The blog is presented here in reverse chronological order. “The Final Chapter” is the last post. To read the first post entitled “My Father Has Passed,” please scroll to the bottom of the page.
The Final Chapter
Chapter 12 After the fire, life was difficult. The store was never rebuilt and the once proud edifice that my father built from the ground up, with nothing but grit and unnatural hard work, became an empty shell. It stood there for years with a tired old sign in the window: “Perl’s Meat. The Tradition…… Continue reading The Final Chapter
Up In Smoke
Chapter 11 It was a Friday night on November 10, 2006, when the frenzy of the day had wound down and the quiet calm of Shabbos had begun that all was not well inside Perl’s Meats. An industrial oven was overheated and the wooden interior wall had caught fire. Within minutes, smoke began to pour…… Continue reading Up In Smoke
Love, Marriage, and a Baby Carriage
Chapter 10 In 1956, my father met my mother, Esther Langner (who sadly passed away six years ago), the daughter of Rabbi Avraham Langner and the granddaughter of the illustrious Rav Moshe Langner, the Strettiner Rebbe. The Strettiner Rebbe of Toronto was the son of Grand Rabbi Yehudah Zvi Langner of Strettin, Poland, a widely…… Continue reading Love, Marriage, and a Baby Carriage
The Years of Backbreaking Struggle
Chapter 9 In 1954, my father opened a small kosher butcher shop in rented premises on the north side of Bloor, between Euclid and Manning Avenues. There was only one other kosher butcher at the time, but according to my father, they had terrible customer service. “I knew if I treated the customers well, they…… Continue reading The Years of Backbreaking Struggle
Finding a Place to Call Home
Chapter 8 After a year living in Nagyszalonta and following his father’s remarriage to Chana, my father went to the Pocking DP camp, the second largest DP camp in Germany. There, he received diploma from ORT, the organization for reconstruction and training, for his studies in the trade of weaving, dated September 2, 1947. The…… Continue reading Finding a Place to Call Home
Liberation
Chapter 7 After enduring seven months in Schachandorf, which included the frigid winter months, May arrived together with the resonant sounds of thundering cannon fire being exchanged between the German and the Russian Allied soldiers. With the prospect of liberation by the Russians imminent, the SS guards gathered the 2000 boys who remained of the…… Continue reading Liberation
Miracle Under an Apple Tree
Chapter 6 My father’s story up until this point is one I really didn’t know. Writing this blog has forced me to discover aspects of his life that remained in the dark. There was just too much pain that would have been dredged up for my father to speak about it. Better that the wound…… Continue reading Miracle Under an Apple Tree
Schachandorf
Chapter 5 The boys crossed the border into Austria and walked some 15 km to Schachendorf. Today, Schachendorf is a bucolic agricultural town with acres of wheat fields that obscure an ugly truth: This is the place where approximately 1500 to 2000 Jews were buried in a mass grave. In 1944, Schachendorf was a desolate…… Continue reading Schachandorf
900 Km Across Hungary On Foot
Chapter 4 Békéscsaba, Hungary The Hungarian Gendarmerie (a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations) woke up the Jews in Békéscsaba in the middle of the night and moved them to a ghetto, enclosed districts that isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities from the non-Jewish population. Life in the ghettos was marked by…… Continue reading 900 Km Across Hungary On Foot
