Features
The late Rabbi Zalman Schachter’s time in Winnipeg recalled at lively evening hosted by Jewish Heritage Centre
(This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21, 2016 issue of The Jewish Post & News) By BERNIE BELLAN
It was billed as an evening that would be devoted to “Rabbi Zalman Schachter and the Winnipeg origins of the Jewish Renewal Movement”.
Like just about everything else associated with the late Rabbi Schachter (who died in 2014 at the age of 90), it was an evening not without controversy.
The Jewish Heritage Centre promoted the program, which was held Monday, Dec. 12, in the Multipurpose Room of the Asper Campus, as part of “its synagogue series connected with the Synagogues Exhibit at the Asper Campus.”
With the ever-clever Prof. Dan Stone serving as host, the audience of over 100 was treated to a series of reminiscences about Rabbi Schachter’s 19 years spent in Winnipeg (from 1956-75) – a time that paralleled the advent of the “New Age” movement, also a time during which the use of hallucinogenic drugs became highly popular among young people.
The evening featured three main speakers: Rabbi Alan Green, who was given his “smichah” by Rabbi Schachter; Prof. Justin Jaron Lewis, an expert on Hasidism and the organizer of an interview project centering around Rabbi Schachter’s time in Winnipeg; and Alexandra Granke, a graduate student at the University of Manitoba in the Department of Religion, whose Masters thesis dealt with the influence Winnipeg’s Jewish community had on Rabbi Schachter’s thinking.
There was also a contribution from Murray (Moish) Goldenberg, who was a protégé of Rabbi Schachter’s. Goldenberg read a poem devoted to the late rabbi’s memory.
Following the speakers’ presentations, Dan Stone invited anyone in the audience who wanted to tell of their own experience with Rabbi Schachter to speak up. One by one individuals told stories about how Rabbi Schachter touched their lives.
Lest anyone reading this think that the evening was nothing more than a love-in for Rabbi Schachter, however, there were some negative notes struck as well. Although he was undoubtedly a man of great charisma, Zalman Schachter had his detractors. Two themes mentioned several times, both by the featured speakers and audience members, coursed through recollections of his time spent in Winnipeg: his faithlessness when it came to his relationships with women, and his overt championing of drug use.
Following is an account of some of what was said:
Rabbi Green who, Dan Stone told the audience, will be leaving Winnipeg in 2018 to move to Fairfield, Iowa – the centre of transcendental meditation, described first meeting Rabbi Schachter in Los Angeles in the 1970s.
In time, Green became a devout follower of Rabbi Schachter’s, culminating in his receiving his smichah from Rabbi Schachter in Philadelphia, where he found the rabbi “surrounded by a bunch of old hippies” – some of whom “were leaders of the New Left in the 1960s.”
“My first class with him,” Rabbi Green said, “was kind of a Sinai movement for me. It literally took my breath away.”
Rabbi Schachter had a multitude of interests, including “Jewish mysticism, humanism, and modern psychology” among others, noted Rabbi Green. As well, “he was fluent in many languages.”
What impressed Rabbi Green quite deeply, he said, was how Rabbi Schachter “brought together Judaism and Indian mysticism”.
“How often we let fear get in the way of Jewish mysticism,” Rabbi Green said Rabbi Schachter once told him.
Turning to the subject of the Jewish Renewal Movement and Rabbi Schachter’s central role in that movement, Rabbi Green observed that “there are now hundreds of Jewish Renewal rabbis – most of them ordained by Rabbi Schachter.”
It was in Winnipeg, Rabbi Green noted, that Rabbi Schachter “created the first rainbow talit”. It was also here that “the interface between psychedelic drugs and spiritual practice” first took root among Rabbi Schachter and his many followers.
Rabbi Green commented, however, “that I always found this phase of Rabbi Schachter’s life to be somewhat embarrassing”.
