Survivors' memoirs chronicle similar lives

Two Montreal Women only learn of uncanny parallels in their lives when asked to publish their Holocaust memoirs in one volume

Reuters | Published: 08.13.11, 10:46

In a serendipitous twist, two Montreal residents recently learned how much they shared in common after their book publisher asked if they could release both of their Holocaust memoirs in one volume.

Eva Marx and Judy Abrams were born just six months apart in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, two years before World War II began. Both miraculously survived the Holocaust and within months of each other, managed to escape to Canada and settle in the same Mount Royal neighborhood of Montreal.

Placed one year apart, they attended the same high school and later MacDonald College where both become teachers. All the while, they never met despite leading extraordinarily similar lives.

Over 60 years later, their individual memoirs chronicling childhoods forever marked by the Holocaust are being published as part of the Azrieli Foundation’s Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs this summer.

“While every story is unique, looking for parallels often gives us additional insight into a period of history,” said Dr. Naomi Azrieli, chair and executive director of the Azrieli Foundation.

“This was the main reason we wanted to publish both stories in one volume. Even we didn’t realize, however, how closely these parallels continued for years after World War II.”

"One of the Lucky Ones and Tenuous Threads" are evocative accounts of this fragmented and fearful period in Marx and Abrams’ young lives.

Separated at times from their parents, the two authors poignantly describe the insecurities they lived with as hidden children and, as adults, explore the role that memory, innocence and, in hindsight, knowledge, has played in their lives.

This is one of two new volumes of Holocaust memoirs being released by the Azrieli Foundation this summer.

The Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program was established by the Azrieli Foundation in 2005 to collect, preserve and share the memoirs and diaries written by survivors of the twentieth-century Nazi genocide of the Jews of Europe who later made their way to Canada.