Features
Jewish Life in Canada, seen through the eyes of William Kurelek
By IRENA KARSHENBAUM In December, as I was running up a steep hill in the bitter Calgary cold, which is not as bitter as the Winnipeg cold, I was cursing myself for not having covered my brilliant head with a woollen scarf.
Wearing my 1916 prairie costume, underneath a 25 year-old sheep skin coat that now passes for historic, I scaled the hill at Heritage Park while worrying I might suffer a heart attack triggered by too much vigorous movement in the frigid cold. The angle of the hill dropped down and my brisk pace turned into a slow, penguin-like waddle to steady myself on the ice.
My eyes looked up and facing me, as if on the palm of my hand, was a scene from another time. The sun danced on the dazzling, white snow and in the near distance, across the railroad tracks, stood a little, yellow false-front building, once called the Montefiore Institute, framed by naked, trembling trees, and where I was headed. A horse-drawn wagon turned the corner and slowly crossed along the path. Not being satisfied with just savouring the moment, I grabbed my phone. An image emerged on my screen, worthy of a cozy children’s book, or a William Kurelek painting.
My vision was prescient.
That afternoon, on my volunteer shift as an interpreter, in the kitchen of the Montefiore Institute, which also served as the cheder, I looked through the sideboard buffet that housed a small library. I was searching for a Hanukkah story to read to the children when my eyes rested on Jewish Life in Canada, by William Kurelek and Abraham Arnold.
I flipped the pages of this old book and even though I was familiar with Kurelek’s work, I suddenly could see that the artist’s paintings depicting early Canadian Jewish life looked an awful lot like us, the costumed interpreters bringing Jewish life, to life, to the guests visiting the restored 1916 prairie synagogue. I was momentarily confused, was I a subject of a William Kurelek painting that had magically come alive?
Not wanting the other interpreters to think I am some kind of a book thief (which, of course, I am!) I announced, loudly, that I will be borrowing the book to write my latest story about an out-of-print book — Bernie didn’t know this yet — with promises to return it.
At home, I read the book. Divided into two parts, the first half being the works of William Kurelek (1927-1977), with his own writings about each painting, and the second by, Abraham Arnold (1922-2011) — who served as the founding Executive Director of the Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada — and who contributed a series of essays about various aspects of Jewish life, that read more like a text book.
Kurelek credits “the two Abes of Winnipeg” — Arnold and Abe Schwartz — in his introduction for giving him the support he needed to bring the book project to life.
Kurelek recounts how, in 1973, the idea for the book emerged and was meant as an expression of thanks to the Jewish community for his success as an artist. It was Winnipeg-native, Avrom Isaacs (1926-2016), who first discovered the artist and took the risk of exhibiting his work, a break Kurelek desperately needed having for ten years tried “in vain on my own for recognition.” Isaacs gave Kurelek two opening nights, the first being sponsored by a Jewish women’s organization (he doesn’t say which one) that also bought a few of his pieces. He states that in fact his first art patrons were Jewish and only later, “followed by those of British origin.”
Jewish Life in Canada contains 16 of Kurelek’s paintings, all of which as indicated in the book, are held in the collection of a Mr. and Mrs. Jules Loeb, and was published by Hurtig Publishers of Edmonton in 1976. The book is out of print and unavailable, except through maybe a lucky find at a used book store or on Amazon. My search for a used copy, surprisingly, brought up information that a new edition of a Jewish Life in Canada, this time with writing by Sarah Milroy, will be published by Goose Lane Editions of Fredericton in May of 2023.
Through his paintings, Kurelek, born to a Ukrainian family in Whitford, Alberta, depicts Jewish life in Canada from the east coast, “Jewish Doctor’s Family Celebrating Passover in Halifax,” to the prairies in “Baker’s Family Celebrating the Sabbath in Edmonton” and “Jewish Wedding in Calgary” set in front of the original House of Jacob synagogue, to the west with, “General Store in Vancouver Before World War One.”
