Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday, Am Shalom Synagogue in Barrie hosted a renowned author this weekend who discussed his book about his family’s Holocaust survival stories.
Jewish Toronto journalist John Lorinc wrote ‘No Jews Live Here,’ a book published this past fall, to keep his family’s stories alive.
“My mother is 92 and getting older, and so I wanted to capture those stories before they disappear,” said Lorinc.
In 1944, Lorinc’s mother, uncle and grandmother were hiding from the Nazis in a Budapest, Hungary apartment building along with other Jewish people and Gentiles. He says that one day, they heard a truck with Hungarian fascists stopping by the base of their building.
“The apartments that were rented by Gentiles had signs on them that said: ‘no Jews live here,’” recalled Lorinc. “My grandmother, who was a very survival-minded person, realized that the neighbors, the people next door who had that sign, were away. And so, she ran out, grabbed the sign and put it on their door, and so the Hungarian fascists who were rounding people up didn’t take them away.”
That incident, Lorinc confirms, is what inspired his ‘No Jews Live Here’ book title. He adds that the fascists eventually returned and took his family away, but his mother always remembers his grandmother’s fearlessness.
“She was a total handful,” said Lorinc. “In these moments of extreme danger, she was able to figure out how to protect [our] family.”
Lorinc’s mother and father both survived the war – the latter surviving Auschwitz – and eventually made their way to Canada in the 1950’s. But many of their other family members perished in the Holocaust.
“These are things that we really have to think about and remember, and try to apply the learnings from the past to what’s going on today,” said Lorinc.
Am Shalom Synagogue president Jeff Wellman echoed the need to keep Holocaust stories alive from generation to generation.
“[It’s] important to understand the horrors that have happened, the antisemitism that’s happened, but also the other racisms and biases that have happened, to teach all of us to be better people and fight the discrimination that unfortunately is still with us,” stated Wellman.
Monday also marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
