Reviews – Suzanne Berliner Weiss

Suzanne Weiss, Holocaust Survivor, Speaks on Her Life and Activism

This article is taken from the McGill Daily dated Feb. 26, 2020.

by Abbas Mehrabian. On February 18, Holocaust survivor and social activist Suzanne Weiss spoke at Concordia University about her life, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Islamophobia, and the climate crisis.

“Back in 1942, Adolf Hitler marked me down for death. I was only one year old. Why did Hitler want to kill me?’’ Weiss started her speech by recalling the first time her life was at risk. Born into a Jewish family in Paris in Nazi-occupied France, she answered the question herself: “Because he was a racist, a white supremacist.”

It took her several decades to find out how she was saved: “There was a civilian resistance which obstructed the Nazi rule and provided refuge for thousands of Jews, including me,” she told the attendees, adding, “It was also a multitude of individuals who helped [in various ways]. A multitude of small individual acts of courage and kindness forged a chain of solidarity across the country, which helped defeat the Nazis.” Her parents did not survive – Weiss’ mother was deported to Auschwitz, while her father died of war wounds, leaving her an orphan.

After the liberation of France, at age nine she was adopted by a Jewish American family in New York. Her stepfather had a narrow view of women, believing their destiny was to “find a mate, marry, and take care of [their] husband and household and their children.” She rejected this stereotype, and at age 17, she left home and took refuge with a girlfriend. Weiss recalled, “It was illegal for a girl of my age to leave home without permission. My parents had me arrested and charged my girlfriend’s mother for influencing me to be a lesbian!”

Book Review: A Lifetime for Liberation by Naomi Allen

Solidarity: A Socialist, Feminist, Anti-Racist Organization — https://solidarity-us.org/atc/207/holocaust-to-resistance/

by Naomi Allen

*Raincy-le-Plateau orphanage 1946: Suzanne (second from left) with other children and their dog, Zezette.*

Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey
by Suzanne Berliner Weiss
Roseway Publishing (Nova Scotia and Manitoba), 2019, 311 pages.

SUZANNE WEISS’S THRILLING and sometimes harrowing account of her life, from war orphan to immigrant to socialist activist, can be read almost as a catalog of liberation struggles from the post-World War II era through the first decades of the 21st century. Her personal story meshes almost seamlessly with the political history of those years.

For her contemporaries, some of the fascination in reading this account will come from a shared experience — growing up in the stifling 1950s, the sudden expansiveness of the ’60s, the life-altering embrace of radical politics, then navigating a route through the thicket of political life without a compass.

But the core of the story is not one that most of her readers will have experienced — born in 1941, the war refugee child of Polish and Russian Jewish resistance fighters, raised in French orphanages, adopted by Jewish American “progressives,” seeking her place in the world. Nevertheless, the writer’s voice is so engaging that her personal story grabs the reader from the very start, and becomes a compelling guide through her life and adventures, both personal and political, to almost the present day.

Continue reading Book Review: A Lifetime for Liberation by Naomi Allen

A Life Full of Adventure and Discovery, Review by Arthur Maglin

Posted byArthur Maglin

Posted in Amazon with a five star review

June 7, 2020

This review was written December 11, 2019 as an Amazon five-star review. I have since expanded it. The book made a powerful impact on me. I still find myself thinking about it.

Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey by Suzanne Berliner Weiss. Halifax and Winnipeg: Roseway Publishing, 2019. 320 pages. $21.31.

Suzanne Berliner Weiss has written a compelling autobiography that begins in France where she was saved from the Nazi Holocaust and then adopted by progressive Americans only to grow up in the witch hunt 1950’s and to emerge into the 1960’s with a lifelong outlook, in her words, of “solidarity, generosity and love.”

Continue reading A Life Full of Adventure and Discovery, Review by Arthur Maglin

A Life Saved, and Lived, by Solidarity, Review by James Clark

Review by James Clark

Suzanne Weiss begins her recent memoir with these words by W. B. Yeats: “There are no strangers here, only friends you have not yet met.” More than just an epigram, they describe a practice of solidarity that saved Weiss from the Holocaust and later shaped her more than six decades of activity as a life-long socialist. It is this critical link, between the courageous acts that spared thousands of Jewish children during World War Two and a life committed to the struggle for human liberation, that forms the central message of Weiss’s text: solidarity inspires solidarity.

Breathtaking in its sweep of history, Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey (published by Roseway in 2019) follows Weiss from her childhood in Nazi-occupied France during World War Two to some of the most momentous struggles of the last 60 years: the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the rise of Black Power in the United States in the 1960s and 70s, the anti-imperialist movements in Latin America in the 1980s and 90s, the Palestine solidarity movement in the 2000s, and today’s fight for climate justice and Indigenous sovereignty—among many others.

