Connect with us

RSS

Q&A: Holocaust survivors Pinchas Gutter and Mariette Doduck talk about the state of Jew hatred after Oct. 7

Mariette Doduck and Pinchas Gutter have a lot in common. At ages 89, and 92, respectively, they are among the estimated 5,800 remaining Canadians who survived the Holocaust.

Both were children when the Nazis invaded their homes. Both have devoted their lives since coming to Canada as tireless Holocaust educators and community leaders in their respective cities of Vancouver, where Doduck eventually settled in 1947, as a war orphan, and Toronto, which has been Gutter’s permanent home since the 1980s. They’ve both joined March of the Living trips as educators. And just recently, on Dec. 18, 2024, the Governor General named both to the Order of Canada for their contributions to making the country a better place.

The nomination process began four years ago, started in secret by their friends and supporters. Now, the two honourees hope that their ongoing work to fight hatred, racism and antisemitism receives a big boost because the announcement of their awards came just ahead of this week’s 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

As world leaders joined a group of 50 survivors at the site of the notorious Nazi death camp in Poland on Monday Jan. 27, Doduck and Gutter remained at home, vowing to continue teaching the lessons of the Holocaust so they can fight their growing dread of a world with loud echoes of the social and geopolitical conditions of their own stolen childhoods.

“No child should live the five years that I lived in hiding,” said Doduck during an interview with The CJN Daily. “So I think this will be a way of maybe moving the awareness faster by this honour.”

When the Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940, Doduck was five years old and living in Brussels with her widowed mother and some of her 10 older siblings. Doduck’s mother sent her into hiding with non-Jews, where she survived the war by remaining silent. The Nazis murdered her mother and two of her brothers at Auschwitz. Doduck also worked as a messenger for the resistance. She came to Canada together with three older siblings who had also survived. They settled in Vancouver. (Doduck’s sister Esther Brandt died in that city on Jan. 7.)

Gutter was a Polish boy of seven when the war started, living in Lodz with his Hasidic family of winemakers and his twin sister. The family moved into the Warsaw Ghetto but after the uprising in 1943, the Nazis deported the Gutters to Majdanek, where his parents and sister were immediately killed. He survived six concentration camps, including two where he worked as a slave labourer. It would be another four months after the liberation of Auschwitz until Gutter was freed by Russian and Czech troops, who opened the gates to Theresienstadt in May 1945. After the war, Gutter lived in Israel and South Africa before moving to Toronto in the mid-1980s. He was the first survivor to participate in the USC Shoah Foundation’s digital hologram program

They both sat down to explain what receiving the Order of Canada means to them, and why they won’t retire, especially after Oct. 7. The interview took place over Zoom, and both survivors were wearing their new Order of Canada lapel pins.

Mariette Doduck: We decided to wear them because we’re supposed to wear them now. I got my first letter in the mail with the C.M. on it after my name. But it’s not complete, of course until we arrive in Ottawa/

Pinchas Gutter: There’s gonna be a ceremony. The ribbon and the whole order, where you get it. But of course, at the moment I think the Governor General is very busy with the Prime Minister resigning and things. So you know we should just be patient. We will be patient and wait.

MD: They told me it wouldn’t be, probably,  till the end of 2025. I’m not worried about it. I’m not thinking about it, that we will be called in, but I am delighted, I’ve got to say. 

Ellin Bessner: Do you know how you ended up getting nominated? Has anyone told you that they were the little birdies that did it?

MD: It was suggested by a girlfriend in Toronto who started the ball rolling, got in touch with my daughter, who just told me, and she did all the work with my friends. but they did it in 2020. It took 4 years. So that also was a surprise. I knew nothing about it. My children, my daughters never said a word. They did all the groundwork, So for me. It was a kind of a shock.

EB: Did you get a call from the Governor General?

MD: I was in Philadelphia visiting my newest great-grandchild. Benjamin.  and  I get this call, and this lady says ‘Congratulations!” and I said, ‘Excuse me. I think you’ve got the wrong number, and I hung up.’ Then she called me back, and she was laughing, and she said,’ Is this Mariette?’  She says, ‘It’s my first time on the job, and I’m being hung up on.’

And I said, “Are you playing a joke, is somebody playing a joke on me?” And she became very formal, and she says “We do not play jokes. I want to congratulate you on being bestowed this honour”. And I was like, in shock. I wanted to verify it. That thought, you know, I need papers. I needed documents, which she sent right away, and she said, “You must not tell anyone. You can tell your children, but you’re not to tell your family. Nobody. Not until December 18th when it will be announced.”

PG: I know several people who did that, but of course they don’t want me to tell anybody that they did so, but I knew that. One of them started actually, a few years ago. As Mariette told you, it’s a long process. It’s not something that happens overnight. They asked Eli Rubenstein (national director of March of the Living Canada].  Eli phoned me and told me that he not only did that, but he sent all the alumni from the March of Remembrance and Hope. You know mostly 95 percent of them are not Jewish people. They’re all from different universities doing their PhDs. 

But I can tell you it’s the same thing that happened to me, Mariette. I got this phone call but I didn’t answer. I thought it was one of these scams and things like that, so I didn’t answer it. 

The person said, “I’ve got a very important message for you and something, something.” And I thought to myself, this sounds like something genuine. So I better phone her back. And when I phoned her back the first thing she did was the same as what she said to Mariette. She said “Congratulations you’ve received the Order of Canada, and you can tell your children and your wife, but you mustn’t tell anybody else until the 18th of December”. 

And we just waited, and that was it. And then subsequently [we received] a little packet, where you got the pin you can wear. And so I’ve just put it on my jacket, and I’m waiting now for them to contact me when the ceremony is going to be. But I’m not concerned. I’ve got the Order of Canada, and I’ve had, like Mariette, I’m sure she’s had 50 to 60 phone calls. I had some from everywhere.

MD: I was in shock to receive this prestigious award, for my work has always been for children and not depending on public recognition. I’m also the co-founder of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. So I have always worked with this. I don’t think we’ve done this for recognition. We just wanted to make the world aware.

And for me, when I arrived here in Canada, in 1948, as a war orphan, I was told that I would die by the age of 30. That I wouldn’t see my 30th birthday. The government official also said that I would amount to nothing. That I would be a burden to the community or to the government.

I’ve worked all my adult life to make the world aware. So for me, I will use this award as an opportunity to draw attention to racism, to intolerance and antisemitism. Also I’m accepting this in recognition of all immigrants and child survivors who have arrived in Canada, in a place that originally did not want us. Like the book “None is Too Many” [by the late Irving Abella and Harold Troper documenting Canada’s racist policies which kept Jewish refugees from Europe out the country during the government of wartime prime minister Mackenzie King].

EB: Why did they say you were going to pass away by the age of 30? Because of your deprivation, and your being in hiding, and your malnourishment?

MD:  The thing was, the four of us (siblings) weren’t accepted [as war orphans] at the same time. We couldn’t have a cavity. We couldn’t have this. We couldn’t have that. There were rules that they gave. I was only 12 years old, and they made it so difficult. 

So I wanted a better world for children… because we then have a world where no child should live the five years that I lived in hiding. 

I am honoured to receive this (award). If this will teach more and then listeners become witnesses for us, to what happened to us children. Camp survivors that I’ve worked with, child survivors who are in their eighties and nineties, we’ve always with this. I’ve dedicated my adult life since I was really a kid to this. So I think this will be a way of maybe moving the awareness faster by this honour.

I happen not to like publicity. I am quite shy. I’m very easy to talk to. I can speak off the cuff, but I am not comfortable receiving something. So for me this was like a shock.

EB: Pinchas, we’ve heard how it sits a little bit uncomfortable for Mariette, but also a little bit, sort of, finally, like a circle for her. But how does this award land for you?

PG: My attitude was a bit different. I didn’t expect to receive this award. I am a person who kind of doesn’t believe that you get the awards and things like that. But what actually happened to me is different.