Following Rabbi Green’s presentation, Justin Jaron Lewis took the podium to offer some observations about Rabbi Schachter’s time in Winnipeg. Lewis noted that Rabbi Schachter’s own autobiography has relatively little to say about the time he spent here, even though it was a fairly lengthy period. As well, the Wikipedia article about the rabbi barely mentions his time spent in Winnipeg, Lewis also observed.
It was partly because of that vacuum, Lewis explained that, at the behest of his colleague in the Judaic Studies program at the University of Manitoba, Ben Baader, Lewis embarked upon the creation of an oral history project devoted to gathering “memories of Rabbi Schachter during his Winnipeg years.”
With contributions from 28 different individuals, all of whom whose lives were touched by Rabbi Schachter at some point during his time spent in Winnipeg – as the director of Hillel, as the representative of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, as a Professor of Religion, and in the many other roles he played, interviews were gathered. Those interviews now reside in a collection put together at the University of Colorado in Boulder (where Rabbi Schachter spent the final years of his life).
(If you would like to listen to any of those interviews simply Google “Winnipeg Jewish renewal”. According to Lewis, however, some of those interviews are not entirely positive in the impressions some interviewees had of Rabbi Schachter.)
The fact that Winnipeg seems to have been almost deliberately obscured in any writing, either by Rabbi Schachter himself or others writing about him, is somewhat of a puzzle for Lewis. After all, he observed, it was here that Rabbi Schachter “began the chaotic and colourful phase of Judaism that became so important in his later years.”
Perhaps it was the shroud of controversy that surrounded him while he was here that led to Rabbi Schachter’s downplaying the time he spent here but, as Lewis suggested, “over time the world has forgiven him even though he left Winnipeg under a cloud”.
It was left to Alexandra Granke to fill in some of the blanks that others have found when it comes to knowing more about the time Rabbi Schacter spent here.
As Granke explained, she was “the first person to have listened to all 28 interviews about Rabbi Schachter” that Winnipeggers gave. (By the way, if you have something you’d like to tell about Rabbi Schachter, you can still get in touch with Justin Jaron Lewis, who said he would love to hear from anyone else who might have something to contribute to the oral history project. He can be reached at Justin_Lewis@umanitoba.ca .)
In analyzing Rabbi Schachter’s often controversial stay in Winnipeg, Granke observed that “there was an air of inevitability about Rabbi Schachter’s break with the Lubavitch movement.”
Granke referred to an interview given by Abe Anhang, who talked about Rabbi Schachter’s use of LSD as the reason for his departure from the Chabad movement.
“His use of LSD runs through many of the other interviews,” Granke noted. Yet, she was “surprised by the relative nonchalance of many of the interviewees” toward Rabbi Schachter’s prolific drug use.
In fact, one interviewee mentioned how she was first introduced to “weed, mescaline, and cocaine” by Rabbi Schachter.
Rather than simply dwell on this aspect of Rabbi Schachter’s life though, Granke observed that many interviewees spoke of how he “opened up his group of followers to a different understanding of Judaism.”
“Doing drugs for him was not something fun,’ Granke noted. Rather, “for him it was about a way to reach a higher level of spirituality.”
Turning to yet another oft-criticized component of his life, Granke did refer to Rabbi Schachter’s having “fathered ten children with a variety of women.”
Yet, despite his somewhat notorious reputation, Granke suggested that others “were willing to overlook his lapses in moral judgment because he was so accepting of others.”
Although Reb Zalman, as he came to be known affectionately by his devoted followers, may have “been the opposite of what was expected of rabbis in Winnipeg,” his “dedication to people” is what seems to have been the mark that he left most often upon others.
“Reb Zalman always had time for others,” was a common refrain through the interviews, Granke said.
As one interviewee suggested, Rabbi Schachter’s form of spirituality, which he formulated while he was in Winnipeg, was “Buddhist chakra meeting Jewish sphirot”.
“He was a Jewish practitioner in a universal soul,” said one interviewee.
Granke referred to the interview given by Len Udow, who suggested that the pain of Rabbi Schachter’s wartime experience (when he fled first from Vichy France, then to Belgium, where he was “one step ahead of the Gestapo”) dissipated during moments in which he was engaged in prayer. “It was as if all the pain of the war was dispelled by the sudden connection with his many ancestors.”
