WEBVTT

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Around or about 2004, my father decided

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to really build up the Azrieli Foundation

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and one of the first programs he had in mind was related

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to Holocaust survivors and their stories.

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My father himself was a Holocaust survivor.

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He was born in Poland in September 1939.

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He ran eastward and he survived in the Soviet Union.

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His story is a great adventure in many ways,

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and also a really traumatic and tragic story.

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He understood instinctively there were

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probably survivors just like him who had struggled

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with telling their stories

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and weren't finding publishers.

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We decided that we were going to reach out

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to every synagogue and Jewish community centre in Canada

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and say, if you know of survivors

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who have written their memoirs, please get in touch with us.

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We're interested in collecting and publishing memoirs.

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So we started receiving manuscripts that really came in,

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in all shapes and sizes.

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Uh, some handwritten in Yiddish on, you know, you know,

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paper that wasn't in the best shape

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and some, you know, word processed.

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You knew on like on one of the first computers with the sort

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of, you know, zip, zip printer.

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We had manuscripts that were hundreds of pages long

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and others that were very short

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and we received a few diaries written at the time

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or immediately post-war.

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I think he would be blown away now.

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I just think he would be like, wow.

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We've distributed a million books.

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We are in every province in territory in Canada.

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You know, something that he had thought of has blossomed

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and will live on, and that these stories will live on.

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Yeah.