Let me tell you a story. When I was liberated in 1945, by the Russian army on the 8th of May, the last day of the war, in Theresienstadt, after a death march from Germany to Czechoslovakia, we arrived there about 2-3 weeks before we were liberated. Those people who could still stand, ran out. Because the gates were open. The Czech gendarmes who were guarding us disappeared. And we saw Russian infantry with bandoliers with rifles and bullets, and they had Mahorka, which is tobacco, in one boot. They had these white boots. They had food in the other boot. They were chasing Germans out. And there were women with prams and little babies, and young girls and old men, and they were being beaten. They were being abused. 

I was at that time going on 13, and I come from a Hasidic frum home. So I knew nothing about relationships between men, women, or sex, or anything like that. But I saw these Russians or Czechs or whoever grabbing young women, taking them away, and really being very nasty. and I felt compassion.

After five years and six concentration camps, and losing my extended family and my immediate family in Majdanek. My sister and my father and my mother were murdered the day we arrived in Majdanek, and there I felt compassion because I couldn’t feel anything else. I saw people suffering, and I felt compassion.  And from that time on, whenever I feel people that need help, I try to do that. 

And Mariette spoke about children. And when I came to Canada the first thing I did was I helped elderly people. Why? Because people don’t want to be volunteers at old age homes. People dribble. They don’t look very nice. You don’t want to see yourself when you get old, so it’s very difficult to get people to volunteer. So that was my first job, and it had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

And since then I’ve started doing a lot of Holocaust education. But I did it together with others: I worked with Indigenous people. I worked with Black people. I worked with all kinds of different people. I always worked with people that needed help, and it didn’t really make any difference to me. 

So I was very apprehensive about getting [the Order of Canada] and I felt extremely honoured that I got it. I really felt that it would create a climate where other people would try and do the same thing. If one person can do it, another person can do it, and every person that does just a little bit can make the world a better place.  You don’t have to go and solve all the problems of the world. It’s impossible. But you can do a little bit, and a little bit is important because it adds up, it adds up, and it adds up, and makes the world a better place.

EB: You see what Canada is like now since Oct. 7th, where antisemitism is tolerated in the highest levels of academics, of unions, of government, of police who are trying to do whatever they do. But it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a good job. So I’m wondering when you talk to your Jewish audiences, how can your life and your legacy be effective now? When we’re living in this world where Jew hatred for your great-grandchildren is back. 

MD: The question you’re asking about tolerance is understanding. Intolerance is ignorance. That’s what it means to me. I don’t know if that’s possible. We are trying to use tolerance because in our whole life, tolerance and patience and teaching is an important fact, and the teaching in our Judaism has always been about learning and teaching.

During all the years, just before COVID, I didn’t speak. Not on Zoom, not on anything, because I felt “What did we change?”

During COVID, I re-lived Europe because I was locked in.

Then came Oct. 7. I couldn’t breathe. With every IDF soldier that is dying out there, it’s like I’m losing a child.

Going back to tolerance and intolerance, I would say we made a niche. The Vancouver Holocaust Educational Centre, for example. It took us almost 50 years to get Holocaust education taught in Grade 6 and Grade 11 right now. The school board doesn’t want that. The B.C. government has agreed to put in a Grade 10 Holocaust education module. It’s been a fight uphill in Canada to teach about the past, about the Second World War.

But, I find I’ve got a bright light. I find my students today are better educated in history and I find their questions much more involved. Some. I’m not saying all those children ask me questions, but I mean when I speak, or even teachers when they’re asking

Oct. 7 didn’t just make the Jews hated. All children in the world were affected by it, by the news, by their parents talking about the hate that happened. So I’m saying now, again, the education [is key]

I find that in my symposium and everything there’s a long line up, and the questions are much better than they were just before COVID. So I have to say we are a light in the educational department of hate. Antisemitism has been an undercurrent our whole life, for 2,000 years we’ve had this current.

Even the first time I learned about the phrase “Jew them down” when I came to Canada. I said to my Canadian-born husband [Sidney Doduck]—I wasn’t going to marry a survivor—I said, ‘What does that mean?’

