Features
Larry & Evelyn Hecht have been devoted members of our community
By GERRY POSNER
Recently I was at a synagogue in Toronto to hear the former rabbi of the Tree of Life Temple in Pittsburgh recount the events of the tragedy at his former shul when, as the Torah was carried around the synagogue, who should appear in the aisle across from me, but Evelyn and Larry Hecht.
Now, surprises like that I welcome. We both did a double take. I then reflected on the time when Evelyn and I sat on the rabbi search committee at the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue and we were charged with the task of going to New Jersey to scout out a potential rabbi for the synagogue. That job was but one of only a few that Evelyn and her husband Larry undertook (and in fact still undertake) as active members of the Winnipeg Jewish community. The fact is that Hecht is a name synonymous with strong participation in communal life.
And why not? The name Hecht means spears or arms. It is like a sharp weapon that pierces the enemy – just as Larry and Evelyn have pierced through the wall of passivity and changed so many organizations in a positive way.
The team of Larry Hecht and the former Evelyn Malian was married in Winnipeg in 1961. They are now approaching their diamond anniversary. Even with three grown children and numerous grandchildren, they were never too busy to contribute to the community and continue to this day to those organizations that are so meaningful to them.
Just take a look at the groups that have benefited from the involvement of Evelyn Hecht over these past 60 years. It began with the CJA Young Leadership, Hadassah and Ramah Hebrew School. She was just warming up. Evelyn co-chaired the Town Hall Lecture Series at the YMHA and, in 1978, she was awarded the Max Nathanson Young Leadership Award (which makes me wonder: When do they give out the Old Leadership Award?).
Evelyn also became active in the NCJW and their Opportunity Store. Perhaps one of her most significant contributions to the Winnipeg Jewish community was her tenure as the first female president of the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, where she pursued an egalitarian agenda still so very visible at that synagogue today.
She even served as Chair of the Manitoba Community Services Council. As well, for those whose memories are long, you might recall Evelyn as the host of the “Jewish Connection” cable TV show for many years. All of these volunteer roles ultimately led to Evelyn assuming the job as the Director of Community Relations for the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council, as it then was called. Thus, for a multitude of years, Winnipeg, and in particular the Jewish community of Winnipeg, have been beneficiaries of the Evelyn Hecht persona.
Husband Larry was right by her side along the way. Larry developed J. Hecht & Son into an international large fur manufacturing business whose products were sold throughout North America and Europe. He also was a huge contributor as a volunteer for many organizations in Winnipeg. He is one of a handful of third generation members of the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue and of the YMHA/ Rady JCC. Larry followed the model set by his father and grandfather when he became active in the Masonic Order.
Larry’s first stint as chair of an organization came when he served as Chair of the Talmud Torah Men’s Dinner in 1969. For years Larry was a willing canvasser for the Combined Jewish Appeal and even now serves as the Chair of the Redemption Committee, a difficult job for sure. And of course, Larry was a long term board member of the YMHA and was its president from 1993/94. He also served on the Va’ad Ha’ir. Moreover, Larry was Chair of the Safety Committee for the Downtown Biz for many years as well.
The Hechts might attribute their strong commitment to the general and Jewish community to the principles of Tzedakah, Chesed, and Derech Eretz first exemplified for them by their parents. I personally lament that there are not more Hecht types around today who exemplify these noble principles.
With all of that said, I wonder if Evelyn might well agree that the toughest assignment she had in her volunteer years was the hiring and firing of rabbis for the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue. What she does say was that the most important work in her professional career was the facilitating of the immigration into Winnipeg of so many Argentinians, beginning in 1998, as well as many newcomers from Israel. Even though Evelyn retired in 2006, her connection to these newcomers remains strong and the positive impact of these immigrants in our community continues to this day. It was for this contribution that caused Evelyn to be recipient of the Larry Hurtig Professional Leadership Award in 2019.
When it is all said and done, the Winnipeg Jewish community can be grateful for the time and effort that Larry and Evelyn have given to it. It has been a “ Hecht” of a run for them and happily, they keep running.
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/
Features
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