Features
Memoir of Hungarian Holocaust survivor who worked in Auschwitz camp hospital recently translated into English
Review by JULIE KIRSH (former Sun Media News Research Director)
In order to avoid a death march, my weak, ailing, Hungarian Jewish father dug a hole on the grounds of Buchenwald. He pulled a dead man’s body over his own. The unfortunate man had died of typhus, which my father also caught.
On April 11, 1945, the US army entered Buchenwald and rescued my father. He spent three weeks in a Red Cross camp recovering from typhus and starvation before making his way back home. Once he reached home in Hungary, he spent eight months in a sanatorium before being restored back to health.
With that as preamble, I had a particular interest in reading the memoir of another Holocaust survivor, József Debreczeni: “Cold Crematorium: Reflections from the Land of Auschwitz.”
The reader learns that the “Cold Crematorium” of József Debreczeni’s memoir was the Dornhau “camp hospital”. Dornhau was the headquarters of a vast network of concentration and slave labour camps in World War II. In April 1944, Debreczeni was deported to Auschwitz from his home in Serbia. He was a slave labourer in three subcamps that were satellites of Gross-Rosen, which Debreczeni refers to as the “Land of Auschwitz.”
With his journalist’s eye for detail, Debreczeni makes the inexplicable horrors of his experience come alive for the reader. The terrible suffering of hunger, the back breaking labour for slaves who were once doctors, lawyers, and businessmen before the war, are all described in the book. Even an addiction to tobacco becomes for some as important as food. The reader feels the frost and cold of winter in 1944 for the inmates – who were without shoes and underwear – and only rags for clothing.
Debreczeni’s description of the Dornhau hospital forces the reader to confront a madhouse: “We’ve wound up among raving maniacs. A dizzing cacophony of moaning, whimpering, shrieking, whining and delirious snarling. The underworld is seething”.
Some of Debreczeni’s writing is sardonic. He tells of a hierarchy of “nobility” in the hospital. Once honourable physicians in Hungary are forced to become part of the Nazi killing machine. However, the newly arrived doctors and medical students remain “stuck outside of Eden.”
Similar to my father, Debreczeni, burning with fever, pulls a dead man’s lice-ridden blanket over his emaciated body. He is “burning in the cold crematorium.”
Night in Dornhau is described in a heart rending fashion. Six hundred men are pressed close together. Every third person is dying.
At “Appell” next morning, the dead are counted. The black humour continues with the inmates coming up with a variation: “Report if you are dead”.
In December,1944, Dornhau had become a hub, a repository for prisoners who were close to death. Debreczeni remarks that the Nazis were “in the grips of the psychosis of anxiety that comes with sensing the end.” Still the death machine grinds onward with the few survivors dying even as liberation draws near. In the last days of the horror, the food rations drop even further.
Debreczeni pays honour and shows compassion to his fellow prisoners: Bergman, Herz, Gleiwitz, Nébel and others, by describing their origins and final fates.
In the last days, typhus breaks out in Dornhau. Diarrhea, edema and high fever are raging. With suitable nourishment and draining of the body’s water, my father survived typhus. Most did not.
Reading the final pages of Cold Crematorium was among the most anxious readings of my life. Despite a vision of liberation and the Russian army only seven kilometers away, the SS guards still lock the exit gates each evening. Finally, liberation arrives. Debreczeni is nursed back to health by Russian nurses. Reporters and journalists pour into Dornhau and are described as “Martians of the universe beyond the barbed wire.”
Cold Crematorium was first published in Hungarian in 1950, as a haunting memoir, sparing no harsh words for the SS and their collaborators, but also a telling reminder of how the world forgets.
More than seventy years later, Cold Crematorium is reaching a wider audience with its translation into English and several other languages. The book has helped me understand the last days leading up to liberation and gives me further insight into my father’s remarkable survival.
“Cold Crematorium: Reflections from the Land of Auschwitz”
By József Debreczeni
Translated from the Hungarian by Paul Olchváry (St. Martin’s Press, 2023)
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Features
The Canadian Online Casino Market: Overview for 2024
The online casino industry in Canada continues to show remarkable growth and has managed to entice both players and analysts. Certain provinces underwent policy changes that have successfully attracted the digital gambling business outside of the Great White North. Some of these brands are a list of best online casinos in Canada, and they are a go-to choice for thousands of gamblers. You can read in-depth reviews to find out what top-rated operators have in store in terms of games, bonuses, and other relevant features for Canadian players.
The policies that allowed foreign brands to enter the Canadian market were approved in 2022. Now that enough time has passed let’s see what is the situation on the online gambling front and talk about some key players.