Having converted to Catholicism in adulthood, Kurelek doesn’t shy away from religious subjects displaying remarkable knowledge about Judaism’s religious practices. In “Yom Kippur” he shows what the Holy Day looks like with congregants immersed deep in prayer, men wearing their tallis, women praying in the women’s balcony. He paints a white parochet explaining that, “White, symbol of purity, is the dominant colour of this solemn day.” He used Toronto’s Kiever Synagogue as the basis for this work.
Kurelek shows how Jews toiled in their new land with works like “Morosnick’s Market, Dufferin Street, Winnipeg,” “Teperman’s Wrecking Firm in Toronto” with men sorting scrap metal, men sewing in “Jews in the Clothing Business in Winnipeg” and “Jewish Scrap Collector Questioned by a Toronto Policeman,” a composite work inspired by Kurelek’s memories and multiple photographs including one from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
Four of Kurelek’s paintings depict Jewish farming life.
In “Pioneering at Edenbridge, Saskatchewan,” Kurelek writes about the history of the colony, which was settled in 1906 by 20 Jewish immigrants, originally from Lithuania, who decided to leave their new-found home in South Africa for a second migration to fertile farm lands along the Carrot River. It is this painting, with its horse-drawn wagon and wooden homes in the distance, that reminded me of the view I encountered at Heritage Park that December day.
In “Bender Hamlet, the Farming Colony that Failed,” Kurelek displays good knowledge of Jewish prairie history, listing all the farm colonies of Saskatchewan and Alberta, even mentioning my beloved Montefiore where the Montefiore Institute originally stood, also Camper, Pine Ridge and Bender Hamlet of Manitoba. He paints Bender Hamlet, founded in 1903, with a few, far away, grey buildings set against a vast sky and yellow, grassy fields littered with rocks. The inspiration for the painting, he notes, came from Abe Schwartz, who gave Kurelek his great-aunt’s diary describing her life farming in North Dakota. Kurelek explains how he incorporated pieces of the diary into the picture frame, “I want to convey the idea that these memories are like voices in the wind as it sighs through the thistles of the overgrown fields and through the chinks of abandoned buildings.”
Kurelek’s Jewish Life in Canada is more than a thanks to the Jewish community, but a gift of memory that reveals a life that once was to future generations.
Irena Karshenbaum, founder of the project that gifted the restored Montefiore Institute to Calgary’s Heritage Park, volunteers as an interpreter in the synagogue and writes. www.irenakarshenbaum.com
Features
Patterns of Erasure: Genocide in Nazi Europe and Canada
By LIRON FYNE When we think of the word genocide, our minds often jump to the Holocaust, the mass-scale, systemic government-led murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, whose unprecedented scale and methods led to the very term ‘genocide’ being coined. On January 27th, 2026, we will bow our heads for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 80th year of remembrance.
Less frequently do we connect genocidal intent to the campaign against Indigenous peoples in Canada; the forced displacement, cultural destruction, and systematic killing that sought to erase Indigenous peoples. The genocide conducted by the Nazis and the genocidal intent of the Canadian government, though each unique in scale, motive, and implementation, share many conceptual similarities. Both were driven by ideologies of racial superiority, executed through governmental precision, and justified by the perpetrators as a moral mission.
At their core rests the concept of dehumanization. In Nazi Germany, Jews were viewed as subhuman, contaminated, and a threat to the ‘Aryan’ race. In Canada, Indigenous peoples were represented as obstacles to ‘progress’ and seen as hurdles to a Christian, Eurocentric nation. These ideas, this dehumanization, turned human beings into problems to be solved. Adolf Hitler called it the ‘Jewish question,’ leading to an official policy in 1942 called the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question,’ whereas Canadian officials called it the ‘Indian problem.’ The language is similar, a belief that one group’s existence endangers the destiny of another. The methods of extermination differed in practice and outcome, but the language of intent resembles one another.
