Читать книгу Marking Humanity: Stories, Poems, & Essays by Holocaust Survivors - Shlomit Editor Kriger - Страница 19

George Scott (originally Spiegel) was born in Hungary in 1930. His father died when he was only a year old, and his maternal grandparents raised him. After completing Grade 4, his grandparents placed him in the Budapest Jewish Orphanage, where there were about 120 boys, aged six to 18. He tried to run away from the orphanage when the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, but he was caught on the border of Slovakia and taken to Sarvar, a large concentration camp. In August of that year, he was transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland. Although he survived the Holocaust, he lost five of his mother’s six sisters and all of their children and husbands, as well as his grandparents.

The Canadian Jewish Congress, along with other agencies, assisted in bringing over 1,000 child survivors, including George, to Canada. George was 18 when his ship arrived in the summer of 1948. He stayed in Nova Scotia with several families who took him in, and he later moved to Toronto, Ontario. Having changed his last name to avoid prejudice during the Holocaust, he ended up settling on Scott.

In 1954 George married Ruth Levstein, and they had three children. Ruth died suddenly in 1978.

George is now in his third marriage, with artist Harriet Brav-Baum, and also has two stepchildren. For over 30 years, he has enjoyed speaking to schoolchildren about the Holocaust.