Alex Levin

Working at the Salvation Army also presented me the opportunity of meeting Holocaust survivor, Alex Levin, who was staying with a senior’s group at the camp. Meeting Alex was a great experience because he was the first ‘high profile’ person I’d done an interview with. Mind you, for an elderly man of different descent than I, Alex is so down to earth, it’s automatically like talking to an old friend. Being from a Jewish background myself, I not only had the chance to do an excellent interview and paper, but I also learnt a lot about I come from in the process. Alex also gave me a memoir he wrote about his experiences, called ‘Under the Yellow and Red Stars’. It’s amazing and everyone should read it. Portraits of Alex and article below.

Holocaust survivor Alex Levin outside his home in Toronto.

May the Message Ring Clear through the Broken Telephone of Generations: We are All Human.

By Leah Myers.

One day after school, 15 year old Joshua Daniels came home with a lot to say about his day and what he learnt from a man who came to speak with him and his classmates. 

Daniels– who has lived his life with the privileges of a stable society, shopping malls, and the freedom to choose between Nike’s or Puma’s– met a man who, at the young age of 10 years old, wore shoes made from tree bark and socks from cornstalks.

On November 7th, 2010, St. Paul’s United Church in Ajax opened its doors to Holocaust survivor, Alex Levin to speak on behalf of Holocaust Education week. Daniels parents, Esther and Ken witnessed the 78 year old, European man who captivated a room full of children with wandering eyes  and unfocused minds, taught them about the past, and warned them about repeating similar mistakes in the future. 

“Their lives are so different,” Esther Daniels said, comparing how Levin and her son grew up, “what he went through and how it is now. One thing my son realizes is that this should not happen again.”

Alex Levin has made it his life’s mission to tell his story and experience of the Holocaust to the younger generation. Levin constantly recounts his journey not because he has pleasurable memories to share– remembering his past is very painful– and he does not sugar coat the dark part of history that robbed the lives of his mother, father, five year old brother and 6 million Jews. Since they can’t speak or write, his motive it to do so on their behalf. 

Anxious ears fill the pews of St. Paul’s church as Levin paces slowly up and down the aisles and begins his story. Levin elaborates on his simple childhood living in Rokitno, Poland before Nazi’s occupied the land in 1941 and the Jews were forced into ghettos. Levin’s family was a strong, loving one and he describes his mother as ‘the very image of a Jewish mother‘, who practiced homey routines and enjoyed cooking traditional, family recipes. Levin recalls with affection and fondness the last supper they ate as a family, which sadly only consisted of a few cold potatoes.

Levin’s voice, hinted with an European accent, projects calmly yet passionately throughout the chapel. He stands straight with his hands behind his back, his chest puffed out, sporting a Remembrance Day poppy with a Canadian flag centered in it, over his heart. He’s wearing a blue suit pinned with medallion ribbons he earned from his time as a Red Army Veteran. Levin’s fluffy, white hair peaks out the sides of his uniform cap. 

On August 27, 1942, The Sarny massacre in Rokitno left Levin an orphan and a victim of War. That day, Ukrainian and German authorities carried out the gunshot, mass murders in Town Square which would define the rest of Levin’s life.

Six million is a large number for anyone to comprehend, especially in the context of murdered persons. Ken Daniels sadly shook his head as he described how his son kept asking if that many people were really killed. He couldn’t fathom such a large statistic, but after hearing that Alex’s family included in the six million, it was clear that he had made an effort to believe the unbelievable.

In the silence of the church venue, the buzzing of florescent lights is heavy and the sound fills the room as Levin pauses not only to recollect his train of thought, but to go one step further and attempt to relive a moment from many years ago. 

Levin generates moving imagery in the minds of his audience as he describes tightly clenching his brother’s hand as they tore through a hellish blood bath of murder victims and ran deep into the woods of Rokitno. The forest where Levin and his brothers once timidly explored would become their haven for life and survival for 18 months.

Levin is a Holocaust survivor with a unique tale of strength and will. The will to live made Alex Levin a survivor. Today, he addresses not only mature minded adults to listen to him speak but he also talks with school children– as new and innocent as he was when he fled into the forests of Poland. Levin sits on the floor with these children and tells the terrors of WW2, while trying not to eliminate the horrible crimes he witnessed firsthand with his childish eyes. 

In a dark humour, Levin articulates on the difficulty of being genuine, yet bearing a kind heart that does not aim to send children running out of the room screaming.

“The children ask me so many questions: When you were a child, what kind of toys did you have in the forest? What should I tell them? I took a live bear and played with the live bear? Or I played with the leaves? These were my toys.”

The ridges and fissures in Levin’s elderly, facial features separate his generation from a child’s, but the well-conducted yet quirky way of his mannerisms are instantly inviting and Levin could easily be anyone’s story telling, war-veteran of a Grandpa.

After 18 months of surviving off the land, Levin is adopted by the Red Army and becomes a ‘son of the regiment.’ 

In Russia (or at the time, the Soviet Union) he studies military sciences and engineering and tries to establish a career for himself. 

Shortly following, however, Levin is interrogated by the KGB because of his relation and contact to Israeli sister-in-law and was reproached for failing to disclose the fact he had surviving brothers in Israel. Reportedly, the KGB made Levin’s life ‘living hell.’  He was given an ‘honourable discharge on the basis of a scheduled personnel layoff’ and registered with the local military as a retiree.

Cocked necks and raised eyebrows maintain their stance, as Levin continues to explain the unjust and prejudice he experienced in the Soviet Union in the 1980’s. After working unfulfilling jobs that didn’t utilize the skill set he learnt in military school, Levin concluded there was no present or future for Holocaust survivors in the Soviet Union. Levin packed his bags and left his life- his wife and his daughter- behind and joined his brothers in Canada. Levin’s wife, Marina and his daughter, Yelena later moved to Canada after Yelena experienced prejudice when she was denied a post-secondary education on the basis on being Jewish.

Like many survivors, Alex Levin kept silent about his life’s trauma for a long time. Levin recalls the time he met a Holocaust survivor from Holland. Levin uses hand gestures to detail the survivor as a large man, ‘twice as big and strong as him’. When Levin saw the man break down and collapse, he understood that delving into the past isn’t easy.

‘We Who Listened’ is a book put together of children’s responses to Alex Levin’s memoir ‘Under the Yellow and Red Stars.’

“After school children read my book they have to write one or two sentences; I’m proud that some of them, not all of them, but some of them understand what I was talking about; that is why I’m doing this. Some of them understood and wrote their responses from their heart and tell their parents and siblings about it; it is very painful but that is why we [survivors] have to do it.”

“Growing up in Canada, my son has had so much freedom,” reiterates Esther Daniels “but he realizes that the material things aren’t important... and that all Mr. Levin thought about in the forest was food!”

As humans, we basically all have the same basic needs. Alex Levin, even from a very early age can recall his strong, family backdrop– which is almost as universal as hunger. Levin was robbed of his mother, father and younger brother, but the courage that formed as a result of his family’s love gave him the strength to be more than a victim of war and a survivor. It gave him the bravery to be a speaker and an educator. 

May the message ring clear through the broken telephone of generations that we are all human. And even though, like 15 year old Joshua Daniels, we live in a different world than Levin did– free and garnished– the emotion and tone, in the voice of a Holocaust survivor, will make us listen and empathize. May the subtleties and idiosyncrasies in the body language of these survivors penetrate us and let us pass down their knowledge with a similar level of humanity.