In January of 1948, Saul Reichert landed at Pier 21 in Halifax, alone in the world.
asserted
Reichert → land → world
He was a survivor of Auschwitz and had lost his mother and five sisters in the Holocaust.
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He → lose → Holocaust
Mr. Reichert was a participant in the War Orphans Project, the product of an agreement between the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Canadian government that ultimately saw 1,123 Jewish survivors under the age of 18 immigrate to Canada.
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survivors → see → Canada
It was also the first crack in the notorious Canadian immigration policy that had shut out Jews fleeing the Nazis before and during the Second World War.
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that → shut → War
Most of the orphans were sponsored by Jewish families in Montreal and Toronto, but Saul was one of 28 headed for Alberta, travelling across the country to Edmonton, where he was welcomed by a sponsoring family.
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he → sponsor → family
Within two years, he owned a lunch counter and spoke English, launching a successful business career in restaurants and real estate and becoming an active member of Edmonton’s Jewish community, showing a remarkable resilience and positive attitude that continued throughout his life.
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that → own → life
“He didn’t look back, he looked forward and lived in the present,” said David Margolus, an Edmonton lawyer whose parents sponsored young Saul on his arrival in the city in 1948.
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parents → look → 1948
Mr. Margolus was born two years later and Mr. Reichert became a presence in his life that continued until Mr. Reichert’s death.
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that → bear → death
Mr. Reichert, who died in Toronto on July 24 at 95, never stopped being thankful for his chance at a new life.
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who → die → life
“To come to a country like Canada was really the difference between day and night,” he recalled in a 1985 video testimony produced for the Jewish Archives and Historical Society of Edmonton and Northern Alberta.
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he → come → Edmonton
“He was a very optimistic person, stubbornly optimistic,” said Bonny Reichert, a Toronto food writer and the youngest of Mr. Reichert’s four daughters, who chronicled her father’s life in her own memoir, How to Share an Egg, published in 2025.
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who → say → 2025
“He didn’t expect to survive and when he did, he saw it as a marvellous second chance.
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he → expect → chance
“Seeing things in a positive way and thinking things would get better soon, that was Saul to a T,” said his eldest daughter, Rochelle, who recalled that her father didn’t dwell on what he lived through as a child and teenager.
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he → see → child
“He didn’t want to burden his children and didn’t want us to experience what he had,” she said.
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she → want → what
Shlomo Reichert was born on Dec. 17, 1930, in Pabianice, a small city adjacent to Lodz in central Poland, the only son of Betzalel Reichert and his wife, the former Udel Rotblat, who also had four daughters together.
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who → bear → daughters
A fifth girl, Saul’s half-sister, was the daughter of Betzalel’s first wife, who had died.
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who → die → wife
The family owned a paint-supply shop and lived a middle-class life, though they were affected by the Depression.
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they → own → Depression
In the video, Mr. Reichert recounts that he had a wonderful childhood, surrounded by a warm and loving family.
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he → recount → family
That childhood ended in 1939, with the death of his father from natural causes and the Nazi invasion of Poland.
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childhood → end → Poland
In 1940, the family was forced into Pabianice’s Jewish ghetto, where he was nevertheless able to continue some schooling.
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he → force → schooling
Two years later, they were forcibly sent to the ghetto in Lodz where conditions were much more difficult.
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conditions → send → Lodz
“People were sitting in the streets waiting to die and nobody could help them,” he recalled.
uncertain
he → sit → them
Then Saul managed to get work as a sorter in a church where the authorities had sent pillows, duvets and other bedding taken from Jewish families.
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authorities → manage → families
Workers like Saul would slash them open, and then separate the feathers and down, which were ultimately shipped off to Germany.
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which → slash → Germany
Reacting to Saul’s inherent charm, a supervisor named Mr. Sharp took a liking to the boy and found a job for Saul’s mother distributing food, giving the family better access to scarce rations.
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supervisor → react → rations
“All of a sudden, our fate in the ghetto became better,” Saul said.
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Saul → become → ghetto
Desperate Jews would occasionally hide jewellery or cash which would emerge when the bedding was ripped open and could be traded for something of immediate value.
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bedding → hide → value
“For a diamond ring, you’d be lucky if you got two or three loaves of bread,” Saul said.
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Saul → get → bread
In the fall of 1944, the Lodz ghetto was emptied.
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ghetto → empty → 1944
Saul and his family were loaded into rail cars and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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Saul → load → Birkenau
Arriving at the camp, they were surrounded by armed German guards screaming at them, accompanied by dogs.
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they → arrive → dogs
“All of a sudden, they separated the women and the men.”
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they → separate → women
It was the last time Saul saw his mother and sisters.
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Saul → see → mother
“You could see the crematorium in the background,” Mr. Reichert recalled in 1985.
uncertain
Reichert → see → 1985
“The people who looked sick and were very thin went to the other side and were never seen again.”
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who → look → side
But Saul, despite his small stature, was nevertheless selected for forced labour and ended up in a sub-work camp called Gleiwitz, where he hauled railway ties.
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he → select → ties
As the Red Army advanced in early 1945, the Nazis sent the remaining concentration camp inmates north on the infamous death marches.
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Nazis → advance → marches
Saul and a cousin ended up on a train that took them to Germany, where they were liberated by U.S. soldiers in May of 1945.
uncertain
they → end → 1945
Hiding in a barn, he was initially skeptical but when he heard the troops speaking English, he was elated.
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he → hide → English
I’m going to live.
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I → go → ?
…and 27 more, not listed.
