Why 2023 was declared 'Year of Chava Rosenfarb': Celebrating a Jewish-Canadian author
The Holocaust survivor settled in Canada, winning multiple awards for her work
Chava Rosenfarb was 21 years old when she and her family were taken to Auschwitz from the Łódź ghetto in 1944.
"They took away our rucksacks and purses, and of course, they took away my poems and… we had nothing anymore. Nothing. Nothing. So that's how we entered the concentration camp," Rosenfarb told IDEAS in a 2001 documentary.
"I promised myself in Auschwitz, you know, when we arrived there, on the ramp, when we stood there, I promised myself that if I survive, I will write about it."
Rosenfarb, her sister, and her mother were deported from Auschwitz to a work camp at Sasel (a sub-camp of Neuengamme concentration camp), where they built houses for the bombed-out Germans of Hamburg.
Despite the horror, the hunger, and the fear, Chava Rosenfarb found ways to write.
"I had the upper bunk and I started, in the evenings after work or before we got down from our bunks, to write down the poems, which I remembered, in teensy weensy letters on the ceiling above my head," she said.
"I learned them by heart and I erased them, sort of, with my hand — and then after liberation I remembered these poems."
Before the war ended, Rosenfarb, her mother and sister would survive yet another camp, Bergen-Belsen. She would soon find out that her father had died in the last transport out of Dachau.
2023: The Year of Chava Rosenfarb
Rosenfarb stayed in Europe after the war, and married another Holocaust survivor, Henry Morgentaler. The couple settled in Montreal in 1950.
Morgentaler became a prominent Canadian abortion provider and rights activist, while Rosenfarb continued to write. The poet and novelist is best known for her work in Yiddish, including a trilogy titled The Tree of Life, about life in Poland during the Holocaust. She won multiple prizes for her work.
To mark the centennial of Rosenfarb's birth and honour her legacy, the city of Łódź, Poland, where she was born, declared 2023 "The Year of Chava Rosenfarb." In the fall, the literary community in Łódź held celebrations and a conference in honour of the Holocaust survivor.
"These books of Chava Rosenfarb make us more rich, you know, give us a different perspective. It is also to tell something more about us, the good and the bad, you can learn something more about yourself, just in this universal way," said Joanna Podolska, organizer of the Łódź celebratory events.
Goldie Morgentaler is the daughter of Chava Rosenfarb. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Lethbridge, and translates her mother's work into English.
"One of the things that has always intrigued me about her fiction is she tries to get inside the mind of people she despised," she said.
On a recent visit to her mother's birthplace, Łódź, Poland, Goldie Morgentaler got a chance to see her mother's work in a new light. The Canadian-Jewish poet and novelist has inspired concerts, readings and public art.
"Murals painted on the walls which say, 'Here lived Chava Rosenfarb,'" she described.
"When you know my mother's novels and you see in front of your eyes what she's writing about, it makes it come to life."
In this episode, IDEAS revisits a 2001 documentary chronicling Chava Rosenfarb's life — from her childhood in Łódź, through the horrors of the Holocaust, to her life in Canada. The program also explores the politics of Holocaust remembrance in Poland today.
Listen to the original documentary from 2001, The Tree of Life, by Elaine Kalman Naves, with producer Jane Lewis of CBC Montreal.
Guests in the 2001 documentary:
Chava Rosenfarb was a Canadian Yiddish writer
Henry Morgentaler was an abortion rights activist and provider
Goldie Morgentaler is Chava and Henry's daughter, and professor emerita at the University of Lethbridge
Abraham Morgentaler is Chava and Henry's son
Joanna Podolska is an organizer of centenary celebrations for Chava Rosenfarb in Łódź, Poland
*This episode was produced by producer by Allison Dempster, with help from Matthew Lazin-Ryder. The original 2001 documentary was produced by Elaine Kalman Naves, with producer Jane Lewis of CBC Montreal.