Continue reading A Life Saved, and Lived, by Solidarity, Review by James Clark

Review of “Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey” – Review by Phil Ward

Socialistresistance.org | Socialist Resistance

Phil Ward, 7 May 2020

For the author’s comments on related Holocaust autobiographies, see end of this review. (SBW)

“Holocaust to Resistance” differs from [other biographies on the Holocaust] in two respects. Firstly, Suzanne Weiss was too young to recollect – and certainly to understand – most of her experiences of the war years, so one of the strands of the book is a journey of rediscovery of her past as a Jewish girl born in Paris in 1941. The second strand recounts her life as a political activist, including over 25 years as a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (USA – no relation to the British SWP). Although many Jewish holocaust survivors have developed left-wing views as a result of their experiences and used them as a guide in their working lives, a memoir from an activist in a far-left political group or “party” is different.

A life of political activism

In 1958, aged 17, having moved with her adoptive mother to the Los Angeles, Suzanne came to political activism through her interest in the struggle of African Americans against racism and for civil rights. She soon encountered the Socialist Workers’ Party and joined its youth wing. The SWP was about to enter a decade or so of growing political influence, after the witch-hunts of the McCarthy period. The party brought with it a number of people seasoned in the workers’ struggles of the 1930s, the war period and its immediate aftermath. Its history in the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement, meant that it was able to draw on experiences wider that just the USA to inform its activity.

Continue reading Review of “Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey” – Review by Phil Ward

It’s a Page-turner That Brings You In On Her Journey

By Sue Goldstein

Toronto – March 10, 2020 -Suzanne Berliner Weiss is a lifelong organizer, whose passage to activism began in Vichy France under Nazi rule. In her highly readable memoir, Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey, Weiss recounts her life in France and the people who saved her from Hitler’s slaughter.

As a hidden child in Auvergne in south-central France, Suzanne lived with a farm family who were loath to give her up once her father, after surviving the war, returned to retrieve her. Shortly afterwards, her father died.

Survivor Discusses Why She Embraces Left-Wing Politics

Below is an appreciation of a talk I gave to the meeting of If Not Now, an organization of young Jews against Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

By Barbara Silverstein

Canadian Jewish News, February 7, 2019

Suzanne Weiss

Suzanne Weiss was born in Paris in 1941, during the German occupation. Her Ukrainian father was a prisoner of war. Her mother, a left-wing Polish refugee, was deported from France in 1943 and died later that year in Auschwitz.

Weiss was one of thousands of Jewish children who were rescued by an underground network of Jewish and gentile groups. They placed these youngsters with families and in children’s homes throughout southern France.

A long-time political and social activist, Weiss spoke about her experience as a young Holocaust survivor and her 2017 visit to Auvergne, the region where she was hidden, in Toronto on Jan. 31. The event was organized by IfNotNow Toronto – which is dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, building a Jewish community that values inclusivity and justice, and challenging community support for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank – to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On July 16, 1942, French police arrested 13,150 Jewish refugees. They were herded into the Velodrome d’Hiver (Vel’ d’Hiv) and soon after sent to extermination camps, Weiss recounted. “Almost all of them were killed. Why was I spared? I have pieced the story together.”

She and her mother, Faiga Berliner, escaped the “Vel’ d’Hiv round-up,” and headed south, but they ended up in a German transit camp with other Jewish refugees. Weiss was smuggled out and eventually placed with a family in Auvergne, a region in southern France governed by the Vichy regime.

“Faiga had to entrust me to a left-wing Jewish organization. They placed me with a nursemaid, a non- Jewish nanny,” recalls Weiss.

Jewish parents like her mother “understood that they had to hide their children.… A network of anti-Nazi resisters saved the children by dispersing them.”

Some were sent to live with gentile families, while others were placed in orphanages. “They were hidden in plain sight of all,” she said.

These French villagers and clergy risked their lives to save Jewish children. A network of organizations provided stipends to the gentile families and institutions, to care for the children, Weiss explained.

The Buchners, friends of her father’s who were in the Jewish resistance, also looked out for her, Weiss said, pointing out that an important mission of the French Jewish resistance was to save Jewish lives.

She still does not know the name of the family, or even the village, where she was placed. “I remember nothing. I was on a peasant farm with a family who had wanted to adopt me,” she said. “I owe my life to the hospitality of that family.”

Weiss did, however, recall that after the war, she was located by her father, Aron Itzkovitch. One of her first memories is of her desire to remain with the French family. “They fought to keep me. I was unwilling to go,” said Weiss. “He took my arm and pulled me away.”

He returned her to the Jewish community and died shortly thereafter. She lived in a Jewish orphanage in Paris for five years, until she was adopted by the Weisses, a left-wing Jewish-American couple.

“I was brought up with people in the orphanages who promoted justice, love, peace and solidarity. That was their Judaism,” she said. “That was my Judaism. I believe that was the Judaism of my natural parents. It was the Judaism of my adopted parents. They were against segregation, apartheid, the death penalty and fascism.”

When she visited the French town of Clermont-Ferrand, in the Auvergne region, in 2017, Weiss took the opportunity to thank the people of that area for their bravery, solidarity and generosity.

“During the occupation, they accepted a diversity of refugees. The people of Auvergne saved the lives of thousands of people,” said Weiss.

“They wove a fabric of solidarity and built a long chain to save lives and change the course of history.

