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Holocaust survivor Edith Kimelman keynote speaker at the Jewish Heritage Centre’s 19th annual Holocaust and Human Rights Symposium
By MYRON LOVE
Edith Kimelman, whom I have known for many years, exudes elegance and confidence. Beneath the surface though, this child survivor of the Holocaust – in common with most Holocaust survivors – will tell you she continues to bear the scars of the trauma that she went through. And, as with many of her fellow survivors, she came here with nothing and built a life for herself as a wife, mother, grandmother, scholar and educator.
In recent years, Kimelman has devoted much of her time to Holocaust education, sharing her story with many high school students in and around Winnipeg in an effort to inspire young people to eschew prejudice and hate and work for the betterment of society. In 2016, she was one of those featured in filmmakers Yolanda Papini Pollock and Erol Meryl’s “Never Again: A Broken Promise” – a documentary on genocide.
On Thursday, March 12, Kimelman told her story to her largest audience yet – 1,350 high school students from 27 Manitoba schools who were in attendance at the University of Winnipeg’s Duckworth Centre for the 19th annual Holocaust and Human Rights Symposium presented by the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada.
Kimelman and Indigenous leader, acclaimed author, and Indian Residential School survivor Theodore Fontaine were the two keynote speakers for the day, with Kimelman speaking in the morning and Fontaine in the afternoon session.
The symposium began with remarks from Dr. Annette Trimbee, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. She noted that pre-war Germany society was not much different from our own society today. “Minority communities in many countries are still being marginalized and abused,” she pointed out.
Trimbee quoted the late Simon Wiesenthal, who said that “for evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing”.
She also spoke of the importance of education in making the world a better place.
In introducing Edith Kimelman, Belle Jarniewski began by putting the Holocaust into graphic context. The executive director of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada and director of the Freeman Family Foundation Holocaust Education Centre noted that, along with death camps, the Nazis built tens of thousands more slave labour camps, transit camps and ghettos throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.
In addition to the more than three million Jews murdered in the death camps – as well as millions more Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political prisoners and others deemed “undesirable”, 1.4 million more Jews in Eastern Europe were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen in mass shootings.
Jarniewski also spoke of Canada’s sorry record of residential schools as well as the worrying explosion in recent years of antisemitism, racism, and anti-immigrant sentiment in many countries. “There are at least 100 active white supremacist hate groups in Canada alone”, she added, noting that many espouse neo-Nazi ideology.
Jarniewski urged the students at the symposium to add their voices to the fight against hate. “Together, we can make a difference,” she said.
Kimelman began her remarks with a paraphrase from the great Israeli statesman Abba Eban, who described the Holocaust as one of the greatest crises in the history of Western civilization – with the Jews at the centre of it: “Antisemitism is the most violent hatred,” she observed. “I have carried the trauma of what we went through all of my life. I was robbed of my childhood but still managed to find a spark from the ashes from which I was able to build a new life in a new country.”
She described her early years as a happy time, doted on by loving parents in a small, community in Ukraine, where her best friend was a non-Jewish little girl next door. Life as the six-year-old Edith knew it came to an end in June 1941, when the Nazis arrived. Her family’s home was ransacked by the neighbours and almost everything was taken.
“I saw my best friend wearing my best clothes,” she recalled. “My friends shunned me. I sensed that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. I thought that I must have done something wrong.”
A short time later, German soldiers took her father away and shot him. She and her mother found his body and had to carry it back to their home, where two of her mother’s brothers came to take her father’s body for burial.
Part of Edith’s family home was overtaken by Ukrainian militia. Her mother overheard some of the militiamen making plans to drown Edith, her mother and grandmother (her father’s mother), along with some Russian soldiers who they had previously captured – in the Horin River. Her mother woke the little girl in the middle of the night (her grandmother refused to leave) and they walked 24 km to Rowno, where they were taken in by her mother’s relatives.
Her mother’s parents were farmers in another village. They sent a farmer with a wagon filled with hay to pick up mother and daughter and bring them to the safety of their farm. In the fall of 1941, 19,000 Jews in the Rowno Ghetto who did not possess work permits were gathered at the train station, then taken directly to Soscenki, and shot into prepared mass graves.
In the fall of 1942, Edith and her mother continued to stay with her mother’s family in Tuchin. The remaining Jews in the Tuchin ghetto decided to burn it down rather than being slowly depleted in small groups.
At another point, Kimelman’s mother was badly beaten by some Germans and left with permanent kidney damage.
