our societies. We must all be alert to the dangers of hatred, speak out against discrimination, and defend the fairness and openness of a free and democratic society with rules of law to sustain it.

Looking at the Book of Names—hundreds of thousands of names—at Auschwitz I.I found my family's names among those many lost.

Each time I visit one of the many memorials to the Holocaust, I come away with the feeling that for many it is very difficult to grasp the enormity of the tragedy. One person who understood—and took personal responsibility for—this horror was Pope John XXIII. A few weeks before his death, he penned the following deeply moving penitential prayer:

We are conscious today that many, many centuries of blindness have cloaked our eyes so that we can no longer see the beauty of Thy chosen people, nor recognize in their faces the features of our privileged brethren.