Market Size
The growth of the Canadian casino market has been nothing short of spectacular. The data from the Canadian Gaming Association revealed that in 2024, almost 20 million people (50% of the Canadian population) have gambled at an online casino at least once. It is a significant ramp up in activity compared to 2020 when approximately 10 million players used internet gambling sites. In other words, the market is growing very actively, and some estimates claim the number of active players will surpass 30 million by 2029.
To put these numbers into perspective, let’s see how these numbers impact the revenue. By 2024, the online casino gross gaming revenue of Canada is projected to be more than $2 billion, up from $750 million in 2020.
Regulatory Landscape
The legal status of online casinos in Canada is determined by local governments. Despite federal provisions contained in the Criminal Code, individual provinces are free to regulate and license gambling. This has resulted in a situation where some provinces are more liberal with legislation compared to others. What’s more, certain provincial regulators even run their own gambling sites.
The most populous province in Canada, Ontario has led the way in the regulation of online gambling. In April 2022, they opened the doors to private offshore brands, so long as they are compliant with iGaming Ontario. The move has resulted in earrings around $1.26 billion by the end of March 2023. Other provinces have been observing this development and it has created a benchmark for future regulation of the industry throughout the country.
Economic Impact
The economic effect of online casinos in Canada has had an upward trajectory. Tax revenues from internet casinos are projected to reach impressive figures in 2024:
- The expected online casino GGR of $9 billion and the current GST rate of 5% puts the federal government tax revenues at around $450 million from online casinos.
- Total collected taxes from internet casinos in Ontario are estimated at $1.2 billion, depending on the provincial tax rate and gaming activities.
- Jobs are another social-economic advantage of online casino business. The industry is projected to generate over 25,000 direct employment opportunities in 2024; a notable increase from 2021 when that figure was 15, 000. Some examples of these jobs include software development, customer support agents, marketing and data analysis.
Key Players in the Market
In Canada, online gambling is regulated by provinces and each province has its own government-run operators. Here is a list of some state-owned gaming sites by province:
- British Columbia
- PlayNow.com: Currently managed by the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, PlayNow.com delivers online casino games, sports betting, and lottery.
- Manitoba
- PlayNow.com: Similarly, through BCLC, the Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries Corporation (MLLC) employs PlayNow.com to offer online gambling to the people of Manitoba.
- Ontario
- OLG.ca: Online gambling in Ontario is run under the OLG, which runs a site OLG.ca where people can play casino games, buy tickets, and bet on sports.
- Quebec
- Loto-Québec is the provincial regulator that also hosts online casino games, sports betting, poker, and lottery. In 2022-2023, 13.5% (almost $404M) of their total revenue came from online products.
iGaming Ontario or iGO is an affiliated company of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario tasked to regulate and oversee online gaming in Canada. The body works with private operators to offer a regulated gaming network.
Some of the key iGaming Ontario operators include:
- BetMGM
- DraftKings
- FanDuel
- PointsBet
- 888 Holdings
These operators are affiliated with iGaming Ontario, which guarantees access to a secure gambling platform.
Player Preferences and Popular Games
Canadian players have also exhibited a relative preference for casino games. According to recent data from iGaming Ontario, for the period from April 1 to June 30, 2024:
- Casino games like slots, live, computer-based table games, and peer-to-peer bingo, represented 84% (nearly $15.5 billion) of total wagering handle and 73% ($529 million) of gaming revenues.
- Esports and novelty bets along with regular and proposition bets contributed 14% of the total wagers, and they were worth $2.5 billion. This roughly translates to a gaming revenue of $181 million.
- Peer-to-peer poker, according to stats from iGaming Ontario, generated $67 million in gaming revenue (2023-2024), and the value of wagers placed exceeds $1.6 billion. Many players participate in multiple online tournaments simultaneously, so getting the accurate number of active players is rather difficult.
Future Outlook
The future of the Canadian online casino market looks promising, with several factors driving continued growth:
- Expanding player base: According to estimates on Statista, the number of active users will reach nearly 34 million by 2029. The current user penetration rate is 69.4%, mainly thanks to the high accessibility of online gambling and macroeconomic factors. Casino entertainment is widely available through smartphones, and Canadians have enough disposable income (USD 34 421 a year per capita) to spend on this leisure.
- Technological advancements. The combination of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in online casino games could revolutionize the players’ experience. Not to mention, AR is considered to be one of the top investments in the future, which is why most casinos are starting to add it to their portfolio.