Kimelman told how she, her mother, grandparents, and her uncles and aunt were hidden in a haystack by a kindly Ukrainian lady throughout the winter of 1942-43. After that, they joined other escapees in the forest.
There were other brushes with death and finally, in early 1944, the group of about 75 destitute and desperate Jews was liberated by Partisans. That spring, Edith and her mother were both afflicted with typhus. Her mother eventually died in Lodz as a result of the severe beating that she had received, which had damaged her kidneys.
“With my mother’s death, everything I loved, everything I held dear also died,” Kimelman recalled. “I felt that I had nothing to live for. Fortunately, my grandmother, my uncles and my aunt gave me the courage to hang on to life.”
In 1949, Edith and her surviving family came to Winnipeg, where she lived with her grandmother and an uncle. Education had been very important to her parents and, by becoming well educated, Edith was determined to honour their memory. She went to university as a mature student, earning a BA from the University of Winnipeg and certification from the University of Manitoba, followed by graduate studies at Bar Ilan University and the Hebrew University in Israel, Oxford, and Columbia. She became an educator and an administrator in the Jewish school system.
Edith was married to Sam for 63 years prior to his passing in 2017. She is the proud mother of three sons and grandmother of two grandsons.
“I see myself as a branch that was ripped from a tree, but managed to take root and grow,” she told her audience. “We are fortunate that in Canada, we have the opportunity to raise our family in freedom, peace and security.”
Nonetheless, she added, quoting Bernie Farber, former executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, “Jews are no strangers to antisemitism. While history has shown us that Jew hatred may take an occasional holiday, it never takes a permanent vacation.”
“I am frightened by the current rise of antisemitism and am reaching a time in my life when every day is a bonus. The world is turbulent; so many countries are at war with other or themselves. I am grateful that I live in Canada where I can express my feelings before you without feeling repercussions just because I am Jewish. I hope I have been able to leave you some seeds of thought which will take root.”
The symposium receives funding from the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba and the Asper Foundation, while the Jewish Heritage Centre is a beneficiary agency of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg,
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Young pediatrician Daniel Kroft and his Jewish history podcast
By MYRON L0VE It has been said that if you want to make sure to get something done, give the task to the busiest person in the room. That adage would certainly apply to Daniel Kroft.
Although only 30 years old, Daniel, the son of community leaders Jonathan and Dr. Cara Kroft, has emulated both of his parents by being a community leader as well as a pediatrician. In the former category, Daniel is a member of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg’s Community Planning Committee (His father, Jonathan, is a Past President of the Federation).
The younger Kroft is also a co-founder of the Manitoba Maccabim – a young Jewish advocacy group. He recently joined Belle Jarniewski, executive director of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Manitoba, in a presentation to the Internal Medicine Department of Health Sciences Center on the subject of antisemitism.
Professionally, the Gray Academy graduate (class of 2012) is a member of a clinic run out of St. Boniface Hospital, is on staff at the Children’s Hospital, puts in time at the Health Sciences Centre, and serves as a consultant pediatrician at Brandon’s regional hospital. He also takes trips to northern Manitoba to offer his services.
In addition, he is a member of the Jewish Physicians Association of Manitoba.
With all that on his plate, you wouldn’t think that Kroft would have time for much else. If so, you would be wrong. Four years ago, he launched a new initiative, a podcast – “The Jewish Story” – intended to teach interested listeners about Jewish history.
The idea came to him, he says, back in 2021, when he was still a medical student. “It was the time when Black Lives Matter was in the news,” he recalls. “At med school, we were learning all about Black history and Indigenous history. I realized that I actually didn’t know much about my own Jewish history.”
The first source he turned to was the Anglo-Jewish historian Simon Schama and his book, “The Story of the Jews”. He followed up with online courses from Oxford and Harvard as well as a lecture series led by prominent historian Henry Abramson.
Setting up a podcast, he notes, required another learning curve. “It takes me about a year to do the research and organize my podcasts,” he reports. “I had to learn how to do a podcast and about which equipment to buy. I set up a recording studio in a room in my house.”
On his website (rss.com/podcasts/thejewishstory/), Kroft describes “The Jewish Story” as “a Jewish history podcast for the 21st century”. “We use the latest in archaeology, linguistics and historical methods to sculpt the history of the Jewish People from the exodus from Egypt until the present,” he notes.
He started his series of podcasts going back to the beginning – from the earliest evidence of Jewish existence through the establishment of the Jewish kingdom, its conflicts with neighbouring empires, to its destruction by the Babylonians.
And that is just the first episode.