Murray Goldenberg mentioned Rabbi Schachter’s having taught him the blessing for marijuana: “shehakol neheyeh b’dvaro” (who brings about everything by his word).
Yet, as I noted earlier, not everyone was so rosy-hued in their memories of Rabbi Schachter. David Wilder suggested that “the reason he (Rabbi Schachter) doesn’t mention Winnipeg in his writings is because of his situation with his family. His kids didn’t speak to him,” Wilder said (because of their father’s having left their mother to take up with the daughter of a well-known Winnipeg radio announcer).
Justin Jaron Lewis did say though, that “the kids reconciled with him at the end.”
As audience members after audience member spoke up to recall their own experience of Rabbi Schachter, it was easy to understand the enormous impact that this man had on so many Winnipeggers. As Jerry Cohen said, “There was no greater influence on my life Jewishly than Reb Zalman. He was a great influence to many of us in those early years in Winnipeg.”
#1 Mr. — Ernest Seinfeld 2017-07-09 11:15
This is the first time I am reading about this rabbi. I also read an article about him today in the Jerusalem Post and made the following comment:
“I remember Rabbi Schaechter as a fellow student in Vienna at the Sperlgymnasium (high school, the same Sigmund Freud atttended) in 1937.
In Austria classes in one’s religion were mandatory.
He kept trying to upstage our religion teacher by frequent interrupting him with “Raschi said”.
The rest of the students who had no idea of the teaching of Raschi and hardly were even aware of this great Talmud scholar, after a while gave him the nickname ‘Raschi’. The teacher obviously did not enjoy these interruptions but remained quiet and polite.
Ernest Seinfeld
es893columbia.edu”
I attended three years with him in the same classes. He sat always in the first row and tried to ‘shine’. He craved for attention, a trait his fellow students did not exactly find appealing.
In our January 18, 2017 issue we also printed this letter from members of Rabbi Schachter’s family, in response to the original article:
Response to article on Reb Zalman Schachter
We are the widow and children of Reb Zalman Schachhter-Shalomi, z”l. We want to recognize the initiative of the Jewish Heritage Center in convening a public forum honoring our father and Winnipeg origins of the Jewish Renewal Movement. While none of us live in Winnipeg any longer, we treasure the time that the family had in Winnipeg and are sorry that we were unable to be present for this forum. Had we been present, we would have contributed to this retrospective in the following ways.
- The article “The late Rabbi Zalman Schachter’s Time in Winnipeg Recalled at Lively Evening Hosted by Jewish Heritage Centre” misstated the tone of his family situation. Our father was wholehearted in his relationship with his wives and children. His marriage breakdowns were certainly not caused by lapses in moral judgment. Divorce almost always is difficult for the marital partners and children. In the case of Reb Zalman and Feigle, the decision to end their marriage was understandable as, much earlier, they recognized that their relationship was unsustainable. They had drifted apart as a result of the differences in their spiritual visions and only intentionally stayed together until their youngest child reached her Bat Mitzvah so that she would have the capacity to deal with family breakdown. None of the children harbor any resentment to children from other mothers. It is a testament to Reb Zalman’s love for his children, and our love for him, the that we are all in touch with one another to share each other’s joy and provide support in times of need.
- There is an element of physical harshness in the name Schachter, which has its origins in Shochet (slaughterer). Reb Zalman was someone who was deeply concerned with the increase in violent conflict in the world. He adopted a typical Jewish response to his concerns by adding a name that would bring to our consciousness the need to pursue peace, Shalom. For many years now, he has been known and called Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.