- Regulatory evolution. The reality is this industry is still new, so there’s a lot of back and forth on the regulatory front. Generally, if online gambling is fully legal (casinos and sportsbooks are permitted) the regulations only get tighter from that point onward. There are new restrictions on advertising, game features, spending limits, etc. Also, fees that businesses pay to cover the social costs of gambling tend to get higher.
- Crypto integrations. Even though cryptocurrencies aren’t legal tender in Canada, they can still be purchased legally. There are several crypto trading businesses that are authorized to exchange currency in Canada, which means these digital coins are readily available. As a result, we will likely see more gambling sites with crypto integrations that Canadians can use.
Market estimations show that the Canadian online casino industry has the potential to record a CAGR of approximately 6.5% in the next five years and it may reach $3.7 billion by 2025.
It wasn’t long ago that the Canadian online casino market was viewed as nothing more than a gamble. But now it is a major player in the country’s digital economy. From the prairies to the coast, Canadians are going online, placing their bets, and contributing to the growth of a new and fast-growing sector.
Features
Revisiting Boris Birshtein’s Efforts to Save a Holy Torah
Boris Birshtein had not been previously associated with saving Torah scrolls. He was a businessman. However this story will show an amazing tale that must be read in order to be believed.
The Torah, known as the five books of Moses, is the holiest object in Judaism. But in the case of the Torah scrolls found in a ravaged synagogue in Chișinău, Moldova, there is an added layer of significance due to their incredible survival story. And Boris Birshtein provided a helping hand.
Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum recalls the emotional moment when he first encountered these sacred scrolls shortly after Moldova’s independence from the Soviet Union. “When we arrived at the devastated synagogue in Chișinău, we discovered about thirty Torah scrolls, some inscribed with messages that spoke of their miraculous survival during the Holocaust.”
The scrolls, eventually saved by businessman Boris Birshtein, were inscribed with symbols of faith, echoed the resilience of the Jewish people. Rabbi Greenbaum describes one scroll bearing the message, “Joy is the happiness of the soul,” symbolizing the enduring joy of the Torah even amid unimaginable adversity.
For the Chișinău Jewish community, the discovery was bittersweet. The scrolls were found, but their condition revealed the toll of years of neglect. Recognizing the need for a large-scale restoration, the community knew who could help. Enter a Jewish businessman known as Boris Birshtein.
The Role of Boris Birshtein
They turned to Boris Joseph Birshtein, a Jewish-Lithuanian philanthropist and respected business leader in Moldova, to help bring these scrolls to safety. He played a critical role in securing permission from the Moldovan government, enabling the scrolls to be transported from Chișinău to Tel Aviv for restoration.
Reflecting on this mission, Birshtein stated, “The Nazis sought to destroy the very existence of the Torah, and everything it stood for. When I learned of the scrolls in the deserted Chișinău synagogue, restoring them was an opportunity to stand up to the attempt to eradicate Jewish life from the heart of Moldova.”
He envisioned the restoration as a chance to honor the joyous occasions once celebrated around each Torah scroll, representing not only preservation but also a revival of Jewish history and tradition.
Celebrating the Completion of Restoration
After years of meticulous work, the restoration project was completed in December 1996, culminating in an emotional ceremony held at the Nehora Yeshiva, “Lev Ya’akov,” in Mevaseret Zion.
This amazing event, filled with reverence and pride, attracted many, including respected rabbis and public figures. Birshtein had the honor of presenting one of these precious scrolls to the yeshiva, a gift that symbolized the dedication of many to safeguarding Jewish heritage.
In his speech accepting the Torah, Rabbi Greenbaum praised the partnership between people like Birshtein, who support the Torah, and the Chișinău community.
He likened this partnership to the biblical figures Zebulun and Issachar, expressing deep gratitude for Birshtein’s involvement. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of Israel and a survivor of Buchenwald, also spoke, emphasizing the significance of the mitzvah “Write this song for yourselves,” which resonates deeply with the yeshiva’s students.
This momentous occasion at Nehora Yeshiva marked not only a new chapter in the life of the institution but also a tribute to the Jewish communities that had originally cherished these scrolls.
Birshtein reflected, saying, “I am honored to have played a small role in bringing the sacred Torah scrolls from Chișinău to Tel Aviv for restoration, and delighted that one of them will now be cherished at the Nehora Yeshiva. Indeed, joy is in the happiness of the soul, and my soul is filled with happiness at this moment.”
The journey of these Torah scrolls—from war-torn Europe to restoration in Tel Aviv—highlights the enduring power of faith and community and the unbreakable link between the Torah and the Jewish people.
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