The first season – seven episodes – encompassed Jewish history up to and including the Roman invasion of Jerusalem and destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE. Kroft points out that some of his podcasts feature guest commentators. In his first season, for example, in the third episode, he interviews Rabbi Matthew Leibl about the relevance to modern Jewish life of the first eight centuries of Jewish history.
In the seventh episode, he discusses with his former elementary school teacher, Sherry Wolfe Elazar ,what lessons modern Jews can learn from the Greco-Roman period for Jewish history.
The second series of podcasts focuses on the development of Jewish life in the first centuries after the Diaspora and the effects of the new Christian and Muslim religions on the Jewish people. The seventh and last episode of season two features Rabbi Anibal Mass, the spiritual leader of the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, talking about a wide range of subjects ,including the breakaway Karaites, he definition of Jewish music, and how technology has shaped modern Jewish practice.
The third season covers the 11th-15th centuries while the most recent series of episodes spans the period from 1500 to 1650. Kroft reports that the next group of podcasts will provide an overview of Jewish life in the 17th and early 18th centuries, including the beginnings of Jewish life in North America.
I asked Kroft when he finds the time to work on his podcasts. His response: in his spare time – weekends and holidays.
The podcaster reports that when he started, he was getting 30-40 listeners per episode. Now his numbers are up to 200-300 from all over the world.
For readers who may want to hear Daniel Kroft’s story in person, he will be one of the presenters at the upcoming Limmud Winnipeg. Kroft will be presenting on Sunday, March 23, at 1:30 at the Campus.
For more information aboutLimmud, contact coordinator@limmudwinnipeg.org or 204-557-6260
Local News
Former Winnipegger Ezra Glinter to discuss his new biography of Rabbi Schneerson at upcoming Limmud Winnipeg
By MYRON LOVE The Chabad-Lubavitch movement is one of the world’s largest and best-known Hasidic groups. Driven by the belief that we are on the verge of the messianic age. Lubavitch, under the leadership of the charismatic Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson , has, over the past 70 years. engaged in an outreach program to the Jewish world which may bemunprecedented in Jewish history. Wherever there is a Jewish community in the world, no matter how small, you will find a Lubavitcher Rebbe.
I have seen one survey that more younger American Jews – almost 40% -have developed a connection with Chabad than another branch of Judaism.
Last October, former Winnipegger Ezra Glinter published “Becoming the Messiah: The Life and Times of Menachem Mendel Schneerson,” the first biography of Rabbi Schneerson to combine a nonpartisan view of his life, work, and impact with an insider’s understanding of the ideology that drove him and that continues to inspire the Chabad-Lubavitch movement today.
On Sunday, March 23, Glinter will be introducing his biography to his home town as one of the presenters at the 15th Limmud Winnipeg Festival of Jewish Learning.
(Limmud was founded in England in 1980 with the aim to build bridges between professional and nonprofessional educators and between those of differing religious commitments. Today, the Limmud Festival is held in more than 90 Jewish communities in over 40 countries around the world.)
The New York-based son of Nancy and Harry Glinter has had an interesting life journey of his own – a journey that has included his own immersion for several years in the Orthodox world – making him an ideal individual to explore the Rebbe’s life and work and impact on Judaism.
“It was helpful hat I could apply the skills that I learned in Yeshiva to the research,” Glinter notes.
The fact that he is also self-taught in Yiddish was also helpful.
Glinter in a graduate of Talmud Torah. At the age of 16, Glinter chose to pursue a more religious lifestyle. With his parents’ support, he enrolled in Ner Yisroel in Batimore.
In 2004, after four years in yeshiva, he enrolled at McGill, graduating with a BA in English (in 2008), followed by a year at New York University. Since then, he has pursued a career as a freelance journalist. For five years, he served as deputy arts director for the Jewish Daily Forward. Over the past eight years, he has contributed book, theatre and arts reviews and lifestyle stories to numerous prestigious American publications, as well as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,”and the Paris Review.
The Schneerson biography is his second book. In 2016, he published “Have I Got a Story for You” – a compilation of 42 stories – published in Yiddish in The Forward over its almost 130—year history.
The stories are an assortment of wartime novellas, avant-garde fiction, and satirical sketches about immigrant life in New York – with short biographies of the contributors. Glinter served as editor of the project – with the stories being translated into English by leading Yiddish translators who were able to capture the sound of the authors and the subtleties of nuance and context.
Glinter notes that he spent four years doing the research for his current book. He reports that his Shneerson biography has been generally well-received – although, he adds, there haven’t been a lot of reviews.
“It seems that both followers of Chabad and secular readers appreciate the book,” he comments.
