My family’s relationship to Schara Tzedeck began in 1948. In May of 1948 my parents both Holocaust Survivors arrived in Vancouver and I was born a short time later, in September of that year.  My father, Samuel, was born in a small village in Poland named Sarnaki. My mother Michla, was born in a small village in Lithuania named Paselva.

My father was the youngest of nine children and my mother was the eldest of eight. Upon reaching adulthood, my father began his life in Warsaw; married, had children, worked as a tailor and played in a mandolin orchestra. My mother moved to Kaunas which was the capital of Lithuania at that time. She too married, had children and built her own home. For both my parents life was good until the rise of Hitler. 

My father’s whole family including his wife and children were murdered in the Holocaust, with the exception of his oldest brother and his family who somehow got to Siberia and survived the war there and later emigrated to Israel.  My mother’s whole family including her husband and children were also murdered, with the exception of her seventeen year old brother who had come to live with her in Kaunas and survived. My father survived the war by jumping from a train going to Treblinka and living in the forest for the duration of the war; my mother survived by going first to Auschwitz concentration camp and then being transferred to the Stuthoff concentration camp from which she was liberated. Her brother survived Dachau.

In 1945, after the war ended in Europe, both my mother and father found their way to Feldafink, a displaced persons camp in Germany. The story went that the two met on Monday and got married on Wednesday in 1946 and remained together until Mom died in 1996.

Through a plan known as the Tailor Project devised by the Garment Workers Union and funded by the Canadian Jewish Congress and approved by the Canadian government in 1947, Canada took in 2,500 tailors and their families from refugee camps in Europe. My father came from a family of tailors and in 1948 he and my mother were sent to Vancouver, a city he had never heard of.   They went by boat across the Atlantic to Halifax and there they were placed on a train going as far west as you could go.

On arrival in Vancouver, my father was given a job in clothing factory, Lounge Fashion, and after a few weeks of staying in a room in a house owned by a Jewish family, my parents were given a room in a house on 14^th and Ontario that belonged to the Canadian Jewish Congress. In that house were several other families and single men.  Both my parents had been Orthodox Jews before the war and they sought an Orthodox synagogue in their new home.

My parents first belonged to the Beth Hamidrash, a small synagogue on Heather Street which was led by a Rabbi that had survived the Holocaust and his wife. The new arrivals tried very hard to support the Rabbi but as families grew people like my father wanted a bigger Shul that would be more inclusive for raising a family, so my father became a member of Schara Tzedeck.

His first seats in the Shul were in the middle section close to the back wall. My mother sat upstairs. I went with my father to Shul and I always remember on Yom Kippur he would lift me on to the seat so I could stand and see the Cantor bow down and kneel during parts of the service. I went with my parents, either or one or the other, to Shul, never missing a Simchat Torah or a Megillah reading. And on the High Holidays there were young people who entertained the children in the basement by reading to us or playing games with us. The Rabbi at that time was Rabbi Goldenberg. To me he was rather an imposing man, always dressed in black and with a beard. On Sunday’s Junior Congregation was introduced, and my father would bring me. I think I came for the apple juice.  

When my brother was born the Shul became even more important to my parents as my brother would need a Bar Mitzvah. So he was enrolled in Schara Tzedeck afterschool program three times a week. That’s a story in itself particularly when Rabbi Goldenberg left and Rabbi Hier arrived on the scene. My brother did have his Bar Mitzvah at Schara Tzedeck (although on the Wednesday before the Bar Mitzvah, he did manage to get himself kicked out of Rabbi Hier’s afterschool class only to be readmitted after my father stepped in to apologize for whatever transgression his son had committed). Later my brother got married at Schara Tzedeck with Rabbi Zaychuck and his two daughters had their Bat Mitzvah’s at Schara Tzedeck.

My boys liked going to Shut with my parents, who attended Shul every Saturday after they retired from my father’s business. Unfortunately, neither my mother or father lived long enough to make it to my boys Bar Mitzvahs but even after my parents were gone, both the boys wanted their Bar Mitzvahs at Schara Tzedeck based on their memories of having gone to Shul with my parents.  My youngest son was, I believe, one of the earliest Bar Mitzvah’s Rabbi Rosenblatt officiated at.

And so 74 years has passed and both my brother and I are members of Schara Tzedeck and G-d willing will be for as long time to come.