Holocaust survivor hopeful for future of Canada, despite noticing similarities from her past
Holocaust survivor Hedy Bohm says there are similarities between the time leading up to Nazi rule in Germany, and eventually Europe, and antisemitic incidents that are happening in Canada now.
Already this year, swastikas were spray-painted on the windows and walls of a synagogue in Winnipeg, a message calling for the death of Jews was graffitied under a bridge in Toronto and an Alberta MP pushed for investigations into Canadians who served in the Israeli Defense Forces, which a Jewish advocacy group condemned as an “antisemitic witch hunt.”
Bohm said that during the Second World War, in her small town in what is now Romania, she didn’t know what was happening to Jews in the rest of Europe. “And didn’t believe it, even if we were told about it,” she said. Upon reflection, even though she was unaware at the time, she said she does notice parallels between the hate being aimed at the Jewish community back then, and in Canada now. But she is hopeful for the future of the country.
“Canada is more aware of the world and what is going on in the world … than it used to be, which is wonderful,” said Bohm, in a written interview with National Post.
The 97-year-old, who lives in Toronto, is launching her memoir, Reflection, on Tuesday in honour of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Bohm was 15 years old when she was rounded up with her family and forcefully placed into a ghetto with the Jewish community of Oradea. She and her parents were later crammed into cattle cars destined for Auschwitz-Birkenau, the notorious concentration camp in Poland, where 1.1 million men, women and children were killed , including Bohm’s mother and father.
“You have to be strong yourself and stick to your ideals,” Bohm said, about making it through tough times. “You have to find strength to take an open stand for what you believe in.”
Closer to the end of the Second World War, Bohm and hundreds of other women were taken from Auschwitz to Fallersleben, Germany, to work at an ammunition factory run by Volkswagen. In an attempt to evade the Allies, the Nazis moved Bohm and the others to a camp called Salzwedel. That is where Bohm was liberated by American troops in April 1945.
After finding it difficult to adjust to being back home after the war, she eventually got married and made her way to Canada. She and her new husband arrived in Halifax at Pier 21 and trained to Toronto. They put down roots in the city, secured jobs and started a family. Bohm did not speak up about her experience as a Holocaust survivor for decades.
In the early 2000s, she heard Iran’s then-president deny the Holocaust during a United Nations speech. Bohm decided it was time to share her story. She has been involved in Holocaust education ever since.
In 2014 and 2016, respectively, she travelled to Germany to give witness testimony in the trials of Nazi officials. She also went back to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2023 , with the March of the Living, a program that brings people together to learn about the Holocaust and honour its victims.
Here is an excerpt from Bohm’s memoir, Reflection , part of Jewish advocacy group the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program.
The Ghetto
Within two or three weeks of the Nazis occupying Hungary in 1944, they took over the government and replaced the liberal mayor of our city with a Nazi, just like they did everywhere else in Hungary. It was then that one of the special units of Hungarian soldiers, the csendőrség (gendarmerie, or police force), who wore hats with a rooster feather on it, became the real representatives of Nazism.
My school was closed in March without warning. One day, we were all called into the auditorium. The principal stood before us and announced that the school would close, effective immediately, and that he hoped we would see each other again after the war. No explanation was given. We were simply told to go home. The closing of Jewish schools was the latest in a string of anti-Jewish laws that restricted our rights and freedoms, one law at a time. Radios were one of the first things to be confiscated. We were no longer allowed to listen to the news. There was a law that forbade Jewish students from attending college or university. I knew this because there were a couple of young Jewish men now working for my father, apprenticed to him because they couldn’t go to university or enter better professions or businesses.
I missed going to school, but we still could walk out on the streets. I wasn’t aware in the slightest of what was going on until, in April 1944, my mother sewed a yellow Star of David on my coat. That’s when I felt marked for the first time. Still, I had no inkling of what was to come. I couldn’t understand why we were being singled out. I wondered what we had done — my parents and the other Jews — to warrant it. Even then, my parents didn’t explain anything to me, and I was confused as to why I couldn’t go to school and why we had to wear the star. I don’t remember if I asked questions. If I did, there were no answers provided. I suppose my parents were trying to protect me from fear and the brutal reality of what the rumours suggested. Everything was changing so quickly, it was bewildering.
Every week, new anti-Jewish laws came out, laws that took everything away from us: our homes, our possessions, our freedom and our rights to citizenship and humane treatment. We had to go to city hall and hand over the contents of our bank accounts. Jews were no longer entitled to have anything of value, and the Nazis demanded that all valuables be handed in — paintings, sculptures, furs and jewellery. They started arresting Jews and torturing them in the police stations if they thought they were hiding money or valuable possessions. If a Jew was known to be wealthy and the Nazis thought they hadn’t given up enough, they were tortured.
Jewish businesses were taken over by the Nazis, but my father’s workshop wasn’t confiscated. I suppose the small workshop wasn’t important enough or productive or rich enough to be of any note. They left it alone, and my father had it until we went into the ghetto, just several weeks after we started wearing the yellow star.
I barely remember those last weeks at home before we were forced into the ghetto. I was probably reading and playing piano. I don’t even remember visiting with my classmates. I do remember seeing (my friend) Laci though. He came to see me even though most people were afraid to walk on the streets by then. Wearing the yellow star meant you would be recognized as a Jew and get beaten up, or worse. The star became an open invitation for anyone who wanted to abuse Jews without repercussions, rather with the encouragement of all those around.
This excerpt was taken from Reflection by Hedy Bohm.
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