3 records – page 1 of 1.

Engelhard, Sarah - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60316
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
04:49:00
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
04:49:00
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Sarah Engelhard was born on July 10, 1932 in Alsace-Lorraine, France. Her childhood was spent in Toulouse, where she lived with her parents and her younger brother Jack. With an increasing number of Jews in Toulouse being taken by the Nazis, her family escaped to Spain when she around nine years old. To do so they obtained false papers and hired guides to take them over the Pyrenees. They lived in Spain for almost two years, finally immigrating to Canada on the first day of Passover in April 1944. Though she picked up English quickly, she didn’t enjoy her first years in Canada. High school was hard for her, and she dropped out at age 15 to help her father sell his handbags. Though she managed to do her part well, he did not, and the business fell through. She found a job in the music section at Eaton’s department store. When she was 18 she left home and became engaged to a man she had known in high school, Avi Boxer. That engagement fell through and, after obtaining her degree from St. George’s University, she married a man twenty years her senior named Harry. They had three children. She moved with Harry to Philadelphia where he was working as an engineer. There, she began to write French love songs and perform in dinner clubs as a singer as well as audition for plays. She also taught French, eventually getting a television program for teaching French. She and Harry divorced in 1972. A year or two later she returned to Montreal after having visited Europe for the first time since she left. She reunited with Avi, and though the relationship was sour they had a child, Asa. In 1993 she and Asa left for Israel, where she lived for nine years. She returned to Montreal in 2002 and has since written a book about her life.
Accession No.
WTH-470
Name Access
Engelhard, Sarah
Places
Saarbrucken, Germany, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Engelhard, Sarah - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60326
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
04:49:00
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
04:49:00
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
French
Notes
Sarah Engelhard was born on July 10, 1932 in Alsace-Lorraine, France. Her childhood was spent in Toulouse, where she lived with her parents and her younger brother Jack. With an increasing number of Jews in Toulouse being taken by the Nazis, her family escaped to Spain when she around nine years old. To do so they obtained false papers and hired guides to take them over the Pyrenees. They lived in Spain for almost two years, finally immigrating to Canada on the first day of Passover in April 1944. Though she picked up English quickly, she didn’t enjoy her first years in Canada. High school was hard for her, and she dropped out at age 15 to help her father sell his handbags. Though she managed to do her part well, he did not, and the business fell through. She found a job in the music section at Eaton’s department store. When she was 18 she left home and became engaged to a man she had known in high school, Avi Boxer. That engagement fell through and, after obtaining her degree from St. George’s University, she married a man twenty years her senior named Harry. They had three children. She moved with Harry to Philadelphia where he was working as an engineer. There, she began to write French love songs and perform in dinner clubs as a singer as well as audition for plays. She also taught French, eventually getting a television program for teaching French. She and Harry divorced in 1972. A year or two later she returned to Montreal after having visited Europe for the first time since she left. She reunited with Avi, and though the relationship was sour they had a child, Asa. In 1993 she and Asa left for Israel, where she lived for nine years. She returned to Montreal in 2002 and has since written a book about her life.
Accession No.
WTH-537
Name Access
Engelhard, Sarah
Places
Saarbrucken, Germany, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Wahnon, Sarah - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60317
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:17:00
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:17:00
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Sarah Wahnon (née Goldman) was born in 1923 in Lisbon, Portugal. At the beginning of the interview she states that she is not a survivor of the Holocaust. Her parents were born in Poland in 1895. They moved to Berlin in search of a better life. In 1923, with the rise of Hitler, they moved to Lisbon as it was easy to obtain visas for Portugal. Her father opened a small factory and the business went quite well. Sarah worked in a department store. Her family wasn’t particularly religious, but her mother made Sarah and her brother take Yiddish and Judaism classes. Sarah speaks about the deeds of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese diplomat who issued an estimated 30,000 visas to Jews and other persecuted minorities in Portugal, against the orders of his own government, Prime Minister Antonio de Oliviera Salazar. Sarah also describes the Jewish life in Portugal before, during and after WWII, and the changes with the arrival of refugees from the rest of Europe. In 1950, she immigrated to Canada with her husband (a Sephardi Jew) and her father, mother and brother, because they wanted to experience a different environment. She had two children who were born at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal.
Accession No.
WTH-473
Name Access
Wahnon, Sarah
Places
Lisbon, Portugal, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail