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Jennie Lifschitz: A Canadian-Born Holocaust Survivor
By Rachel Mines
Outlook Magazine (Vancouver, B.C.), Sept./Oct. 2010
In his 1996 article “From Montreal to Auschwitz: Harry Cohen was the
only Canadian to die in the Holocaust,” journalist Gil Kezwer describes
the life and fate of Harry Cohen, “believed to be the only Canadian
citizen to die in the Nazi genocide of the Jews” (Montreal Gazette,
April 16, 1996). Born in Poland, Mr. Cohen emigrated to Montreal in
1919. On his return to Poland on business in 1939, he was trapped by
the outbreak of war. He was hidden by a Christian family but discovered
in 1942 by the Nazis and deported, most likely to Auschwitz, where he
died.
The tragic story of Harry Cohen provides a small but
important link between Canada and the events of the Holocaust. But
Harry Cohen was not, in fact, the only Canadian victim. Another
is my mother, Jennie Lifschitz, who may have been the only
Canadian-born survivor of the Holocaust. Jennie did not like to speak
much about her tragic past, and it was only after her death in 2005
that my family and I began to piece together her remarkable story.
Jennie
Lifschitz was born in Montreal on July 8, 1924. Her birth certificate
records her parents as “Abraham Lifschitz, merchant … and … Paola
Bloomberg, housewife.” Jennie’s parents and their first child, Rubin,
had immigrated in the early 1920s from Libau, now Liepaja, Latvia.
Their second child, Dora, was born in Montreal in 1922.
Abraham
and Paola’s marriage did not last long. A few months after Jennie’s
birth, her parents separated, and Paola returned to Libau, taking the
three children with her. Six years later, in January 1931, the two
older children returned to their father in Montreal. For some reason,
perhaps because Abraham wanted a caretaker for his elderly widowed
mother in Libau, Jennie remained and grew up there.
On
June 17, 1940, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the USSR
annexed Libau. Although the takeover had a great impact on the Jewish
community— a year later, 550 Libau citizens, including 200 Jews, were
deported to Siberia – it did not seem to have affected Jennie much. A
lively 16-year-old, she welcomed the chance to sneak out of her
grandmother Malka’s house, where she lived after her mother’s
remarriage, and go dancing with the Red Army soldiers.
But the
Nazi occupation of June 29, 1941, was clearly a disaster of a very
different order. Anti-Jewish measures were put into place immediately.
On July 5, Jews were ordered to wear yellow stars. Jewish men were
assigned to work details, curfews were imposed, property confiscated,
and beatings and mass arrests became the norm. On July 24, Jennie’s
uncle Hessel was arrested on the street, taken with a group of other
men to the fish factory near the canal, and shot. On the night of
December 13, Jennie’s remaining family in Libau—all but she and her
14-year-old cousin, Bella—were arrested and taken to the beach at
Skede, north of Libau, where they were shot and buried in mass graves.
On
July 1, 1942, Jennie and Bella, among a total of 832 Jews—the sole
remnants of a pre-war population of over 7200—were moved into nine
houses surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Jennie was lucky in that the
labour she was compelled to do—keeping house for SS officers—was
relatively light and allowed her access to scraps of food, which she
stole and, risking death if caught, smuggled back into the ghetto. The
Libau Ghetto was liquidated on October 8, 1943, and residents
transported to Kaiserwald concentration camp in nearby Riga, Latvia’s
capital.
In Kaiserwald, inmates worked a 12-hour day, often at
hard labour, with minimal, poor-quality food. Beatings and various
forms of maltreatment were routine. Hunger and lice were endemic.
Jennie
spent about six months in Kaiserwald before being transferred on March
17, 1944, to a satellite camp to work on the German railway. At 18, she
became a crane operator, moving heavy equipment, under constant threat
of beatings or death for the smallest infraction of the rules. Somehow,
she maintained her sense of humour. She once told me that she and some
other women were ordered to strip the interior of a railway car. They
smuggled out seat fabric with which they made themselves red plush
underwear.
By the summer of 1944, the German army was in
retreat, and Soviet forces were approaching. Nazi authorities began
planning the evacuation of Kaiserwald and the transfer of prisoners to
other camps. On August 6, 1944, Kaiserwald and its satellite camps were
evacuated, and Jennie was transferred by ship to Stutthof camp near
Danzig (now Gdansk), where she arrived on August 9.
Stutthof was
a barracks camp surrounded by watchtowers and a double row of
electrified barbed wire. According to the Holocaust Education and
Archive Research Team, new arrivals through the main gate, or “Death
Gate,” would be told, “From now on, you are no longer a person, just a
number. All your rights have been left outside the gate—you are left
with only one, and that you are free to do: leave through that
chimney.” Jennie became prisoner 56-164.
Two weeks later, it
looked as though Jennie’s luck had finally run out. Along with other
prisoners, she was selected to be killed. She was in a line-up for the
gas chamber when an SS officer called out that railway workers were
needed. Jennie was spared, and on August 26, 1944, was transferred to
Stolp-Pomerania, where she did slave labour until the camp’s
liquidation in the face of the advancing Soviets.
On March 6,
1945, Jennie and other prisoners were loaded into a railway car
—perhaps one she herself had maintained—and transferred to Burgraben
camp. She arrived amidst chaos. She later recalled, “On arrival in
Burgraben, we found one barrack with dead and dying Jewish people.
There were no guards and we had no food. … The Soviet front was very
close, and when the SS came to return us to Stutthof, they were in such
a hurry that they left some prisoners in the fields. I was later told
by someone who had been left behind that the Red Army liberated the
camp about fifteen minutes after our departure.” Jennie was
returned to Stutthof on March 22, but, with the camp’s liquidation
underway, was evacuated to the Hela Peninsula a month later. She
recalled, “We stayed for two days. … On arrival … we were left in a
field guarded by the SS. No food was provided. There was much confusion
and panic … and there were many wounded and dead people.”
From
Hela, Jennie was evacuated by barge on April 24. Prisoners, including
Jews, Norwegians, and Poles, were at sea ten days: “We were confined to
barges, without food or water. … About 32 Jews survived from the barge
I was on. … On 3 May, 1945, we arrived in Neustadt,
Schlesweig-Holstein, where we were liberated by the British Army.” By
this time, Jennie had contracted typhus. She survived with the help of
a small tin of vitamin paste, a gift from a Norwegian sailor.
After
liberation, Jennie recuperated in Neustadt Holstein, where a DP
(Displaced Persons) camp was established in a former submarine training
school. Eventually, the question of emigration arose. As Jennie lacked
identification and spoke no English, her claim to be Canadian was not
believed. Eventually she met a soldier from Montreal who recognized the
surname Lifschitz and realized he knew Jennie’s father. As Jennie later
recounted, “I was deported … as a Canadian. Yes, it sounds funny, but …
they sent me out of Germany and no other country wanted me except
Canada so I was sent on a troop ship to Montreal.”
As a
passenger on the troop ship Aquitania, Jennie returned to the country
of her birth on March 2, 1946. Rejoining her father and siblings in
Montreal, she assisted her father in his store and restaurant business,
eventually opening a lunch counter of her own. In March 1947, she had
her first child, a daughter, whom she named Paula after her mother.
In February 1954, Jennie, her husband Sender, a fellow survivor, and Paula moved to Vancouver. With her earnings from her
businesses in Montreal, Jennie bought a house on Nelson Street in the
West End: a neighbourhood that at that time bore an uncanny resemblance
to Libau, with its park, beaches, and European-flavoured
“Robsonstrasse.” Jennie rented rooms and ran the house as a business.
Sender found a job in a shoe factory. In 1956, Jennie opened a
restaurant, the Ideal Lunch. Sender left the shoe factory, where he had
been earning only $52 a week, and joined his wife in the restaurant.
Like
Harry Cohen, Jennie was not protected during the Holocaust by her
Canadian citizenship. On the contrary, her nationality worked against
her efforts to obtain compensation from the German government.
According to Jennie, “After the war ended … I made application for
indemnification from “BEG” (the German Federal Indemnification Law),
but was denied because of my Canadian citizenship,” presumably because
Germany and Canada had not signed an agreement to compensate Canadian
Holocaust survivors.
In 1955, Jennie applied to the Canada War
Claims Commission, established to compensate Canadian soldiers and
civilians who had lost property or been maltreated as prisoners of war
during WWII in Europe and Asia.
Jennie Mines (nee Lifschitz)
is Case No. 2452 in the Report of the War Claims Commission. In his
report, Deputy Commissioner H. V. Bird affirms Jennie’s Canadian
nationality, quoting a Department of Citizenship and Immigration
document: “since there is no indication in our records that she has at
any time lost or relinquished her status, she is a natural-born
Canadian citizen under the provisions of … the Canadian Citizenship
Act.” Furthermore, Bird goes on to confirm that Jennie “possessed
Canadian national status … at the time of the act causing the loss or
damage complained of.” Jennie’s claims for maltreatment and injury were
corroborated by witness affidavits, medical letters, and identity cards
supplied by Allied authorities. The Commission awarded her $1,045 for
maltreatment (later amended to $1,038) and $1,120 for personal injury.
Years later, in her application for benefits under the Claims
Conference Article 2 fund, Jennie explained, “To the best of my
knowledge, the Canadian government has provided no specific programs
whatsoever with respect to indemnifying Holocaust survivors. With
respect to the Canada War Claims Commission … it is my understanding
that I received indemnification not as a Jewish survivor of the
Holocaust per se, but as a Canadian prisoner of war.”
Jennie
used the money she received from the Canada War Claims Commission to
pay off the mortgage on her house “about three and a half years after
it was bought.” Her daughter Rachel was born shortly after. With their
young family, the rooming house, and the restaurant, Jennie and Sender
seemed successful. Sadly, after the birth of their son Michael in 1959,
their marriage became troubled, and after years of difficulties, the
strain eventually became too much. In 1967 Jennie left the family home.
The restaurant was sold, and the couple lived separately until their
divorce in 1981. In August 1982, Sender died. In 1984, Jennie married
Jack Phillips, a longtime family friend. Their 20-year marriage was
happy. In 2001, Jennie applied for compensation for her wartime
suffering under the Claims Conference Foundation “Remembrance,
Responsibility, and the Future,” also known as the German Slave Labor
Fund. She received two lump-sum payments totalling just over $10,000.
In May 2003, she applied for compensation from the Claims Conference
Article 2 fund, but here things did not go so smoothly. The problem was
Jennie’s Canadian citizenship, as, unlike the United States (the
“Princz Agreement”), Canada did not have an agreement with Germany to
compensate Holocaust survivors who were Canadian nationals at the time
of their persecution. Jennie’s claim had to go to a special
arbitration, and it was not until October 29, 2004 that her claim was
approved.
Sadly, the compensation, a monthly pension of $270,
came too late for Jennie to enjoy it. The same month the claim was
approved, Jennie entered the hospital for major surgery. The operation
was not a success, and Jennie died on August 9, 2005, aged 81.
Jennie’s
wartime suffering left her Canadian family a legacy of guilt and
remorse. It is impossible to know if her marriage to Sender would have
been a success had they not been survivors, but certainly the Holocaust
left its mark on their children, who, like others of the Second
Generation, have had to come to terms with their parents’ suffering,
dislocations, and losses.
But possibly the hardest-hit was
Jennie’s father, Abraham, who, as a result of either decision or
negligence, had abandoned his wife and Canadian-born younger daughter
to the Nazis. He could not have foreseen the outcome of allowing them
to return to Europe in 1924 and remain there, but he was plagued with
guilt for the rest of his life. Having lost both legs to diabetes, he
viewed his suffering as just retribution for his actions. One of his
nieces, who still lives in Montreal, quotes his words: “my
mother-in-law, Malka, put a curse on me … and that’s why I’m dying in
pieces.”
RACHEL MINES was born and lives in Vancouver, and teaches English at Langara College
© Copyright
Judy Cohen, 2001.
All rights reserved.
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