Features
For Harvey Minuk, the Ashkenazi Synagogue – and the Minuk family, have remained integral to his life even after he left Winnipeg
By GERRY POSNER When you talk of ex-Winnipeggers who have more than a fond spot in their hearts for the city, their past, their family and identity, look no further than Harvey Minuk, a central figure in that very large and well known Minuk clan so evident in Winnipeg and now beyond. Minuk oozes with what is the essence of Winnipeg life and I suggest he is transforming Toronto one house at a time.
His beginning might have given us a clue as to what would follow since he was delivered at home by his own father at 2 Mellish Avenue on a cold February day. Right away you knew this kid would be different. Dad was Bert Minuk – married to the former Lola Fashler. Minuk grew up in Garden City, later moving from Mellish to Forest Park Drive. Along the way, he not only attended Jefferson Junior High and later Garden City Collegiate, but he developed friends that have remained to this day. These relationships exist because Minuk feels strongly about Jewish traditions, such as justice and welcoming the stranger. His choice of friends represents these two Jewish ideals. He stays in touch with his old Forest Park neighbours, Shelley and Len Hirsch, as well as Chaim Raber. This is very Winnipeg.
Integral to his growing up years were his sporting activities, including playing baseball at the Garden City Community Centre, hockey at the West Kildonan Arena, as well as street hockey on his street. To this day Harvey has cherished memories of walking to play hockey in the dark morning with a stick over his shoulder, blades up and skates dangling from the end.
Now, if you know anything about Winnipeg, you know the Minuks were a large bunch, and a tight one. The High Holidays at the Ashkenazi Synagogue on Burrows Avenue were veritable Minuk- run services, given their numbers and their Kohanim status. This applied to major simchas as well. As Harvey tells it, “My friend Avrum Pollock and I share a joke that, forget the Ketubah, a Winnipeg Jewish wedding needs at least one Pollock and Minuk as witnesses so that it can be considered official.”
And, at most of the Jewish weddings in Winnipeg in the day, that likely was the case. Another place of assembly was Gimli, or more specifically Loni Beach, where Ruthie and Hy Sirkis and Dora and Keppy Steiman, along with Ruby and Sam Minuk and their respective families, all part of the Minuk mishapacha gathered regularly.
Harvey graduated from the University of Manitoba with a BA in both Psychology and Economics. He apprenticed with his father and Uncle Bill Minuk in what was then a premier real estate agency in Winnipeg: Park Realty. (Many readers will recall that name.)
Harvey then headed off to McGill for an MBA programme. As Harvey puts it, “ It was a weird feeling being the only Minuk in the Montreal phone book.” Upon graduating with a Finance major, Harvey headed off to Toronto and the then Midland Doherty company (later Merrill Lynch), followed by a stint at the Bank of Montreal in its real estate group.
About 12 years ago Harvey met Summer Nudel, whom he married five years ago. Harvey is now a step-father to Cleo.
Ultimately, Harvey was recruited to become the first Canadian hire at the GE Capital Real Estate Group. But. in 1988, Minuk decided to start out on his own with his company, First Place Capital Inc., which drew Harvey Minuk into valuations, consulting, development work and in large part, residential renovations. The company evolved and today still involves both Harvey as the general contractor and prime shaker and mover, along with Summer, who handles social media, photography and administration.
Harvey has also brought with him to Toronto his Winnipeg Lubavitch Ahkenazai roots to a Toronto synagogue called the Junction Shul. The impact of the time spent at synagogue in his Winnipeg days and the death of his brother Randy Minuk some nine years ago caused Harvey to take on a more observant lifestyle than in the past.
Surprisingly, he even makes challah and is a proficient cholent maker. How many Minuks can make that statement? But what is the most constant and unwavering part of Harvey’s life is his connection to Winnipeg, his past, friendships and of course, his family. Harvey’s father, Bert Minuk, is still active and once the pandemic has ended, you can bet as sure as there is a Minuk davening at the Ashkenazi on the High Holidays, that Harvey Minuk will be back in town to visit with his friends and the many Minuks.
Features
The greatest escape
Author’s father survived Holocaust with grace, joy intact
By MARTIN ZEILIG Former Winnipegger Bernard Pinsky grew up listening to his father Rubin Pinsky’s stories of his childhood in Poland and his time spent living in the forest, where he survived the Holocaust after fleeing a Nazi work camp in 1942.
“My father’s stories didn’t make the Holocaust scary for me as a child,” Pinsky says.
“He told me about scavenging for food in the forest, learning what berries and roots he could eat, making baskets and other things from birch bark and twigs, learning the animal sounds, etc.”
Pinsky, who lives in Vancouver, will speak at the Winnipeg launch of his book,Ordinary, Extraordinary — My Father’s Life (Behind the Book), on Sunday — the anniversary of Kristallnacht — in honour of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The program will feature a conversation between Pinsky and Belle Jarniewski, executive director of the Jewish Heritage Centre. The event is presented by the centre in partnership with Jewish Child and Family Service and the philanthropic Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation, for which Pinsky, a retired lawyer and community leader, is the chairman.
Of his father, a former yeshiva student, Pinsky says, “He was not a particularly successful businessman in Canada, although we didn’t feel poor; we had what we needed. I saw how hard he worked, how positive he was, how he provided for his family despite not knowing any English or French when he came to Canada in his 20s.
“Despite his being an ordinary man, I realized that his life had taken an extraordinarily difficult route, which he overcame to create a normal, ordinary life for himself and his family.”
Pinsky wanted to honour his father, so for his 72nd birthday in 1996, he wrote a manuscript about his life as a gift.
“He was very happy to get it, but by then he had some mini-strokes (TIAs) and I doubt he ever read the whole manuscript,” Pinsky says via email.
He also sent the manuscript to some relatives, including Melvin Fenson, a Winnipegger and former partner of Walsh Micay law firm, who had made Aliyah (immigration of Jews from the diaspora to Israel) in the 1970s.
“Melvin read the manuscript and said that it contained some good information about the Holocaust and Yad Vashem (Israel’s official memorial museum to the victims of the Holocaust) might accept it for their archives,” Pinsky says.
The manuscript was submitted in 1997 and Yad Vashem said it would be included in its catalogue, but nothing happened for a decade.
Then, in 2007, Pinsky received a letter from a history teacher in Djatlovo, Belarus, who was hoping to translate the manuscript into Russian.
It turned out to be the same town as Pinsky’s father grew up in — prewar Gzetl, Poland.
“I went to Djatlovo in 2012 and saw both the incredible work that the teacher, a Russian Orthodox woman, and others like her were doing to create memorials to the Jewish community that perished in the Holocaust, and I saw the small museum in that teacher’s high school that she had created based on my work.
“She said she did it because she is religious and preserving the memory of the Jews, who were now all gone, was the right thing to do.”
At the time, Pinsky was a lawyer with a busy practice and planned to finish the book when he retired. However, at 67, he moved on to a new job at a charitable foundation that also left him little free time.
Finally, his wife pointed out that, since it seemed likely he would work long hours for the rest of his life, the time to finish the book was “now or never.”
He spent evenings and weekends in 2023 finishing the book, had it edited and self-published it.
“Ordinary, Extraordinary is the survival story of Rubin Pinsky and some of Rubin’s immediate family,” he says. “But it is also the story of what Rubin did with his life after the Holocaust, his attitude towards life and his ability to pick himself up and to live life fully after every one of life’s blows, mostly with determination and with joy.
“His life could be an example of what people can endure in life and still be fulfilled and happy.”
Pinsky will offer one copy of the book to each family attending the event at the Berney Theatre. Register at 204-478-8590 or jewishheritage@jhcwc.org.
Features
“Sharing Shalom” – new children’s book explores how children deal with antisemitism
While her peers dance, swim, or practice martial arts outside of class, Leila attends Hebrew school twice a week, an act that makes her feel “connected to her grandparents, her aunts and uncles,” writes debut author Danielle Sharkan.
Illustrator Selina Alko (Stars of the Night), working in collage and thick swathes of jewel-tone acrylic paint, shows faces of relatives past and present, layered with texts of liturgical music and prayers.
When Leila arrives at the synagogue one day and finds it vandalized, she’s told that “Some people think we’re different, and they don’t like that.” She worries about how she’s perceived by others, not wanting “anyone to see she was Jewish”- In her anxious state, even her bagel lunch feels like a giveaway. But the more Leila tries to blend in, “the more she noticed the way her friends stood out,” and when she sees community members helping to repair the damaged synagogue, she embraces her identity once again.
The creators address an act of antisemitism with candor and sensitivity, reassuring readers that one can belong to multiple communities without hiding one’s beliefs or identity. Characters are portrayed with various abilities and skin tones.
An author’s note and glossary conclude. Recommended for ages 4-8.
About the author: Originally from Chicago, Danielle Sharkan now lives by the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado. When she’s not eggsploring the area with her two kids, she enjoys yoga, hiking, chai tea lattes and eggsperimenting in the kitchen. She’s eggstatic to introduce the world to Ellie the Eggspert, next March.
Sharing Shalom
By Danielle Sharkan, illus. by Selina Alko.
