Immigrating to Canada

In 1927 Tsivia (later known as Sylvia), with her three children and Mother-in-law Mari, boarded a ship to Canada to meet her husband Isaac who had settled in earlier.  Isaac Staworowski (pronounced Stavorovski) owned a clothing store.  After a few short years in Canada, they changed their last name to Star.

 

Jenta (pronounced Yenta later known as Jennie) immigrated to Canada and settled in Montreal  later that year followed by  (Chaja (pronounced Chaya later know as Ida) in 1929. The two girls lived together - Jennie had a small store and Ida was a seamstress.  The girls then arranged for my Great Great Grandfather to join them as he was approaching the age where he would have to serve in the Red Army.  Zalmon Munish (later known as Sam) boarded the Hellig Olav in Coppenhagen and arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax in March 1929.  He was just 18 years old.  He worked as a fruit peddler and became a Canadian citizen in 1939.  He would meet Miriam Wapia in Montreal and later marry her.  Together they had four children- My Great Grandmother Roz, Sylvia, Sarah and Martin (but we call him Uncle Moishe).

 

Rynah, the eldest sister of Elyah and Zaidy Sam, was married with four children and wanted to stay with her parents in Poland.  According to Bubbie Roz ,her father (Sam) told her that when he left Poland Elyah was just a baby so we think he was born around 1927.

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For a few years the family in Canada received letters, postcards and photos from Poland describing a very good life they were living. By the early 1940's all correspondence from Poland stopped, and the Canadian family never heard from their Polish family again.

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Later on after the war a neighbor from Dabrowa who was not Jewish and loved Moshe and the family ended up moving to Montreal and came to Zaidy Sam's house one day. He was very upset and told him "Don't bother looking for your family, they were all taken from their homes and shot." There was no way of confirming this back then so the family had to live their lives not really knowing for sure what happened to their loved ones.

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In 2019 I started looking on the internet for records that would tell us what really happened, here's what I found...

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In 1930 Canada had closed it's borders to immigration, meaning the 4 siblings living in Canada had great difficulty trying to bring their polish family, including Elyah, to Canada.

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In 1933 Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany and this started a huge uprising of anti antisemitism in Europe. From this time until 1939 Jews in Germany were not allowed to go to school, practice Judaism, or own a business. Life became very difficult.