The Canada that Nate Leipciger sees today is “very disappointing,” he says, compared to how it was when he moved here decades ago.
The 98-year-old arrived in Toronto in 1948 after surviving the Holocaust, including time at notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. The antisemitism of Canada’s past was “gentle,” as he put it.
Jewish people were quietly told they couldn’t rent a house or stay at a hotel. But now, antisemitism is “violent.”
Mezuzahs, or prayer scrolls, are ripped off of doors. There are shootings at synagogues.
“The prime minister (Mark Carney) has offered $100 million to Hamas — the enemy that caused the terrific destruction of October 7,” he told National Post on Tuesday, before a speaking engagement at the Toronto Holocaust Museum for Neuberger Holocaust Education Week.
In September, Carney said he would send that amount as aid for Palestinians. But terror group Hamas has not left Gaza, and an election that was expected in November has been postponed by nearly a year.
Meanwhile, said Leipciger, Hamas’ goal “to destroy the Jewish people” remains. “Once, there was one person that said, ‘I’m going to destroy the Jewish nation.’ Nobody believed him,” he said.
“Today, we don’t have the luxury of saying, ‘Well, maybe it won’t happen.’”
In 1939, when Leipciger was 11 years old, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. His family was forced out of their home. They were first moved to the Sosnowiec ghetto and then the Srodula ghetto, where he shared half a room with his parents and sister.
It was at this location, in 1942, where Leipciger and others in the Jewish community started to build hiding places to avoid Nazi soldiers who would make random arrests and deport people.
After being tipped off that a Nazi raid was imminent, Leipciger, his family and others hid on a rooftop. A woman carrying a newborn baby begged to join. Many were reluctant to let her, worried the baby would cry, but she joined anyway.
The Nazi search came to an end. As Leipciger left the hiding spot, he heard the woman screaming. Somebody beside her had smothered the baby out of fear of being discovered.
This story only represents one life on top of the six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, said Leipciger, but it stuck with him because it was the “most terrible thing” he can think of that happened to the Jewish people as a nation.
“Not only did they murder us, but the Nazis made murderers out of us,” he said. “Our morality was so low that we could murder a child in order to survive a few hours.”
Leipciger was not able to avoid deportation forever.
At 15, he was loaded into a cattle car with his family and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Leipciger and his father were sent to work camps where “life was hard but manageable,” he said. There was “hope” as rumours spread of the war coming to an end.
As Allied forces neared, Leipciger and his father took part in a death march, or forced evacuation. They would walk from camp to camp — many kilometres away — in an effort by the Nazis to keep prisoners from being liberated.
Many were “taken out of line and unceremoniously shot and left by the side of the road,” said Leipciger.
He ended up at a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp in late April 1945.
Days later, American soldiers arrived. But it was an “empty victory,” he said, because he did not know who among his family had survived. He later learned his sister, mother, and many of his aunts, uncles and cousins were killed.
After moving to Canada with his father, Leipciger made it his life’s mission to educate young people about the Holocaust. He returned to Auschwitz-Birkenau for the first time in 1975 and has gone back to give tours more than 20 times.
He said he sees Jew hatred today as “more than antisemitism.” It’s also “anti-Western culture.”
“This is why we have to stand up. We live in a free society, and we are not powerless. We do have power. We can vote out our government that allocated $100 million to Hamas,” he said. “We can fight it at the ballot box, and we can take people to court who are committing acts of violence against us.”
He recalled a scene prior to his deportation to Auschwitz, when the Jewish community was led to the train station in front of other Polish citizens — regular men, women and children. It was not done in a vacuum, he said.
There were people witnessing what was happening. They were also unable to help in any way, he said, but some showed compassion.
He said he remains hopeful that the next generation will be proactive and squash hate wherever they see it.
“Today we are very fortunate that we have many non-Jewish people who are helpful, who understand that (we’re) not necessarily the only group this can happen to, and they feel for us, and that is the big difference,” he said.