Holiday House, $18.99 *32p) ISBN. 978-0-8234-5556-0
Features
“No Jews Live Here” – new book tells poignant story of Hungarian survivors of the Holocaust
Review by JULIE KIRSH (former Sun Media News Research Director)
In 1950 my parents made the decision to leave Hungary, the country of their birth and ancestors. Both were Holocaust survivors. My father survived Auschwitz and was liberated from Buchenwald. My mother hid with false Christian papers in Budapest during the war. Most of their families perished. Coming to Canada without language, money or family support took courage. I am the lucky recipient of their strength, optimism and resilience.
In journalist John Lorinc’s book, No Jews Live Here, his parents and maternal grandmother, Ilona, arrived in Canada in 1956, the second and larger wave of Hungarian refugees. Many were Jewish Holocaust survivors.
Hungary was unique in the east European countries. Lorinc provides an excellent historical overview of Jewish life in Hungary before World War Two.
However the author emphasizes that freedom to succeed in Hungary came at a cost. Lorinc explains why many Jews became Christian converts. In Budapest, an enclave for a thriving Jewish population, Jews constituted 5% of Hungary’s total population. By 1941, over 17% of Budapest’s Jews had converted.
Lorinc’s grandparents who came from wealthy Jewish families converted in the 1920s. However it is important to note that the converts were not saved from the mass deportations in Hungary in 1944. Jews and converts died together in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Over the course of less than 3 months, with the complete cooperation and enthusiasm of the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie, 440,000 Jews were murdered. Lorinc’s grandfather was ordered to join a forced labour unit. He marched off wearing a white armband signifying that he was a converted Jew.
One of Lorinc’s poignant stories is his own father’s history as a slave labourer in the copper mines of Bor in Serbia. Often the labourers, of which many were middle class Jewish Hungarians who had never held a tool other than a writing pen in their hands, were starved, tortured and killed. The Hungarian overseers were especially cruel, according to Lorinc’s father.
Chapter 10 is titled Aftermath and although the Russian army liberated the surviving Hungarian Jews, the horrors of the Red Army soldiers are described relentlessly. Women and girls were raped. Looting was prevalent. Lorinc relates that it was not unusual for a Russian soldier to have 4 or 5 watches on his arm.
Ilona, ever the resilient survivor, along with other survivors in Budapest came up with creative ways to feed her family and at the same time, wrangled with legal authorities and her in-laws for the return of their farm and property. The feud between Ilona and her mother-in-law became much more than logistical. It was tangled with betrayal, grief and financial desperation, a classic family conspiracy theory.
In 1956 after the revolution in Hungary, Lorinc’s parents along with many other Hungarian refugees found themselves in Vienna. Choices to leave Europe were dependent on how easy it was to get an exit visa. The entry gates to Canada had been opened and the lineup at the Canadian embassy permitted applicants to stand in a foyer instead of waiting outside.
Toronto in the mid-50s was a “closed” city on Sundays. Even the swings in playgrounds were chained up to discourage children’s use. Italian men were hounded by police to prevent gathering on the sidewalks of Little Italy.
Like many other immigrants, Lorinc’s parents found jobs and gained a foothold in the security of Canadian life.
The author explains that as a child, he and his sister were baptized at a United Church, a classic “just in case” move for the still traumatized survivors.
Then at age 10, Lorinc’s father told him that he was Jewish but didn’t explain why this was a secret. The need to understand Jewish history in Hungary was planted at an early age.
The author goes on to describe his family’s life in the Toronto suburbs of the ‘70s and ‘80s.
A frequent visitor at the family home was his grandmother Ilona, colourful, dramatic and stubborn. She was consumed with “vanities and accusations” and insisted on wearing high heels and fashionable clothing well into old age. Ilona deeply harboured old family disagreements over ownership of the farm in Hungary.
Ilona’s obsession with her fading looks and the family history of betrayal never left her. Hungarian “Jewish Christmas” with Ilona became a battlefield of wounds and grievances.
After she died, Lorinc reflects that her stubborn character still influences his own world perspective, blurring the line between the life of the author and his grandmother’s story.
Lorinc recounts in detail the need for conversion and hiding one’s Jewishness in an historical context. Before the war, Hungary’s Jews looked the same and had the same freedoms as non-Jews. Seeing themselves first as loyal Hungarians didn’t save converted Jews from persecution and the gas chambers. In fact Lorinc argues that conversion contributed to anti-Semitic theories.
Finally Lorinc and his wife make a trip to Bor, the mine and labour camp where his father was interred. The author’s dedication to telling the story of his family’s tragedy and survival is admirable. Readers will find themselves savouring every word, looking within their own family history as part of the saga of human survival.
No Jews Live Here
by John Lorinc
(Coach House Books), 2024
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