Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Helen Stransky - January 31, 2008

So was it very long--did your uncle and grandmother come, come with you to Canada?

Yes.

And who did you have living in Canada? Did you have family living there as well, in Canada?

No, I had my mother's uh, well my father's sister was--went to Vancouver with her three sons. Their name was uh, was Unger but it--they actually changed it to ???

You went to Toronto?

I went to Toronto. And there's nobody, you know, my uncle boarded us out for--to about three different families as we grew up.

Foster families.

Yeah, foster families.

Jewish families?

Not at all. I did no Jewish education.

Why do you suppose he did that?

He was afraid that Hitler would come to America and he wanted us to be assimilated so we wouldn't be found to be Jewish. Later on he tried to bring us back. I guess we were somewhere between sixteen and eighteen but it was too late. He took us to a conservative synagogue Holy Blossom in uh, in Toronto and tried to get us to go there with them and he told us all about the horrible things that occurred in the camps but we were just--I did when I had my mother's relatives in Los Angeles, they escaped through New York. My--it was very hard for them but the eventually got to Los Angeles and raised their children so I have cousins in Manhattan Beach and Los Angeles and now they've gone to different places as well. My cousins have gone as far as one of the Polynesian islands and raised their children there. It's crazy.