He had to explain to me. I didn’t know these slangs that people use. 

PG:  Every 100 years there’s a change. And there is this kind of uptick. In the 1930s nobody wanted to take refugees. Jewish refugees were anathema. They were not accepted anywhere except in one place in South America. They accepted a few people, and then there was this Evian conference, and everybody said, “Yeah, yeah, we feel sorry for them, but we don’t want them.”

Things have changed. I mean, the world has changed. I mean, according to the news, Canada has taken in 30,000 Syrian refugees that ran away. Then they took refugees from other places. Germany, who hates refugees, they have taken in first of all the Turks, and then they recently taken in Syrians and and others. So there is a change in the sense that people are actually doing things for refugees. You know. They put up tents. They give them some food. As bad things are, there is a change. So we do continue changing for the better.

I am a great believer. I was always an optimist. At the moment, I am a bit despondent, because, you know, things are going the other way from that point of view. But I still believe. And this is what I try to achieve in my teaching. And that’s why I don’t stop. I believe… the most important thing is not to be a bystander.

And that is why I’m not going to stop. I mean, like Mariette, there’s a limit to how much I can do nowadays. And, Dorothy, my wife, wants me to kind of do as little as possible, because she sees how much [mentally] it takes out of you. Of course it takes it out of you. People don’t realize you get liberated from the Holocaust, but you don’t get liberated from the Holocaust. The Holocaust is always inside you.

We’ve got my great grandchildren, who live in Pittsburgh… and a few weeks ago we were in Pittsburgh, and spent four or five days together with our grandchildren and great grandchildren. It was a Mechiya as they say in Yiddish, you know, it was really fantastic. And that’s basically what I want to do. I want them to enjoy themselves. I want them to grow up, and not to have any kind of suffering.

I’m scared for them, I am. I wasn’t scared in the Warsaw Ghetto. I was all of eight or nine or ten years old. I did everything that they didn’t allow you. I went to an underground cheder with seven other children, when my father could still have a Melamed to teach us, and we studied the Talmud.  I wasn’t scared of the Germans. I was fearful of something that they’re going to do to me, but I wasn’t scared inside me. Nothing at all. Today, I feel that I don’t want my children to have any kind of fears about it.

MD: I feel the same way. I have six great-grandchildren, and we are expecting my seventh. Only from three married grandchildren. So I’m lucky. So I’ve got a lot to live for. But I’m also fearful for them. We’ll keep on doing this, for them, to make their life a safer place. 

I never was afraid. The students asked me, “Are you afraid”?  I left home and I was four and a half years old, and I didn’t come out till 1945. I knew about life. When I came to Canada at 11 and a half, I was in a child’s body, but in an adult mind. When I tell the teachers “I don’t want your children to live in fear.”

I’m not fearing about Canada. I’ll tell you a story. My grandson-in-law, and granddaughter are a young Zionist couple. They have 3 kids. When Oct. 7 happened, they wanted to go to Israel.

I said, ”John, you were born in Canada. We are the front line people. You have to stay in Canada. We have to fight here. The IDF will always fight for us, but if you are thrown out of Canada, today you have a place to go, as I didn’t when I was a child. So you are safe. You must stay in Canada.

We are the front line. We must stay and fight here in our country. In every country in the world,  people shouldn’t run away. They should stay in the country where they are, and fight their government and fight their newspapers, fight the computers, all lines of communication. Because we are the front line. We are helping the IDF. Those are my last words. 

The post Q&A: Holocaust survivors Pinchas Gutter and Mariette Doduck talk about the state of Jew hatred after Oct. 7 appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

Continue Reading

RSS

Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire

Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.

Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.

Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.

Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”

As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.

“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.

Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.

The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.

Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.

Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.

Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.

The post Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel

People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas

Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.

“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.

“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.

Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.

The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.

In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.

“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.

“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.

In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.

Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.

In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.

“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”

Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.

Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.

To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.

In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.

Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.

Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.

The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.

The post Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns

Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak

The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.

Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.

With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.

The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.

Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.

Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.

According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.

With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.

In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.

The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.

Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.

The post Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News