'Nothing has changed in 80 years,' says Holocaust survivor

Maxwell Smart landed in Halifax at Pier 21 as a war orphan in 1948. He was born in Poland in 1930 and lived to see a Soviet invasion, and then Nazi occupation of the country. 

During this time he witnessed unimaginable horrors, including the murder of his grandfather.

Smart immigrated to Canada in 1948 with help from the Canadian Jewish Congress. He was one of 1,000 Jewish war orphans allowed to come to Canada. Eventually, he settled in Montreal, where he lives today. 

After decades of silence, he's telling his story in a new book call Chaos to Canvas. He also says he wants to educate the public about anti-Semitism and sees it in recent events, including the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

He spoke to Portia Clark, host of Information Morning Nova Scotia .

What do you remember about landing here 70 years ago?

It was not pleasant. I came in on a boat which was a very simple [military] boat with bunk beds. We slept on bunks, maybe 10 people each. Pier 21 was not a pleasant entrance. It [had] black dark metal cages, and I think there were soldiers. It was a little bit scary.

I was 17-years-old [when I arrived], and 62 people in my family had been killed including my mother, father and my sister. I was left totally alone.

Describe the events leading up to your arrival in Canada.

It was very bad. It was a life that I tried all these years — I'm 80-years-old — to forget. It was horrible.

Imagine killing a [whole] family. I come from a city of 8,000 Jews. Only 100 of those 8,000 survived and I am one of those 100. Just imagine the catastrophe and the horror that I had to live through as a child to come to Canada.

When did your family realize they had to flee to survive?

There was no realizing. Nobody knew, nobody imagined. Nobody could even imagine that something like this could happen. How could you imagine walking in the streets and being killed. How could you imagine taking children and throwing them on trucks.

You can't imagine anything [like that]. There's no imagination that somebody could describe it. I can't describe the horrors that I saw.

Have you always been comfortable discussing what happened?

I have not discussed the Holocaust for 50 years until my children and my family said maybe I should say something about it. Maybe I should not hide like I did for so many years. Maybe I should expose it.

To [relive it again] is not easy. But maybe it's worth it if you could learn something from it, if you could really analyze it. I would like to educate people not to hate.

What do you think are the lessons of this piece of history?

I know that young people are very much involved with the internet and with freedom of speech. I am not against democracy and freedom of speech, but you take a hate group and you give them the freedom of speech to be able to talk on the internet and freely express their hatred. You teach them they're not alone. There's no such a thing as a lone wolf. [The Pittsburgh shooter] was talking to thousands of people about what he was going to do.

He was talking to thousands of people and spreading what he was doing. And people were listening to him. There are going to be copycats.

What should be done to keep on top of those groups that are spreading those kinds of hateful things on the internet?

I don't say ban democracy or ban freedom of speech. I say put in some rules — you cannot openly hate people, you cannot tell them to kill. [The Pittsburgh shooter] was openly telling people that he was going to kill Jews.

What does it feel like as someone who survived the Holocaust to see this happening in 2018?

Nothing has changed in 80 years. That's what I feel. I was killed 80 years ago by hatred of Jews, and the hatred is still there today. The hatred has not disappeared. How do you [get rid of] it? Only through schools. Teach the children to love their neighbour.

The children are the government of tomorrow. The children will teach, be scholars, be inventors. I have faith in the children. They will change the world. They have to.

We are too late, we are too old. We've lived 80 years and nothing's changed.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.