The Holocaust’s concentration camps and carefully engineered gas chambers were designed for efficient, industrial-scale killing, resulting in mass murder. The well-organized plan of systematic degradation, deadly riots, brutal camp conditions, and designated killing centres were only a few of the ways the Nazis worked to eliminate the Jews. The Canadian government’s weapons were policy, assimilation and abandonment. Such as the Indian Act, reserves, and residential schools, which were all meant to ‘kill the Indian in the child,’ cutting generations off from their languages, families, and cultures. Thousands of Indigenous children died in residential schools, buried in unmarked graves near schools that called themselves places of learning. Both systems were backed by either religion or ideology; Nazi ideology brought together racist eugenic policies and virulent antisemitism, while Canada’s genocidal intent was supported by Christian Protestantism claiming to save Indigenous souls by erasing their heritage.
The Holocaust was a six-year campaign of complete industrialized extermination, mass murder with a mechanized intent, on a scale that remains historically unique. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission describes Canada’s indigenous genocide as a cultural one that unfolded over centuries through assimilation and the destruction of indigenous languages and identities. The Holocaust ended with the liberation of the camps and a global recognition of the atrocities committed. However, the generational trauma and dehumanization of antisemitism carry on. For Indigenous peoples in Canada, the effects of the genocidal intent continue to this day, visible in displacement, poverty, and intergenerational trauma. While these histories differ in form and timeline, both are rooted in dehumanization and the belief that some lives are worth less than others.
A disturbing similarity lies in the aftermath: silence and denial. The Holocaust forced the world to confront the atrocity with the vow of ‘Never Again,’ which has now been unearthed and reformed as ‘Never Again is Now,’ after the October 7th, 2023, massacre by Hamas. The largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust, and the denial of the atrocities committed on October 7th, highlight the same Holocaust denial we see rising around the world. In Canada, for decades, the genocidal intent was hidden behind narratives of kindness and social progress. Only in recent years, through survivor testimony for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the discovery of unmarked graves, has the truth gained recognition. But acknowledgment without justice risks repeating the same patterns of erasure.
Comparing these atrocities committed is not about comparing pain or scale; it is about understanding the shared systems that enabled them. Both demonstrate how racism, superiority, and dehumanization can be used to justify the destruction of human beings. Remembering is not enough in Canada. True remembrance demands accountability, land restitution, reparations, and education that confronts Canada’s ongoing colonial legacy. When we say ‘Never Again is Now’, we hold collective action to combat antisemitism in all forms. The same applies to Truth & Reconciliation; it must be more than a slogan; we must apply action to Truth & ReconciliACTION.
Liron Fyne is a 12th-grade student at Gray Academy of Jewish Education in Winnipeg. They are currently a Kenneth Leventhal High School Intern at StandWithUs Canada, a non-profit education organization that combats antisemitism.
Features
Will the Iranian Regime Collapse?
By HENRY SREBRNIK When U. S. President Donald Trump restored “maximum sanctions” pressure against Iran a year ago, he was clear about its goals: Deny Iran a nuclear weapon, dismantle its terror proxy network and stop its ballistic missile program.
The government in Tehran has fended off through violence and repression previous large-scale protests but now may limit or hold its fire. After all, Trump has been willing to go where no U.S. president has, including the authorization of a strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity last year and the recent capture of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
Trump has demonstrated that his government is willing to use military measures to overthrow an enemy regime, and Tehran was, perhaps surprisingly, one of the closest allies of Maduro. The two countries were united by their approach to international sanctions and their ability to survive in American enmity.
Over the past three decades, this combination of political sympathy and anti-American rhetoric developed into a complex web of cooperation involving oil, finance, industry and security.
Since Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, came to power in 1999, relations between Tehran and Caracas tightened significantly. During his first visit to Iran in 2001, Chavez declared that he had arrived “to help pave the way for peace, justice, stability, and progress in the 21st century.”
