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Montreal Gazette
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Montreal Gazette
1973 novel set during Second World War is ‘just as timely today,' Montreal author Ann Charney says
By Montreal author Ann Charney is delighted that her acclaimed 1973 novel Dobryd has just been published in Canada, after being out of print here for years. 'I think it's just as timely today as it was then,' said Charney in a recent phone interview from her home in Westmount. 'I mean, war is a constant element of our lives no matter in what decade we live or what century. It's interesting that the area that the book is set in, which used to be Poland and is now Ukraine, is at war again.' Dobryd is an extraordinary novel, a powerful story inspired by Charney's own life, about a young girl who spends the first few years of her life hiding from Nazis with her mother and aunt in a haystack in a barn somewhere in rural Poland. Like all good books, it starts with a killer first line: 'By the time I was five years old I had spent half my life hidden away in a barn loft.' The novel begins in 1944 with Soviet Red Army soldiers liberating the Polish town of Dobryd — a fictional name for Charney's hometown of Brody — from Nazi occupation. (The town was in Poland at the time, became part of the Soviet Union after the war and is now in Ukraine.) The girl comes down from the hayloft and is carried outside by the Soviet soldiers and she simply can't believe what she sees — a wide world that she doesn't know at all. Running in the sun, playing with other children, going to the market, these are all things she has never experienced. And that's the genius of the novel. Unlike so many stories told of the horrors experienced in Europe during World War II, Charney doesn't write it as a tragedy. That's because the young Jewish girl doesn't think those years in the barn were tragic. It was the only life she knew until that point. Charney notes that at the time of its release, some called it the story of a happy childhood in unbearable circumstances. Charney doesn't like to talk too much about how close the novel is to her own life story. 'I want people to read it as a story,' Charney said. 'Certainly I was born in that part of the world, I was a baby during the war, we had been hidden in that barn, so all that is true. But it goes beyond that. It's about what you can do in different circumstances.' And she especially doesn't want people to see her or the main character as victims. 'I was deliberate in not being melodramatic,' Charney said. 'I didn't want to write about victimhood. I didn't want the child to be a victim. I wanted a description of a strange childhood and very unusual circumstances, which in this case worked to help the child flourish. It was grim, it was terrible but (she) was also surrounded by people who paid a lot of attention to (her) and told her stories. … All the other books I'd read that had depicted that time and that area of the world were books that made people cry. And I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do the opposite.' Charney feels that the reaction to the book in North America was hurt because it contains a very positive view of the Soviet soldiers who rescued them. One of those soldiers, Yuri, is a hero in the story, doing everything he can to protect the child and her mother and aunt. 'Russians and communism weren't very popular at the time and … if you wanted to publish a book in … North America, it had to be Americans,' Charney said. The new edition of Dobryd published by Montreal's Baraka Books includes a foreword by Peter McFarlane. McFarlane is the author of Family Ties, a book about two people tied to Ukrainian history — Charney and Mikael Chomiak, who was the editor of an influential pro-Nazi Ukrainian newspaper during the war. Charney, her mother, aunt and stepfather arrived in Montreal in 1952, living in an apartment near the corner of St.-Joseph Blvd. and Hutchison St. It wasn't an easy adjustment for Ann, an 11-year-old who spoke neither French nor English. But that outsider's perspective served her well. She eventually published several novels and became an award-winning journalist who found her niche trying to explain Quebec to the rest of Canada. Her most recent novel was Life Class, from 2013, which she dedicated to her husband, the noted artist and architect Melvin Charney, who had died the previous year. She had a column in MacLean's back in the '70s called View From Quebec and wrote for years for Saturday Night magazine. One of her best-known pieces was a profile of Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) terrorist Paul Rose. Another was on filmmaker Claude Jutra's suicide. Some of those pieces are included in the 1998 Véhicule Press book Defiance in Their Eyes: True Stories from the Margins. 'I wrote (in the introduction) that I was attracted to all these people because they were marginal characters and I saw myself as a marginal character,' Charney said. 'When I came to Canada, I neither had the desire nor the possibility to become totally Canadian because my background was so different. And I saw that as a great asset as a writer, to observe things from the edges rather than from the centre.'
Nikkei Asia
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Nikkei Asia
Japan emperor's Mongolia visit sheds light on forgotten WWII detentions
A Soviet Red Army solider peers over the edge of a Japanese fort at an unknown location in China on Aug. 23, 1945. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese were detained by the Soviets, and some of them were dispatched for forced labor in Mongolia. © AP KENJI KAWASE TOKYO -- Japanese Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako will begin an official state visit to Mongolia on Sunday, casting a spotlight on the widely forgotten detention of thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians in the last days of World War II. A highlight of their eight-day stay is a scheduled pilgrimage to a cemetery for Japanese nationals who died after they were seized by the Soviet Union from Manchuria and other former Japanese territories.
