Local News
Leo Lowy’s story of survival centrepiece of annual remembrance program
By MYRON LOVE
Since the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2005 designated January 27 – the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz – as the date for the annual commemoration of the Holocaust, communities around the world have been planning events on or around that date to continue to raise awareness of the greatest evil of the 20th century and remember the victims.
The centerpiece of this year’s commemoration – in Winnipeg – of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz – was the story of Holocaust survivor Leo Lowy. Roughly 500 people gathered at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on the afternoon of Sunday, January 26, to hear his story.
As with many, if not most, Holocaust survivors, Lowy’s story – as related by his son, Richard, in Leo’s own words (he passed away in Vancouver in 2002) and a documentary – “Leo’s Journey” – begins with a happy childhood surrounded by a large extended Jewish family and friends – in his case in the town of Berehova, which was then located in Carpathia and is now part of Ukraine – an idyll that was shattered by the arrival of the Nazis (although in Hungary, which captured Berehova at the beginning of the war, the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross would be almost as brutal).
Lowy and his sister, Miriam, were saved from the ovens – the fate of the rest of their family – at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944 for the reason that they were twins – a particular interest of Dr. Josef Mengele – AKA “The Angel of Death” – who determined which of the Jews and others coming out of the boxcars would live and which would be sent right to the gas chambers.
In introducing his father’s story, Richard Lowy noted that, as with many Holocaust survivors, Leo was reluctant to talk about his experiences as a subject of the notorious Mengele. It was only in the late 1990s that Leo began talking about what happened to him and his sister.
In 2000, the Vancouver businessman was persuaded by his three sons, Richard and older brothers Gary and Stephen, to return to Europe and revisit Auschwitz, as well as his hometown. Richard Lowy’s documentary, “Leo’s Journey”, intersperses scenes from the family’s travels with interviews with two other Holocaust survivors – each of whom had a twin sister – and archival historical footage. The documentary was narrated by the distinguished Canadian actor Christopher Plummer.
I was somewhat surprised to learn from the documentary that the Germans actually had a trial run in performing medical experiments on unwilling living people. Pre World War I, Germany had colonies in Africa where thousands of Africans were rounded up, interned in concentration camps and subjected to medical experiments at the behest of German pharmaceutical companies. After the first World War, the German colonies in Africa came under British rule.
Also of note in the documentary was the role that eugenics played in Nazi thinking and the Final Solution. Eugenics was a popular scientific theory which called for forced sterilization of so-called weaker individuals – those with mental or physical handicaps, addictions or criteria based on race – in order to “improve the quality of the human species”.
Prior to the showing of the documentary, Lowy narrated his father’s story based on an interview that Leo gave to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in 1985. In his father’s words, Richard Lowy described Leo’s early life in Berehova in a family of six children (he was the only boy). When the Hungarian cames in 1939, Leo had recalled, they were mainly interested in robbing the Jews.
He described how, in 1944, the Nazis shut up all the Jews in town in a brick factory for almost ten days, than loaded them into boxcars for the journey to Auschwitz. The then 15-year-old Lowy remembered the chaos and hollering when they arrived at Auschwitz, the presence of Mengele on the platform directing people to the left or right –to the gas chambers and death or to life, miserable as it may have been – and his and Miriam’s being separated from the rest of the family, put into a van with several other sets of Jewish twins, and driven to a hospital barracks.
“I was getting injections all over my body,” he recalled.
Some twins were operated on and, he recalls, one young male was castrated.
One time, he was taken into a room, put on a table and had his blood drained to transfuse a German soldier on the next table. “I was so weak after that I had to practically crawl back to the barracks.”
Lowy recalled teams of doctors, daily blood tests, being examined every day and being injected with various fluids. “It wasn’t painful, but it was scary,” he noted. “I had never even seen a doctor before.”
He recounted one time when he and his sister were personally examined by Mengele. “He was soft-spoken and trying to be pleasant, but I was so scared that I was shaking.”
Every morning, Lowy remembered, he would wake up in his barracks to find several others in the barracks had died overnight. ‘We would have to assemble for roll calls every morning with the corpses.”