Nearly 300 economic, infrastructure, gas, and oil agreements were signed, worth billions of dollars. At one point, Venezuela even considered selling F-16 fighter jets to Tehran, while Iran supplied Venezuela with advanced Mohajer-6 drones. All this now comes to an end.
Maduro’s removal constitutes a severe blow to the operational base of Tehran in South America. With Maduro gone, “Iran is now in the eye of the storm,” observed Fawaz Gerges, Middle East analyst and professor of international relations at London’s School of Economics and Political Science.
“The big lesson out of the fall of the Venezuelan regime is not Colombia, not Greenland,” he said. “The Iranians know that Iran is the next target. Not only of the Trump administration, but also of the Benjamin Netanyahu government” in Israel.
Israel, which has long perceived Iran as an existential threat, launched 12 days of what it described as pre-emptive strikes on military and nuclear sites in Iran last June, with U.S. war planes attacking three major nuclear facilities.
They now see Iran as being cornered, extremely vulnerable and weak at this moment. “I think they’re piling on the pressure. They’re hoping that they could really, basically bring about regime change in Iran,” Gerges added.
On Jan. 12, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian shifted focus away from Iran’s stuttering economy and suppression of dissent and towards his country’s longstanding geopolitical adversaries, Israel and the United States. Speaking on state broadcaster IRIB, Pezeshkian claimed that “the same people that struck this country” during Israel’s 12-day war last June were now “trying to escalate these unrests with regard to the economic discussion.
“They have trained some people inside and outside the country; they have brought in some terrorists from outside,” he charged, alleging that those responsible had attacked a bazaar in the northern city of Rasht and set mosques on fire.
“My assumption is that the Mossad is active in Tehran behind the scenes,” contended Ahron Bregman, who teaches at King’s College London and has written extensively on Israeli intelligence operations. “Israeli officials are unusually quiet.” There are clear instructions not to talk and “not to be seen to be involved in any way.”
“I’d be very surprised if Israeli agents were not active within Iran right now,” defence analyst Hamze Attar maintained. “They’re going to be doing everything they can to make sure these protests continue and escalate.”
But anything that Israel is up to will of course be covert. This restraint is a calculated approach taken to avoid disrupting a process of regime change that may be driven internally. Intervening would only confirm the regime’s claims that the protesters are “Zionist agents,” a charge that could shift popular anger onto the demonstrators and douse the movement.
“Any visible involvement would give the Iranians an excuse to intensify repression,” explained Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and former head of Iran research in an Israeli military intelligence branch
Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, who maintains he wants peace with Israel and the United States, suggests Iran faces a historic moment. “In all these years, I’ve never seen an opportunity as we see today in Iran. Iranian people are more than ever committed to bringing an end to this regime,” he stated. “By God, it is about time that Iran gets its opportunity to free itself from a tyrannical regime.”
Iranians have seen the regime and its backers exposed and humiliated by an American administration and Israel, and they are taking advantage of it. But it won’t be easy. This is a religious nomenklatura that will use all means at its disposal to hold on to power. Never underestimate their cruelty and resolve
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
New autobiography by Holocaust survivor Hedy Bohm – who went on to testify in trials of two Nazi war criminals
Book Review by Julie Kirsh, Former Sun Media News Research Director
My parents were Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivors who arrived in Toronto in 1951 without family or friends. In the late 50s my mother met Hedy Bohm outside of our downtown apartment and quickly connected with her. Both women had suffered the loss of all family in the Shoah. Over the years our families’ custom became sharing our dining table with the Bohm family for the Jewish high holidays. The tradition continues today with the second generation.
