Showing 211 results

Authority record

Landauer, Otto F.

  • Person
  • October 3, 1903-September 19, 1980

Otto Landauer was born to Jewish parents in Munich on October 3, 1903. He was the second son of Simon Landauer and Senta Seller. There was an older son, Leopold, and a third son, Albert. An only daughter, Johanna Henrietta, was born in 1912. She was named after her paternal and maternal grandmothers, and was always called "Hansi."

Landauer moved first to Portland Oregon in 1941, before moving to Vancouver in 1945. On October 1, 1946, Landauer completed the purchase of the Leonard Frank Photos (Leonard Frank passed away February 1944). Otto continued in the business until he passed away September 19, 1980. His last photographs were taken September 12, 1980, at the Marine Institute.

Langer family

  • Family
  • 1874 -

Fritz and Olga Langer fled Vienna with their son Michael Hans Max Langer (later Livni) and their daughter Lucy (later Laufer) at the outbreak of World War II, when Lucy was only 7 months old. The family escaped to France, where they waited in the suburbs of Paris for approximately 8 months until they were allowed into Palestine in February of 1939. Times were tumultuous in Palestine, and Fritz struggled to find work. In 1942, the Langers left Palestine for Canada, where Fritz’s previous employers in Austria had emigrated. The influence and financial support of the Bloch-Bauer (later Bentley) and Pick (later Prentice) families made it possible for the Langers to be included in the 112 Jews who were admitted to Canada by Order in Council in that year. The first stop was Trinidad, where they waited to receive visas to travel through the United States. After getting their visas, the family boarded a ship called the Robert E. Lee. One day out from port, the Robert E. Lee was torpedoed and sunk within minutes. The family’s important documents, money, and Olga’s jewelry was lost, but the family survived on a lifeboat. They were eventually rescued and taken to port in New Orleans. The Langers were able to see their family in St. Louis, Missouri and New York, New York before they finally arrived in Vancouver, four years after they first left their home in Austria.

Olga Langer (born Spitzer) was born in 1900 in Vienna. She grew up in a moderately upper-class household and completed grade 12, including some Jewish education. Following her education, Olga worked as a bookkeeper for her father. She married Fritz Langer in 1924, in Vienna. The couple enjoyed travel and recreation together in their youth. The transition from her life of relative ease in Europe to the struggles of life in Canada was difficult for Olga, but she proved herself a devoted mother and incredibly supportive wife. Olga worked full-time in her husband’s store and ran the household, a life member of Hadassah who was too busy to ever attend a single meeting. She died in Vancouver in 1982. Olga’s parents were Alfred and Else (born Selinko) Spitzer.

Friedrich (Fritz) Langer (born Lowy) was born in 1891 in Vienna. Fritz was an officer in the First World War in the Mounted Artillery of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Fritz was an insightful and practical man; He changed his last name from Lowy to Langer in 1918 to avoid discrimination. Fritz received a law degree from the University of Vienna and worked managing cotton mills for the Picks and Bloch-Bauers, eventually helping his employers get out of Austria following the Nazi invasion on the 12th of March in 1938. In Canada, Fritz first worked for Pacific Veneer and Plywood in New Westminster, and in 1944 opened The New Stamp Shop on Hornby (later West Pender), which he ran until a few years before he died in 1976 at the age of 84. Fritz’s parents were Morris and Helene Lowy.

Olga’s mother Elsa was born to Rosalie Kaufman and Franz Salinko in 1875. She worked as a private English teacher and maintained the home. Elsa died of cancer in 1929. Alfred was born to Morris and Yohanna (born Goldstein) Spitzer in 1870 and died in 1959. Alfred was a bank director and bookkeeper, and moved to St. Louis, MO in the United States as a refugee in 1939. Alfred re-married following Elsa’s death, to Ella Than. Alfred and Elsa had three daughters: Olga (born 1900), Elizabeth (Liese, born 1901), and Margaret (Grete, born 1902, married Arthur Golz).