- The relatively limited material in the University of Colorado archives on Jewish Renewal on Reb Zalman’s time in Winnipeg is not based in any way on any deliberate action on his part or because of an alleged cloud causing him to leave the city. Reb Zalman moved to Philadelphia because it had a larger Jewish community and was closer to other large Jewish centers in North America. Reb Zalman had begun providing rabbinic training in Winnipeg, but few students were willing to come to Winnipeg to study. The move to the east coast enabled many more students to access his training and become rabbis. As for the gap in current literature concerning Reb Zalman’s time in Winnipeg, we applaud Professor Lewis’s initiative in collecting oral histories to be added to the archive at the University of Colorado. Regarding the claim that Reb Zalman ignored Winnipeg in his autobiography, it should be noted that 97 pages of the 186 page “My life in Jewish Renewal,” (aside from the Appendices), are devoted to years living in Winnipeg. It is crucial to note, however, that much that happened during this period took place during his numerous travels outside Winnipeg.
We are aware that some of his views and activities were challenged by some elements of the Winnipeg Jewish community. Reb Zalman, as we all are, was human. However, for those who focused their comments at the forum on his imperfections, we wonder what standard they were holding him to. On the first Shabbat of the secular year We read Parshat Va’yigash. The story of our ancestor Ya’acov is drawing to a close. Yes, Ya’acov had issues with his wives, with his children, and with neighbors in the broader community. Those flaws, however, are not the major part of his remembrance. We remember him as a Jewish ancestor whose legacy was that all Jews now are known under Ya’acov’s second name, Yisrae. We are all B’nai Yisrael.
We, his widow, his daughters and sons, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all feel that we have been blessed by being the spouse and offspring of one of the 21 century’s greatest rabbis. Each of us, in our own way, is seeking to continue the contribution to society that he has made. May our actions and the actions of Winnipeg Jewry give our father’s neshama an aliyah!
Blessings,The Widow and all the children of Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi
Eve, Miriam, Rabbi Shalom, Josef, Yale, Chana Tina, Jonathan, Lisa, Shalvi, Rabbi Shlomo Barya, Yotam & Rossi
Features
The Last Chance
By ORLY DREMAN (Jerusalem, March 12) Every time I submit an article to this website, I hope that article will be more cheerful than the last one. This one has a little bit of light, but a lot more of the same, I’m sad to write.
There were families where some members were murdered and some taken hostage. Sometimes there were no family members left alive to fight for hostages’ return; that is when neighbors or coworkers began to fight for them. The returning hostages must cope now with the losses from Oct. 7th. The more losses they have, the more complicated the trauma. They find out they lost family members, their house, their security. They come out of a disaster into a new reality. Some of the returnees only found out when they returned that their nuclear family was wiped out. They are coping with a lot of bad news. The families who were busy fighting for their return never got a chance to deal with their own mourning. Other family members got a sign of life from their dear ones still in captivity, but only to hear that they were injured and in bad health. They are deep under the ground in tunnels, with no sun of course and sometimes alone in complete darkness for days on end… in cages tied to chains all the time. They sleep on the floor, shower once in a few months, get hardly any food or water. They eat, sleep and go to the toilet all in one small area, mold all around; the injured and sick get no medications. They were interrogated under torture. These are citizens we are talking about – not soldiers; there are only four soldiers left alive in captivity all living in inhumane conditions. The tunnels are very narrow and low, so if one picks up their head they bang into the ceiling. It has been like this for a year and a half, with weapons turned towards them all the time.
The women say they were beaten every day. (Some are already able to talk about sexual assaults). Some young women say they prayed to die because they experienced horrible things and hoped a war plane would destroy the building and the misery would stop; it was hell. In captivity they suffered psychological terror. They were told Israel does not want to bring them back, they will marry them off and turn them into Muslims. On the day of return sadistic Hamas made a cruel, frightening, humiliating reality show for the whole world to watch. Some of the hostages looked like they were released from Auschwitz. For example, they made one of the hostages say on stage: “I’m happy to return to my wife and children,” while Hamas knew they had already murdered them and his brother. The father himself knew nothing because in the tunnels there was no radio, they kept them disconnected from the outside world. The hostages went through things the brain and the heart cannot absorb.
