Tonight at the synagogue on Leinster Street schoolchildren and community members will gather to hear from Holocaust survivor Bill Glied , who came to Canada as an orphan in 1947.
Mr Glied was born in 1930 Subotica, Yugoslavia, a city about the size of Saint John. They were a middle-class family who had lived there for 200 years and operated a flour mill. He was a student in public school where he played soccer and chess, and went to Hebrew school. Yugoslavia was occupied by the Germans in 1941 and then ceded to the Hungarians. From that point Jewish people had to wear a yellow star and endure persecution and degradation. In 1944 the Glied family and the rest of the city’s Jews were forced into cattle cars and taken to Auschwitz. Upon arrival the family was separated. His mother and sister were taken to the gas chambers. He and his father endured nearly a year in slave labour camps near Dachau, but his father died 9 days before the camp was liberated in April, 1945. . Mr. Glied came to Canada as an orphan in 1947. He married a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor, Marika, and has three daughters and eight grandchildren.
During the evening candles will be lit in memory of victims of the Holocaust.
Local schoolchildren will also be presenting their projects on the Holocaust and a short video called "Outrunning the Nazis" will be shown. The Holocaust Memorial event begins at 7:30 at the synagogue 91 Leinster Street.
