Cypora Lev is living proof that new stories from the Holocaust continue to be discovered and told to new audiences more than 70 years after the Nazi’s military defeat ended the regime’s systematic murder of six million Jews.
Lev, 69, of Montreal was born in March 1946 in a refugee camp in southern Italy, where thousands of traumatized Jewish refugees had gathered to wait for the chance to emigrate to British-controlled Palestine, today’s Israel.
Her parents, Miriam Cukierman and Moshe Altman, were among the only members of their families to survive the Nazi’s ruthless extermination campaign in their hometown of Czestochowa, Poland.
Cukierman survived by pretending to be a Christian; Altman, an engineer, survived the war in a forced labour camp.
They met on the day after the Russians liberated the city in January 1945 and married in Romania while on a six-month trek across war-ravaged Europe. In southern Italy, to their astonishment and relief, they found hospitality, compassion and warmth.
“I never stopped hearing about the wonderful people of Santa Maria di Leuca: their joie de vivre, their kindness, their generosity,” says Lev, who will be in Ottawa on Sunday to help launch Carleton University’s new Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship, the first of its kind in the city.
The event will feature the North American première of a new film, Shores of Light. The Israeli-made documentary tells the story of three Israeli women who, like Cypora Lev, were born in the refugee camp in Santa Maria di Leuca, where Holocaust survivors began to rebuild lives and families.
![Holocaust survivors Miriam Cukierman and Moshe Altman with their baby, Cypora. The couple never forgot the kindness they were shown at their refugee camp in southern Italy. | Photo: Cypora Lev](https://carleton.ca/jewishstudies/wp-content/uploads/nov_2015_700x400_1.jpg)
Holocaust survivors Miriam Cukierman and Moshe Altman with their baby, Cypora. The couple never forgot the kindness they were shown at their refugee camp in southern Italy. | Photo: Cypora Lev
Hundreds of children were born in the camp in the two years after the war.
“It is an amazing story,” says Lev, whose family emigrated to Canada from Israel in December 1959. “The Italians, they welcomed the survivors and allowed them to start life again with dignity and hope.”
Mina Cohn, former chair of the Shoah Committee of the Ottawa Jewish Federation, will serve as director of Carleton’s new Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship. She said Lev’s story highlights the importance of the centre, which will seek to promote a deeper understanding of the history and legacy of the Holocaust.
“It is important now since we’re losing our survivors,” said Cohn, “and it’s our obligation to them, to their legacy, to continue telling their stories. This is one way of doing that. Every time you discover a new survivor, you discover a new story. They went through so much.”
The centre, based at the Max and Tessie Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies at Carleton University, will conduct Holocaust research, she said, and build educational programs for students, teachers and the public.
Cypora Lev will travel to Italy next May to take part in a reunion in Santa Maria di Leuca with dozens of other children born to Jewish refugees in the port city.
“I cannot imagine a greater gift or a more meaningful way to celebrate my 70th birthday,” she says.
The new Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship launches its inaugural event on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. in Azrieli Theater 301 at Carleton University.
Source: Ottawa Citizen
By: Andrew Duffy