“We have to apply the same humanity to refugees and those fleeing authoritarian regimes.”

https://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/survivor-discusses-why-she-embraces-left-wing-politics

‘Holocaust survivor adopts activism’: Book review

Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey, by Suzanne Berliner Weiss, reviewed by: Sharon Chisvin in Winnipeg Free Press.
10/26/2019.

Suzanne Berliner Weiss has dedicated her life to improving the welfare of others. It is an honourable and admirable pursuit — especially considering the tragedy and trauma that characterized Weiss’s early life.

Weiss, who was born in France, spent years in the United States and now lives in Toronto, chronicles that past in her moving and motivating memoir Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey. Written with clarity and honesty, and few embellishments, the memoir explores Weiss’s life as a hidden child during the Holocaust, as a child adopted by an American couple after the Holocaust and as a socialist and activist throughout her adult life.

Weiss’s biological parents were progressive Polish and Ukrainian Jews living in France when Germany occupied the country. Determined to keep their young daughter alive, they arranged for her to be hidden with a rural Christian family. At war’s end, Weiss’s father came to fetch her but, mortally wounded, he left her in the care of a friend who later sent her to an orphanage. Weiss’s mother never appeared; she had been murdered in Auschwitz.

‘Holocaust to Resistance’ documents a life well lived

REVIEW IN RABBLE by Sid Shniad
September 17, 2019

Child visits Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Image: Lisa Leonardelli/Flickr

Holocaust to Resistance, My Journey by Suzanne Weiss
(Fernwood Publishing, 2019, 22.00)

To live a successful life

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of the intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty;
to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better
whether by a healthy child, a garden patch,
or a redeemed social condition;
to know that one life has breathed easier
because you lived here.
This is to have succeeded.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, cited by Palestinian professor and activist, Mazin Qumsiyeh

Sid Ryan’s Vision: Linking Unions to Social Movements

Review: A Grander Vison: My Life in the Labour Movement, by Sid Ryan, Toronto: Dundurn, 2019, 310 pp., $24.99 (ebook $12.99).

A review by Suzanne Weiss: It is rare to find a labour leader who not only speaks on the union’s behalf but acts in the interests of us all, on both local and global issues, with honesty, firmness, and determination. Sid’s memoir of his life in the labour movement is a fast-moving narrative of exciting events that affected the wellbeing of all working people.

His story is brimming with the excitement of union life in his native Ireland, in Ontario, and on the world stage. His moving portrayal of early life in Dublin and Belfast shows how his character was in part shaped by engagement in Ireland’s struggle against colonialism – a theme that resounds in his later activities in Canada.

First elected to leadership positions as a member of CUPE Ontario, Sid prevailed on unwilling bosses to grant esteem and protection to rank-and-file workers, displaying the loyalty to social justice that he learned from his father. Sid understood the central issue of union life: membership unity against the bosses and respect for members as contributors to changing and bettering their own conditions.

Sid’s fifth chapter, entitled, “At Home in the World,” speaks to my heart. It was in this arena that I came to know him. For Sid, “The labour movement has always had an international dimension: the injustices and inequities that unrestrained capitalism visits on workers in one country typically have analogues abroad.”

Sid believes the labour movement must not be narrow, parochial, or restricted to local issues. It is part of the world struggle for social justice. The unions must be a reflection of the social movements that fight so hard for the rights we prize as unionists.

The situation in Israel/Palestine drew Sid’s attention as a lifelong enemy of colonialism. He was in Israel when Ariel Sharon, leader of the right-wing Likud Party “gave the green light to the building a four-hundred-mile barrier wall that would separate the West Bank from Israel and, in the process, cut deeply into prime Palestinian land.” The International Court of Justice was quoted to say that the barriers’ construction was “tantamount to annexation and impeded the Palestinian right to self- determination,” Sid states.

In 2006, five members of CUPE Ontario appealed to Sid to join them in the convention that year to support resolution 50, calling on CUPE Ontario to join the international campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) to hasten the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. The resolution was proposed by my friends, Katherine Nastovski, Adam Hanieh, Ali Mallah, Rafeef Ziadah, and David Kidd. Reading Sid’s account renewed my pride in having worked with these solidarity activists.

As a retired unionist, I was active in the emerging social movement in Toronto in support of Palestinian self-determination. I heard Sid describe the events at the CUPE convention that year at a forum during Israel Apartheid Week, where he recounted the whole episode. All us of there burst with joy as he reported the vigorous near-unanimous stance of 900 delegates to the CUPE Ontario convention representing 220,000 members. Sid explained how the resolution would break new ground both for the union and the BDS campaign worldwide.

Sid was well aware that he would take the brunt of denunciations from right-wing quarters of labour, and government for this bold stand. But to social activists Sid is a labour hero and an example.

Sid Ryan calls for the adoption of “social movement unionism, in which labour forges an alliance with other progressive elements in civil society, taking up the cause of young people, precarious workers, and immigrants.” A Grander Vision explains how this concept has been applied, and it is truly one to inspire us all.