For the past two years, he has been working as the senior staff writer and editor for the National Yiddish Book Centre, which is located in Amherst, Massachusetts. “We have our own press and newsletter,” he points out. “We translate newly published Yiddish works into English.”
Readers who may be interested in attending Limmud this year can cal l204 557-6260 or email coordinator@limmudwinnipeg.org. Ticket prices are $55 for the full day (which includes lunch and snacks) and $30 for a half day attendance. Reduced rates are available for younnger adults (under 30), students and children.
Local News
Bright future for Israeli-born University of Manitoba Science student Erele Tzidon
By MYRON LOVE Erele Tzidon, a second year Science student at the University of Manitoba, seems to have a bright future ahead of her.
Rabinovich-Nikitin
The year before last, the Israeli-born graduate of Gray Academy received a University of Manitoba undergraduate research award, which allowed her to pursue research as a member of Dr. Inna Rabinovich-Nikitin’s research team at the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, (ICS) researching the link between pregnancy complications and the risk for heart disease.
The world-renowned institute, directed by Dr. Lorrie Kirshenbaum, studies heart disease and heart function with the goal of researching means to repair damaged heart cells and prevent heart failure.
This past November, Tzidon was presented with a second award – the Dr. James S. McGoey Student Award – based on the quality of her cardiovascular research at the ICS, which operates out of the St. Boniface Hospital’s Albrechchtsen Research Centre.
“We are very proud of Erele and her achievements,” says Dr. Inna Rabinovich-Nikitin. “We believe she has a promising future in medical research.”
Originally from Moshav Ginaton in central Israel, Tzidon came to Winnipeg in 2018 with her parents Ofer, formerly regional manager for a car rental agency in Israel and now an RBC branch Manager, and Sharon, an emotional therapist in Israel who is currently working as an educational assistant at Gray Academy. Tzidon also has three younger brothers.
The 19-year-od reports that it was through a connection she forged with Rabinovich-Nikitin at G ray Academy (where the latter has three children enrolled in the elementary program) that opened the door to a summer position at the ICS in 2023. She notes that she is at the ICS two days a week and at the U of M three days a week.
“I have always wanted to do research,” she says, “because I have an unlimited number of questions. And I love working with the great team at the ICS.”
One of the primary focuses at the ICS in recent years has been on women’s heart health. Three years ago Kirshenbaum created a new research program within St. Boniface Hospital specifically for the study of heart disease in women. Dr. Rabinovich-Nikitin was the first faculty member seconded to the new research program
In an earlier article I wrote about her in the Post (in 2021), I noted that she, like Erele Tzidon, is originally from Israel, having arrived in Winnipeg in 2016 with her husband Sergey, and their two children (a third child was born here) to further her scientific knowledge through working in Kirshenbaum’s lab.
Rabinovich-Nikitin is graduate of Tel Aviv University with a Ph.D. in biotechnology.
“I was always interested in science, how things work,” she notes. “I have a particular interest in women’s cardiac health.”
Four years ago she herself was presented with the Winnipeg Foundation’s Martha Donavan Leadership Development Award. The award is intended to provide leadership development opportunities for women in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. Eligible applicants include women who are full-time or part-time academic faculty members, students of the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, and students as well as post-doctoral trainees (including residents), presently enrolled in a program of study within the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.
In 2022 Rabinovich-Nikitin, was the winner of the Louis N. and Arnold M. Katz Basic Science Research Prize for Early Career Investigators awarded by the American heart Association (AHA). This award is the highest international recognition of research excellence for an early career investigator to receive, and Rabinovich-Nikitin is the first ever Canadian scientist to receive this award.
That same year she joined the University of Manitoba Department of Physiology and Pathophysiology as an assistant professor, studying heart disease in women. Rabinovich-Nikitin observes that heart disease in women presents itself in a different way than in men. She notes that one of the new lab’s initial findings was that there is one specific gene that leads to cardiovascular issues in some pregnant women that can point to heart disease later in life, and also have negative implications for the development of their children. Those children are smaller at birth and, as adults, are prone to hypertension, diabetes and obesity,
“We are looking into how that particular gene increases the risk of heart disease.” she says.
Rabinovich-Nikitin would like to invites readers who may be interested in learning more about women’s heart health to a free program the ICS is offering on Sunday, February 23 at the Wellness Institute at 1075 Leila Avenue from 1:00-4:00. The afternoon will feature speakers, children’s activities and Zumba sessions.
“I would encourage everyone who has questions and wants to learn about women’s heart health to attend,” she says.
You can find more about the event at https://megaheartevent.com/
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