Hedy was born in 1928 in the city of Oradea in Romania. She was a pampered only child, adored by her father and very much attached to her mother. Although Hedy was an adolescent, she was kept from hearing about the rising anti-semitism around her in her hometown. She was protected and sheltered like any child. Memoirs from other adolescents like Elie Wiesel, aged 15 in Auschwitz, Samuel Pisar, liberated at 16, and Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who was found in Buchenwald by American soldiers at age 8, made me wonder about the resilience and strength of children who survived like Hedy.
Hedy was only 16 years old when she walked through the gates of hell, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hedy’s poignant retelling of this pivotal moment in her young life was the sudden separation from her father and moments later from her mother. Somehow Hedy’s mother got ahead of her upon their arrival at Auschwitz. Hedy called out to her. Her mother turned and they looked at each other. A Nazi guard prevented Hedy from joining her mother. Hedy has always been tormented by this moment of separation. Did her mother know that she was walking to her death?
Hedy writes that she was focused on survival in the camps. She concentrated on eating whatever food was given and keeping clean by washing daily in icy, cold water before the roll call. When she contracted diarrhea, she remembered her mother’s homemade remedy of gnawing on charred wood. Her naivete and innocence were overcome with a strong inner determination to stay alive so that she could see her mother again.
Hedy recounts the terrible hunger that everyone endured. One day, spotting some carrots in a warehouse, Hedy was appointed by her aunt to run and grab what she could. Luckily she evaded the armed guard who would have shot her on the spot.
On April 14, 1945, Hedy’s day of liberation, she learned the terrible fate of her mother. The return home for the survivors was a further tragedy when they realized the loss of family and community.
In her memoir, Hedy describes meeting Imre, an older boy from her town whom she eventually married. Their flight from Romania to Budapest to Pier 21 in Halifax to Toronto is documented in harrowing detail.
Hedy recounts how in Toronto no one wanted to know the stories of the survivors. This was a world before Eichmann’s trial in Israel in 1961 and the TV series, The Holocaust, in 1978. The floodgates for information from the survivors opened late in their lives.
In Toronto, after many failed enterprises, Imre and Hedy stumbled onto the shoe selling business. In 1959, they leased a small shoe store close to Honest Ed’s in downtown Toronto. Surprisingly, the business according to Hedy, became very profitable. Many years later, after Imre’s sudden death due to a heart attack, Hedy continued to manage their shoe business while taking care of her daughter, Vicky and son, Ronnie.
In 1996, Hedy was introduced to Rabbi Jordan Pearlson. Their love match made Hedy feel that she had been given a wonderful gift, late in life, which she welcomed.
Jordan died in 2008. Hedy endured and carried on with yoga and tai chi both as a teacher and devoted practitioner.
A new purpose in life opened up for Hedy when she was invited to be a speaker for the Holocaust Education Centre (now the Toronto Holocaust Museum). She spoke to mostly non-Jewish students whom she visited at their schools outside of Toronto.
Visiting Auschwitz with the March of the Living for the first time in 2010, Hedy faced her fears about returning to the place that held the horrors. She was fortunate to meet Jordana Lebowitz, a student from Toronto who developed a multimedia presentation called ShadowLight. Hedy’s contribution to teaching others about the Holocaust by sharing her experience, is immeasurable.
In 2014, Hedy was asked to be a witness at the trial of Oskar Groning , “the accountant of Auschwitz”, in Germany. In 2016, she appeared as a witness for the trial of the Nazi guard, Reinhold Hanning. He was sentenced to a mere five years in prison and Groning died before he could start his jail sentence. In having the courage to participate in these war criminal trials, Hedy spoke for her parents and all the innocents who could not speak for themselves.
Hedy’s talks to students always include an admonishment to be kind, to trust in themselves and work for the greater good. She rose above her own fears of sharing her story by speaking publicly.
Hedy’s story of survival and perseverance will remain a beacon to future generations, ensuring that hope and good will endure even in the worst of times.
Reflection
by Hedy Bohm
Published in 2026 by The Azrieli Foundation
To order a copy of the book go to https://memoirs.azrielifoundation.org/titles/reflection/