On January 17, 1945, Lowy and all the rest of the surviving inmates of Auschwitz were assembled to be sent on a death march in the cold and the snow. “I knew I wouldn’t survive it,” he said.
He managed to hide in a basement with a few others for three days until liberated by the Americans.
He and Miriam came to Canada in 1948 as war orphans.
“My dad had been involved in Holocaust education in his later years,” noted Richard Lowy. “After he passed away, I felt that I had to continue his legacy of Holocaust education.”
The afternoon program also included: two selections from Zane Zalis’s oratorio, “I Believe”, sung by the Winnipeg Youth Chorus; remarks by Clint Curle, senior adviser to the president for stakeholder relations at the museum; and Belle Jarniewski, the executive director of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada (which partnered with the CMHR). Financial support was also provided by the Azrieli Foundation.
Jarniewski, who is the child of Holocaust survivors, spoke of the “shocking reoccurence of antisemitic hate and violence” in the last few years – especially in western countries which Jews looked to after the war as safe havens.
On the positive side, more than 50 world leaders came to Auschwitz to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation and, a few days earlier, a group of Jewish and Muslim leaders, led by Muslim World League Secretary-General Mohammed bin Abdulkarim al-Issa, also paid a visit to Auschwitz.
“With the passage of time,” Jarniewski observed, “survivor memoirs and testimony will play an increasingly central role in the safeguarding of the historical record. It is our duty to ensure that their words are implemented into education on the Holocaust, human rights, and genocide awareness. “
As to the Angel of Death himself, Jarniewski noted that regrettably, he was never brought to justice. As with many other Nazis, he escaped to South America where he died in a drowning accident in Paraguay in 1979.
Local News
Nakba exhbit at CMHR – you can see it right here and make your own assessment
By BERNIE BELLAN (Posted June 26, updated July 19) The Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Exhibit for Human Rights opened to the public June 27. The morning before the exhibit was set to open to the public, (it had a private opening for invited guests the evening of June 26) we received a press release from the CMHR. That press release gave a very detailed description of what was in the exhibit, along with photos (supplied by Annie Kierans of the CMHR).
There is also a link right at the beginning of the press release that will allow you to watch the same videos that anyone attending the exhibit can watch. We reprinted what was sent to us without making one edit. We leave it to you to form your own opinion as to whether the exhibit is fair in its presentation, and whether it is lacking “context” – which is an accusation that has been levelled at the exhibit’s organizers by some representatives of Jewish organizations.
We have received many emails in reaction to the exhibit. If you have an opinion and would like to see it published on this website, you can send it to jewishp@mymts.net, but please indicate whether you would be willing to have it published on this website.
Here is what we received the morning of June 26:
Winnipeg, MB — June 26, 2026 — The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) will open a new exhibit tomorrow that explores human rights violations related to the ongoing forced displacement of Palestinian Canadians.
Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present will be on display in the Rights Today gallery on Level 5 until 2028. Featuring personal stories told through artifacts and video testimonies, the exhibit presents Palestinian Canadians reflecting on their ongoing struggle for human rights. The small exhibit reveals enduring patterns of loss and resilience, helping visitors understand more about this contemporary human rights story.
Palestinian Canadian stories are now included alongside many other stories of forced displacement and human rights violations featured in the Museum’s galleries. Each of these stories contribute to our visitors understanding of human rights and help the Museum fulfill its mandate to foster reflection and dialogue.
Exhibition highlights
Personal stories and artifacts: Experience firsthand accounts from Palestinian Canadians sharing their journeys of displacement and memory through a series of five artifacts. Cases display artifacts like property deeds, house keys, and a traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, accompanied by short videos that deepen understanding of the impacts of displacement.
Powerful artworks: In her painting Bound Together in Gaza, Malak Mattar, a Gazan artist, captures the struggles and resilience of her generation shaped by conflict. Her work pays homage to Guernica, Picasso’s powerful masterpiece depicting civilian suffering during war.