They look so thin, some have lost 50% of their body weight. Family members who received them said they could not recognize them. The hostages who were kept together showed mercy and compassion towards each other; some were ready to exchange places with those who remained behind and sat in captivity with them. Several of them became more religious. The Saturdays of the returns of three hostages each week were days we all cried… tears of excitement, but also those of concern for the many who will not come back alive.
The Hamas monsters who do not have a drop of mercy and murder babies with their own hands with unimaginable brutality, would not even waste a bullet on them to spare their suffering. The whole world should see this wickedness – the photo of Shiri Bibas holding her two babies in her arms with her terribly frightful expression. Three generations of that family were wiped out; Shiri’s parents were also murdered. The heart of the whole country is shattered. There are two million Nazis in Gaza committing crimes against humanity. All the people in Gaza celebrated and cheered as the coffins passed by and the world did not condemn it. We will not forgive and not forget. Our soldiers found weapons in every home and every school, so there are no “uninvolved.”
At the Lifshitz’s funeral – the eldest hostage murdered in captivity and whose body was recently returned, his wife asked Hamas: “Who did you kill? The humane liberals who helped you every day, brought your sick to our hospitals, took care of you”…. The residents there were all so naïve. When the coffins of the Bibas family passed in the roads of Israel the buildings were lit in orange (the babies were red heads). The whole country was crying, including the news broadcasters. It was a national mourning day, people did not go to work or to school. Each coffin of a dead hostage receives a personal farewell ceremony. We are experiencing a collective trauma. The Israeli heart is very flexible, and our hearts are united during sadness and in moments of relief. The nation has not abandoned the families of the hostages for a year and a half. We demonstrate with them and strengthen them. There is nothing like this in the world – our partnership to destiny.
On the days of the hostages’ release people are in the streets with their cell phones glued to the news, shouting out loud the name of each hostage released into the hands of the Red Cross. We all feel at least some relief and comfort – which we have not felt in a long time. The hostages have turned out to be the families of our whole nation.
We recently took a tour of the Gaza Envelope and went into the small shelters spread out along the “Death Road” (Road 232). They are built to hold at maximum ten standing people, but when almost thirty youngsters ran into them and the terrorists threw hand grenades inside, the few who survived were those whose bodies fell on them and they played dead.
It is nice that a woman in Canada named her baby Alyn. Alyn was a seven year old girl murdered by Hamas together with her fiveyear-old brother and their parents in on Oct. 7th.
In saving lives there are no compromises. We are paying heavy prices to release our hostages, but leaving them there would be the highest price ever. The price now is for the oversight, not for the deal. Among the terrorists released in this recent deal were two who planned the shooting and murder attack of my cousin Rabbi Mark while he was driving his car in 2016. His wife and daughter were seriously injured and now the terrorists are walking around freely.
My American nephew’s house was burned down in the L.A fires. They had to move to another area. It is sad, but everything is relative. In Israel half the country had to evacuate- their houses burned down – some with their families inside. That is very painful.
We are living now in major uncertainty. Will the war renew in the next few days or will negotiations continue? Because this is the hostages’ last chance to return alive. If the fighting starts again, we will have to explain to our young grandchildren that running and hiding in the shelter is just a Hide and Seek game like in the Roberto Benigni movie (“Life is Beautiful”).
How does the world accept a situation where a terrorist group takes civilian hostages into captivity without millions in the world going out to demonstrate?
The country has no leadership, but the citizens do. There is no other country in the world that exhibits social cohesiveness like Israel; that is what holds us together.
Wishing you all a HAPPY PURIM!
Features
And now the news – with Laurence Wall
By GERRY POSNER I am betting that many readers will have memories of the Wall family, formerly of Winnipeg, later of Phoenix and Ottawa. For people with long memories like me, (which memories my grandkids define as old ), that means as far back as Dr. Mark and Elsa Wall. The Walls had four sons: Richard, Laurence, Murray and Bruce. Likely, you will know one or more of the boys. Both Richard and Bruce reside in Phoenix, while Laurence and Murray are in Ottawa. Of course, each has a story, but I was certainly taken by the Laurence Wall story.