02-06-2025
- Politics
What to know about Karol Nawrocki, Poland's newly elected conservative president
WARSAW, Poland -- The final result of Poland's presidential election only became clear after a long, nail-gripping night of counting as both candidates were locked in a near dead heat in the first exit polls after voting ended. Poles awakened Monday to a clear albeit close result that returns a nationalist politician to the presidency who has pledged to hinder the centrist, pro-EU government for the remainder of its term. Here's what to know about Karol Nawrocki, Poland's newly elected conservative president: Nawrocki is a 42-year-old historian who had no political experience prior to the campaign and who was not even a party member until he was tapped by the conservative Law and Justice party that governed Poland from 2015 to 2023. Nawrocki heads the Institute of National Remembrance, which embraces nationalist historical narratives. He led efforts to topple monuments to the Soviet Red Army in Poland. Russia responded by putting him on a wanted list, according to Polish media reports. Nawrocki's supporters describe him as the embodiment of traditional, patriotic values. Many of them oppose abortion and LGBTQ+ visibility and say Nawrocki reflects the traditional values they grew up with. He was also the preferred favorite of U.S. President Donald Trump, with the American conservative group CPAC holding its first meeting in Poland last week during the campaign to give him a boost. Kristi Noem, the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary and a prominent Trump ally, strongly praised him and urged Poles to vote for him. His campaign echoed themes popular on the American right. A common refrain from his supporters is that Nawrocki will restore 'normality,' as they believe Trump has done. U.S. flags appeared at his rallies. Nawrocki performed better in the first round than expected, an indication he was underestimated in the polling. Nawrocki's quick political rise has not been without controversy, with reports linking him to underworld figures whom he met while boxing or working as a hotel security guard in the past. Nawrocki has also been linked to a scandal involving the acquisition of a Gdansk apartment from an elderly pensioner named Jerzy. Allegations suggest Nawrocki promised to care for Jerzy in return but failed to fulfill the commitment, leading the man to end up in a publicly funded retirement home. His shifting explanations raised questions about his transparency and credibility. After the scandal erupted he donated the apartment to a charity. It recently emerged that Nawrocki took part in a 2009 Gdansk brawl involving about 140 rival soccer fans, some later convicted of crimes. Nawrocki described the fight as a form of 'noble' combat. Polish media have also reported on his connections to gangsters and the world of prostitution. His critics say all of these things make him unfit to represent Poland as the head of state but many right-wing voters don't believe the allegations and accuse the media of using its power to hurt him, creating what appears to be a rallying effect around him.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Germany lays to rest Margot Friedlaender, Holocaust survivor key to remembrance culture
BERLIN (Reuters) - Margot Friedlaender, a Holocaust survivor who played an important role in Germany's remembrance culture ensuring the country's Nazi past is not played down with the passage of time, was laid to rest on Thursday after dying last week aged 103. A funeral ceremony took place at a Jewish cemetery and Holocaust memorial site in Weissensee, Berlin, the city where Friedlaender was born and to which she eventually returned. Among the mourners were President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who bowed to her coffin which was covered in pink and white flowers. Friedlaender died on May 9, almost exactly 80 years after the Soviet Red Army liberated the Theresienstadt concentration camp where she was imprisoned. For Steinmeier, she embodied the "miracle of reconciliation" between Germany and Jews around the world, while Merz called her "one of the strongest voices of our time: for peaceful coexistence, against anti-Semitism and forgetting". Friedlaender was born in Berlin in 1921 to Auguste and Arthur Bendheim, a businessman. Her parents split in 1937 and Auguste tried in vain to emigrate with Margot and her younger brother, Ralph, in the face of intensifying persecution of Jews. Her father was deported in August 1942 to the Auschwitz death camp where he was murdered. In early 1943, on the day Margot, Ralph and Auguste were set to make a final attempt to leave Germany, Ralph was arrested by the Gestapo secret police. Auguste was not with her son at the time but turned herself in to accompany him in deportation to Auschwitz where both later died. Margot went underground and managed to elude the Gestapo by dying her hair red and having her nose operated on. But she was finally apprehended in April 1944 by Jewish "catchers" - Jews recruited to track down others in hiding in exchange for security - and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is the Czech Republic today. She survived Theresienstadt and met her future husband, Adolf Friedlaender, there in early 1945, shortly before the liberation of all Nazi camps at the end of World War Two, and they emigrated to New York in 1946. In New York, Margot worked as a dressmaker and travel agent, while her husband held senior posts in Jewish