Curfews and Closures, by Rajie Cook, bears witness to life under military occupation during the 2000–2005 Palestinian uprising, when curfews and closures were expanded and further limited basic rights and freedoms.
Cultural heritage: Discover traditional Palestinian embroidery called tatreez. Tatreez motifs and colours are tied to place, family history and regional identity. Patterns are associated with particular towns, villages or areas of Palestine. In this way, tatreez is a form of storytelling: a way of preserving memory, sustaining identity and expressing resilience across displacement and exile.
Poetry and reflection: Engage with Mahmoud Darwish’s evocative verses, inspiring personal reflection on exile, voice, and responsibility. Visitors can take a card containing Darwish’s poem and add a personal note, fostering ongoing dialogue beyond the exhibit.
Contemporary context: Witness striking images of current events in Gaza and the West Bank, connecting past displacement to ongoing struggles.
Quotes:
“No force can silence the truth we carry. Growing up in Canada, my children lived the Nakba through our stories. And now we watch it happen again, live, on our phones. When I see the images coming out of Gaza, I am not watching the news. I am watching my history repeat itself.” -Fouad Sahyoun, a Palestinian Canadian featured in the exhibit
“We developed this exhibit with a clear awareness that Palestinian Canadian voices have too often been marginalized, silenced or spoken over — and that anti-Palestinian racism affects whose stories are heard and whose suffering is recognized. That is why we intentionally centred Palestinian Canadian voices throughout the exhibit.” -Isabelle Masson, Curator of Palestine Uprooted
“Human rights matter precisely when they are inconvenient, when the question of who deserves the dignity of having their rights recognized is genuinely contested. These are the moments where having a national museum for human rights is most important.
There are people who believe this exhibit should not exist in its current form. There are people who believe it should have existed sooner. There are people who will visit this exhibit and feel that it does not say enough, and others who will feel it says too much.
We have listened to every one of these voices. We have reflected. And we have renewed our resolve to continue the difficult, sometimes contested, and often controversial work of building understanding about human rights. We are a museum grounded in Canada’s human rights framework, whose mandate requires us to bear witness to the full complexity of the human story. We are proud to open this exhibit because the story it tells will help achieve that mandate, and because this story belongs in the collective memory of Canadians.”
- – Isha Khan, CEO
Local News
A photo that’s being circulated on the internet about me
For those of you not familiar with nutjob Michael Kalo – the psycho who created the notorious “$hitler’s List” years ago and the same psycho who went after Ben Carr, well – now he’s obviously taken a strong disliking to the stance I’ve taken on the Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. (You can read elsewhere on this website how I simply posted the entire exhibit as it is – and asked readers to form their own opinions.)
Kalo likes to send out emails to various individual using phony names – such as Frank Ostrowski. When people ask me (or asked Ben Carr) why we don’t take action against him, my answer is: What’s the use? He only basks in the attention.
So Michael – enjoy the attention you’re receiving. I know how much of an embarrassment you are to your wonderfully talented daughters.
Local News
Ami Hassan returning as owner of Falafel Place
By BERNIE BELLAN In a surprise move – and after more than a six-year absence as owner of Falafel Place (Corydon at Wilton) the legendary Ami Hassan has decided to return as owner of one of Winnipeg’s most famous eateries.
Long known for his sometimes irreverent attitude to his customers, e.g., “If you’re finished, get out!”, Ami decided to return to running Falafel Place after having retired years ago (or so he thought) from running the Corydon Avenue restaurant.
We asked Ami whether he’ll be sending a special invitation to Julia Roberts to come visit him at Falafel Place. He asked again: “Who’s Julia Roberts?” (Just kidding – he really does know how Julia Roberts is.) Read the story how Ami told her to leave the restaurant and come back later at Julia Roberts turned away from Falafel Place
Ami did note that when customers saw him inside the restaurant one recent day as he was getting it ready for the reopening Monday, August 10, over 20 of them came in asking him if he was open already.
We asked Ami whether the menu will be the same as it was when he last ran the place and he said everything will be the same.
Falafel Place will be open 7 days a week from 7 am – 2 pm. Remember, if you’re finished – get out!