Born in Montreal in 1954 at a time when his father was doing post graduate work in OBGYN, Laurence grew up in Winnipeg’s south end, on Lanark Street and later Queenston Bay. Wall graduated from Grant Park High School in 1972. From there he was off to the University of Manitoba, where he obtained a BA in 1975. Later that year, he left for Ottawa where he studied journalism at Carleton University, finishing with a Bachelor of Journalism. While at Carleton, he met Roslyn Nudell from Montreal, also a student in the journalism program. They married in 1978.
Wall began his career at the Winnipeg Tribune (and if you can remember the Walls, you’re sure to remember the Tribune). He was a reporter there from 1976-1979. Then he moved to CBC Radio in Winnipeg, first as a story producer for the network program, “Canada Watch,” then a stint as a writer- broadcaster for “ Information Radio”.
In 1983 Wall moved to CBC Saskatoon (much like professional athletes who move from team to team, although for much less remuneration) where he was a radio reporter until 1985. The next stop was at CBC Fredericton from 1985 through 1993. By that time, Wall had moved up to become a senior news editor at the CBC.
In 1993, Wall was hired as a senior editor in Ottawa. He continued in that position for three years. In 1996, he wanted to return to on-air work, so he moved back into the radio booth at CBC Ottawa. He became the afternoon news presenter and never looked back. For 28 years, he wrote and edited dozens of new stories and audio items for 13 different newscasts and news updates every weekday, amassing more than 50,000 newscasts and news updates to his credit.
He retired on May 31, 2024. That day marked the end of an illustrious 44 years with the CBC at four different stations. If you lived in Ottawa, his name was immediately recognizable – so much so that on May 31, 2024, the mayor of Ottawa declared that “ Laurence Wall Day.”
Over the course of his time with CBC in Ottawa, Wall reported on some of the most significant stroies of the day, including the 1998 ice storm; the day to day ups and downs (I think more downs than ups ) of the Ottawa Senators of the NHL; the killing pf Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial in 2014 – and the chaos that followed; and, of course, Covid 19. In fact, Covid caused a major change in the way Wall presented the news. For Wall broadcasts emanated from the basement of his home in suburban Ottawa, which he jokingly referred to as”CBC Nepean.”
Over the years Wall had the opportunity to meet many celebrities, including Gordon Pinsent, Alan Thicke, Ken Dryden, and Eugene Levy. Wall recounts that, although he didn’t manage to get a photo with Levy, he did get a laugh when he introduced himself to Levy as “just the chopped liver news presenter.” He also interviewed Randy Bachman at the Ottawa Writers Festival.
A side of Wall that is not as well known is his musical bent. Since 2001, Wall hosted hundreds of concerts and events for the Ottawa Music Festival, the Music and Beyond Chamber Festival, the Ottawa Jazz Festival, Opera Lyra Ottawa and the Ottawa Writers Festival. He has worked tirelessly to promote classical music for young people. Not to be forgotten are his own talents on the cello as a player in the 65-member community group known as the Divertimento Orchestra.
Aside from all that, Laurence Wall has MC’d dozens of events for various Jewish organizations in Ottawa, including the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, the Weizmann Institute, the Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship, the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University, Limmud Ottawa, his own Kehillat Beth Israel Synagogue, Active Jewish Adults 50+, and a local choir known as Musica Ebraica. Now that is a list of accomplishments that could fill a “ Wall.”
Laurence and Roslyn are also parents of two daughters and are now grandparents as well to one grandson, with another grandchild on the way. Retirement so far for Wall has been just as fulfilling as his career. You might just say that Laurence Wall has just turned another page in his career.
Features
95-year-old Holocaust survivor invited to be part of new mini-series reliving the end of darkest period of her life
By MYRON LOVE Klara Belkin has led a life writ large. She was the principal cellist for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for 20 years. As well, for many years, in the winters, she and her late husband, Emile, a violinist, were also members of the Tampa Symphony Orchestra in Tampa Bay. As a teacher, she served as a member of the faculty of the University of Manitoba’s School of Music for almost 20 years.
