Shalom magazine - The Atlantic Jewish Council

arouNd our regioN:
Yom Hashoah in Fredericton
by Sydelle Grobe
Max Eisen was guest speaker
at the annual Fredericton
community Yom HaShoah
Holocaust Remembrance Service at
Sgoolai Israel Synagogue.
Mr. Eisen was born in Moldava,
Czechoslovakia in 1929 into a large
orthodox Jewish family. In the first
ten years of his life he had a normal
childhood with all the amenities that
good parenting and extended family
provided. “Life changed dramatically
when Hungary occupied the eastern
part of Slovakia in March of 1939
and racial laws were imposed on the
Jewish population,” he said. “This led
to dehumanization, segregation, and
confiscation of businesses. All Jews had
to wear the Yellow Star of David for
visibility.”
His extended maternal family consisting
of grandmother, uncles, aunts and
cousins were deported from Slovakia
in 1942 to Majdanek-Lublin Death Camp
where they were murdered. In May 1944
his immediate family of parents, two
younger brothers and baby sister and
paternal grandparents, uncles, aunts
and cousins all perished in Auschwitz-
Birkenau Death Camp following
deportation.
“I survived slave labour in Auschwitz,
Mauthausen, Melk and Ebensee Camps
and was forced to go on a death march
in January of 1945 where thousands
died from exposure to severe weather
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conditions and malnutrition,” said Eisen.
“I was fortunate to find a discarded
paper cement bag, which I wore under
a flimsy shirt to protect myself from
freezing. We had no food for eight days
and handfuls of snow along the way
were the only sustenance.”
After eight days of marching, the everdiminishing
group reached a bombed
railway bridge over the Danube River at
Mauthausen, Austria. They were forced
to cross the bridge on foot. Eisen made
it across but many did not have enough
strength to avoid missing sections and
fell to their deaths in the icy waters.
Eisen was liberated at Ebensee
Concentration Camp in Austria on May
6, 1945 by the 761st Black Panther Tank
Battalion of the United States Army; the
first all-black fighting unit in Europe.
Following liberation, he was determined
to return to his family home, now
in Czechoslovakia, with the hope of
finding family members that might have
survived and would take care of him.
“Upon arrival at my home, I discovered
that our neighbours had occupied it and
I was made to feel unwelcome,” recalled
Eisen. “The realization set in that at the
age of sixteen, I was homeless and alone
in the world.”
He spent three years recovering from
his ordeal in a Jewish orphanage
organized for surviving teenagers in
Marienbad, Czechoslovakia. Afterward,
he was admitted to Canada as a
displaced person,
arriving in Toronto
in October 1949 as
a ward of Jewish
Family and Child
Services. “This
organization helped
me get clothing, a
place to stay and
work,” he said. “ I
learned English at
night school and by
Page 3 Tishre 5771 - Vol 35 No. 2
Marlene Unger at the Holocaust Memorial
reading books and newspapers.”
Through increasingly more
responsible jobs and applying his
own resourcefulness, he gained the
experience necessary to start his own
manufacturing company in 1964. The
business prospered and eventually
employed up to 65 people. Eisen retired
in 1992 after a successful business career
as a respected pioneer in the industry.
A court case in Toronto in 1985
involving a Holocaust denier motivated
him to get involved with the Holocaust
Education Centre of Toronto as a
speaker/educator. In 1991, he started
speaking about the dangers of hatred
and discrimination in society in an effort
to promote understanding between
community groups.
Lt-Governor Graydon Nicholas, Mayor
Brad Woodside, Royal Canadian Legion
Branch President Jean-Guy Pelletier and
veterans of the Royal Canadian Legion
were guests of honour at the service.
Sgoolai Israel President Louis Budovitch
welcomed everyone to the service. Ellen
Lupu read a selection from the Book of
Joel that praises the virtue of bearing
witness. “Hear this, ye old man, and
give ear. All ye inhabitants of the land.
Hath this been in your days, or even in
the days of your fathers? Tell ye your