organisations. Both vowed never to return to Germany. After her husband's death Margot revisited Berlin in 2003, among a number of Holocaust survivors invited back by the German capital's governing Senate. She moved back for good in 2010, at age 88, regaining her German citizenship and giving talks about her Holocaust experiences, particularly in German schools. "Not only did she extend a hand to us Germans – she came back; she gave us the gift of her tremendously generous heart and her unfailing humanity," Steinmeier said this week. Friedlaender's autobiography, "Try To Make Your Life - a Jewish Girl Hiding in Nazi Berlin" was published in 2008, titled after the final message that her mother managed to pass on to Margot. She was awarded Germany's Federal Cross of Merit in 2011 and in 2014, the Margot Friedlaender Prize was created to support students in Holocaust remembrance and encourage young people to show moral courage. In a 2021 interview with Die Zeit magazine marking her centenary, Friedlaender reflected on the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party's rise since 2015 on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment, saying it made her uncomfortable. "I remember how excited the 10-year-old boys were back then (in Nazi era) when they were allowed to march. When you saw how people absorbed that - you don't forget that," she said. "I always say: I love people, and I think there is something good in everyone, but equally I think there is something bad in everyone." (Writing by Miranda Murray and Matthias Williams; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Reuters
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Germany lays to rest Margot Friedlaender, Holocaust survivor key to remembrance culture
BERLIN, May 15 (Reuters) - Margot Friedlaender, a Holocaust survivor who played an important role in Germany's remembrance culture ensuring the country's Nazi past is not played down with the passage of time, was laid to rest on Thursday after dying last week aged 103. A funeral ceremony took place at a Jewish cemetery and Holocaust memorial site in Weissensee, Berlin, the city where Friedlaender was born and to which she eventually returned. Among the mourners were President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who bowed to her coffin which was covered in pink and white flowers. Friedlaender died on May 9, almost exactly 80 years after the Soviet Red Army liberated the Theresienstadt concentration camp where she was imprisoned. For Steinmeier, she embodied the "miracle of reconciliation" between Germany and Jews around the world, while Merz called her "one of the strongest voices of our time: for peaceful coexistence, against anti-Semitism and forgetting". Friedlaender was born in Berlin in 1921 to Auguste and Arthur Bendheim, a businessman. Her parents split in 1937 and Auguste tried in vain to emigrate with Margot and her younger brother, Ralph, in the face of intensifying persecution of Jews. Her father was deported in August 1942 to the Auschwitz death camp where he was murdered. In early 1943, on the day Margot, Ralph and Auguste were set to make a final attempt to leave Germany, Ralph was arrested by the Gestapo secret police. Auguste was not with her son at the time but turned herself in to accompany him in deportation to Auschwitz where both later died. Margot went underground and managed to elude the Gestapo by dying her hair red and having her nose operated on. But she was finally apprehended in April 1944 by Jewish "catchers" - Jews recruited to track down others in hiding in exchange for security - and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is the Czech Republic today. She survived Theresienstadt and met her future husband, Adolf Friedlaender, there in early 1945, shortly before the liberation of all Nazi camps at the end of World War Two, and they emigrated to New York in 1946. In New York, Margot worked as a dressmaker and travel agent, while her husband held senior posts in Jewish organisations. Both vowed never to return to Germany. After her husband's death Margot revisited Berlin in 2003, among a number of Holocaust survivors invited back by the German capital's governing Senate. She moved back for good in 2010, at age 88, regaining her German citizenship and giving talks about her Holocaust experiences, particularly in German schools. "Not only did she extend a hand to us Germans – she came back; she gave us the gift of her tremendously generous heart and her unfailing humanity," Steinmeier said this week. Friedlaender's autobiography, "Try To Make Your Life - a Jewish Girl Hiding in Nazi Berlin" was published in 2008, titled after the final message that her mother managed to pass on to Margot. She was awarded Germany's Federal Cross of Merit in 2011 and in 2014, the Margot Friedlaender Prize was created to support students in Holocaust remembrance and encourage young people to show moral courage. In a 2021 interview with Die Zeit magazine marking her centenary, Friedlaender reflected on the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party's rise since 2015 on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment, saying it made her uncomfortable. "I remember how excited the 10-year-old boys were back then (in Nazi era) when they were allowed to march. When you saw how people absorbed that - you don't forget that," she said. "I always say: I love people, and I think there is something good in everyone, but equally I think there is something bad in everyone."
