“You couldn’t live and work in Leaside in Toronto in the 1950s and ’60s and not know [Holocaust] survivors.”
—Former Employment Minister Jason Kenney, on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s boyhood in Leaside and his hatred of antisemitism, National Post, Jan. 16, 2014.
The quote above reveals a fact I only recently learned – Leaside was home to scores of Jewish refugees who had escaped Nazi persecution and survived the Holocaust. Several had even lost relatives in the death camps of Europe. Their story is one of suffering, sadness and tragedy, but also of courage, determination and resilience. Here is just one example: Alexander and Dushanka Grin (Green), who lived in North Leaside for over 30 years, most of them at 5 Roxville Ave.
Fleeing Hitler
Alexander Grin was born in Hungary in 1902 and educated in Belgrade – the son of Jewish parents. A lawyer by training with a doctorate in law, he married his non-Jewish wife, Dushanka, in 1937 while she was a medical student in Serbia. One year later they had their first child, Paul. A year after that, Hitler invaded Poland unleashing World War II. For the next five years, Grin and his small family were under constant threat of being captured and killed by the Nazis. In July 1941, they were arrested by Italian Fascists and sent to a vermin-infested holding facility in Albania. They were then transferred to southern Italy, where they were put in another camp – the Ferramonti internment camp.
Released under “free confinement” status in July 1943, they spent several months in northern Italy before fleeing to Rome in late November – after learning the Germans were rounding up Jews in the area and deporting them to places like Auschwitz. Rome was no better, however, as the Germans – who had occupied the city after the fall of Mussolini – were hunting Jews there as well. For the next six months, the Grin family led a furtive and traumatic life, fearing discovery at any moment. Only after the liberation of Rome in June 1944 were they finally able to gain a measure of safety. They made their way to Allied-occupied southern Italy, where thousands of other Jewish refugees had gathered. Once there, they were among a lucky few selected to go to the United States under a special emergency refugee program created by President Franklin Roosevelt.
Fort Ontario
The program called for the transportation of about 1,000 refugees, mainly Jewish, to the town of Oswego in upstate New York. Upon arriving in August 1944, the refugees – including the Grins – were housed at an abandoned U.S. Army barracks called Fort Ontario, where they stayed until the end the war.
It was an austere facility, surrounded by a barbed wire fence to prevent the refugees from travelling freely outside although many were allowed to leave the camp, provided they kept within the town limits and did not work beyond the fort. Despite these restrictions, the refugees created a flourishing community, with their own theatre, newspaper and synagogue, as well as recreational and training facilities. The Grins were active members of this community. Alexander joined the “Yugoslav Club” and founded a culture section that held bi-monthly lectures. Dushanka acted in plays and entered – and won – a fashion-design contest. She was also among those chosen to escort Eleanor Roosevelt when the First Lady toured the shelter in September 1944. Mrs. Roosevelt visited the Grins’ spartan living quarters and was so impressed with how appealing and pleasant Dushanka had made them that she mentioned it in her syndicated newspaper column a few days later.1 As a result, the two women grew acquainted and even exchanged letters.
Canada and Leaside
After the war, Alexander left Fort Ontario and returned to Europe where he discovered that his father, an Ashkenazi Rabbi, his mother, sister and brother-in-law had all been murdered by the Nazis. Dushanka and Paul remained at Fort Ontario and eventually came to Canada. Alexander followed in 1948. The family lived in Hamilton but later moved to Toronto – first living on the Kingsway and then in North Leaside. Early in the postwar period, the couple changed their name from “Grin” to “Green” and had a second child, Lynda, born in 1950. In Toronto, Alexander launched his own travel agency, Europa Travel, which helped thousands of Central Europeans migrate to Canada. Sadly, he died in 1955 at the age of 53. Dushanka, only in her 30s, took over the business and ran it successfully for more than two decades while raising her family. Paul attended Northlea Public School and Leaside High, graduating in 1957 and later becoming a successful businessman. Lynda remained a virtual lifelong Leasider. She too attended Northlea and Leaside High, graduating in 1969, and afterwards married and raised a family. Dushanka died in 1982 at 64. She and her husband are buried in Mt. Pleasant cemetery.
Lynda – now Lynda Green Potts – has bittersweet memories of her parents. While she remembers little of her father, she vividly remembers her mother as a “strong, independent, talented and extraordinary woman.” But Lynda also recalls another side to her mother – one shared by many other Jewish families. “She never talked about what she, my father and my brother experienced during the war. She didn’t want me to know. She didn’t want anyone to know. Leaside was a different place back then, and she believed she was protecting me and my brother by being silent. She didn’t talk about the Holocaust either. She didn’t want to draw attention. Most other Jewish families in the community felt the same way. I didn’t learn about what really happened until I was much older – mainly through my daughter, who did a huge amount of research.”
Today, Lynda is committed to keeping her parents’ memory and ordeal alive. Framed photos of her father, her mother with Eleanor Roosevelt at Fort Ontario, along with their correspondence, are proudly displayed in her home. How many other stories like that of the Grin family are waiting in Leaside to be told?
1 Ruth Gruber, Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees (New York, 1983), pp. 218-19.