Even though Klara Belkin is 95, her career isn’t quite over yet. Recently, she was invited to join Joshua Bell – in New York in September – in a performance with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra of the soundtrack of a projected new four-part miniseries.
The mini-series, “The Train Near Magdeburg”, is the true story of a train packed with prisoners from Bergen Belsen concentration camp in the early days of April 1945, that was intercepted – and the passengers liberated – by American soldiers.
For Belkin (who moved to Saskatoon four years ago, after her husband died, to be closer to her daughter, Lisa),the story is personal. She, her mother, and her brother, were on that train.
Originally from Szeged in Hungary, she and her family were interned in ghettos in 1944. In June of that year, she, her mother, and her brother, were taken to Austria as farm labourers. (Her father had been taken into the Hungarian army.) In December 1944, they – along with her grandparents – were moved to Bergen Belsen.
“I was lucky in that I was in relatively good health and I was with most of my family,” she said in an earlier interview with the Jewish Post & News, of her time in the concentration camp.
However, in April of 1945, with the Russians closing in, it looked like that luck was about to run out for the 15-year-old and the other surviving prisoners at Bergen Belsen. They were all loaded onto boxcars and sent toward Theresienstadt, where – they feared – death awaited them. Their journey came to an end, however on April 13, on the banks of the Elbe River near Magdeburg. A bridge had been blown out and the train could go no further. There were reports that the train was to be plunged into the river or blown up. Before that could happen, the American army arrived on the scene.
“We couldn’t see anything from inside the boxcars,” Belkin recalled. “Suddenly it went quiet. The SS guards had run away. We heard honking outside and then knocking on the boxcar doors. The doors were opened and we saw an American soldier with a gun aimed at us. He couldn’t believe what he saw. He was no doubt expecting to see German soldiers or munitions. Instead, he saw a boxcar full of half dead people.”
Belkin recalled that they were all moved to a nearby village from which the residents had been evacuated. “There were many of us who had typhus and many – including my grandfather – died shortly after liberation,” Belkin said.
Fortunately, her mother, brother, and grandmother also survived. After liberation, Belkin returned to Budapest where the family reconnected with her father and she studied the cello at the Franz Liszt Academy. Following the Hungarian Revolution in October, 1956, she was able to leave Budapest – with the encouragement of her mother – for Vienna. In Vienna, though, the symphony was not hiring any female musicians. So she came to Canada and found a position with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. That was also where she met her husband, Emile, a violin player, who was also a member of the WSO.
About 15 years ago, Belkin had an opportunity to meet two of the GI’s who liberated her and her family. It started with a New York State high school history project. This story began when Lisa Belkin decided to write her mother’s biography. In the course of her research, she came across a tape of an interview that Diane Sawyer had conducted with Hudson Falls, New York, history teacher Matt Rozell (recorded in 2007). In 2001, Rozell had had his students do interviews with surviving World War II veterans living in the area. First Lieutenant Frank Towers, liaison officer of the 30th Infantry Division, and former tank commander Carrol Walsh (743rd Tank Battalion, 119th Regiment), were among the interviewees. They were the last two living American soldiers from the unit who saved Klara and the other Jewish prisoners – 600 of them children – near war’s end from almost certain death.
Klara, Emile, and Lisa Belkin met the two veterans in Florida in February 2011. “I was never able to put a face to my liberators before,” Klara Belkin said at the time.
It was Frank Towers’ duty to arrange food, shelter and care for the former prisoners. Belkin reports that Towers and Walsh frequently spoke about their war experiences and had been invited to the Weizman Institute in Israel where they met with Bergen Belsen historian Bernd Horstmann.
Belkin notes that a reunion in Israel with Towers, Walsh, Rozell and some of the boxcar survivors was talked about – but nothing came of it.
Lisa Belkin reports that she and he mother have seen the first two episodes of the mini-series. She adds that both the BBC and Netflix may be interested in airing the series in the fall.