Born in 1928, in the small Hungarian town of Balasagyarmat, Andrew delighted in watching Sunday football matches with his father and biking around town on his red racer, until his father was taken to labour camps, until the police confiscated bikes and radios belonging to Jewish people, before he had to wear a yellow star and live in the ghetto.
He was fifteen-years old, tall for his age, and the only way out of the ghetto in which he and his family had been imprisoned was by “volunteering” to work in a labour camp. So that’s what Andrew did, never suspecting that would be the final time he would see his family, never suspecting the back-breaking work of the labour camp would only be the beginning of the increasingly horrific violence he would suffer, witness – and survive.
Andrew arrived in Canada as part of a Jewish war orphan program in 1948. He continued his studies, got married, built a company, and became the happy patriarch of a large, loving family. His story is a compelling testimony to the brutal consequences of bigotry, and to the surprising power in small acts of kindness. Andrew’s story is shared by Jessica Poole, the eldest of his many grandchildren.