Fritz’s father Morris Lowy was born in 1855 in Bratislava to Adolf Lowy and [Jetty Schwarz], and moved to Vienna with his family at a very young age in the late 1850s. As an adult he owned a company that manufactured children’s clothing. Morris died in 1927. Helene was born to Heinrich and Caroline (born Mayer) Lemberger in Vienna in 1862 and died of cancer in 1915. Morris and Helene had two children: Fritz and Marianne (Mimi, married name Geyerahn).

Laufer, Lucy

  • Person
  • January 15, 1938 -

Lucy Laufer (born Langer) was born on the 15th of January, 1938, in Vienna, Austria. Her parents, Olga (born Spitzer) and Friedrich (Fritz, born Lowy) Langer fled Vienna with Lucy and her brother Michael Hans Max Langer at the outbreak of World War II, when Lucy was only 7 months old. The family escaped to France, where they waited in the suburbs of Paris for approximately 8 months until they were allowed into Palestine in February of 1939. Times were tumultuous in Palestine, and Fritz struggled to find work. In 1942, the Langers left Palestine for Canada, where Fritz’s previous employers in Austria had emigrated. The influence and financial support of the Bloch-Bauer (later Bentley) and Pick (later Prentice) families made it possible for the Langers to be included in the 112 Jews who were admitted to Canada by Order in Council in that year. The first stop was Trinidad, where they waited to receive visas to travel through the United States. After getting their visas, the family boarded a ship called the Robert E. Lee. One day out from port, the Robert E. Lee was torpedoed and sunk within minutes. The family’s important documents, money, and Olga’s jewelry was lost, but the family survived on a lifeboat. They were eventually rescued and taken to port in New Orleans. The Langers were able to see their family in St. Louis, Missouri and New York, New York before they finally arrived in Vancouver, four years after they first left their home in Austria.
Lucy Laufer grew up in Vancouver BC, attending Cecil Rhodes Elementary School and King Edward High School. When ill as a child, the care she received influenced her to decide to become a nurse as an adult. At age 13 Lucy attended Camp Miriam and became active in Habonim. Lucy graduated high school at age 17, after which in 1955 she participated in a Habonim workshop on kibbutz Kfar Blum in Israel. Laufer graduated Vancouver General Hospital Nursing School in 1959; she then worked in New York for a year before moving to kibbutz Yif’at in northern Israel in 1961. She worked on the kibbutz for about two years, in the orchards and as a nurse in infirmary. Lucy married Gidon Laufer in Haifa, Israel in 1965. In Haifa she was a nurse at a well-baby clinic and a school. She returned to Vancouver, BC around 1966 with Gidon. Gidon started a business in junk and recycling, and Lucy continued to work as a nurse, specializing in wound care and palliative care. The Laufers were divorced in 1991.
Laufer has volunteered extensively in the Vancouver community, serving on Vancouver’s Habonim Camp Miriam committee for approximately 20 years. Laufer has served the L’Chaim Adult Jewish Day Care as both a nurse and board member. She has also volunteered with Shalom BC and Habitat for Humanity, and contributed her professional expertise as a community health nurse. Laufer has two sons. Danny was born in 1968; He and his partner Monica Muller have two children, Jacob (b. 2006) and Anna (b. 2008). Ron was born in 1976; He and his partner Tamar Kafka have three children, Jonas (b. 2014), Sacha (b. 2016), and Amira (b. 2019).

Leonoff, Cyril E.

  • Person
  • February 22, 1925 - April 7, 2016

Cyril Edel Leonoff was a founding director of the Jewish Historical Society of BC and serves on the board as Society historian, researching such topics as the Jewish community of BC and Jewish farm communities of western Canada, and publishing the results of this research.

Cyril Edel Leonoff was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1925. He is the grandson of Edel Brotman, a homesteader and rabbi of the Wapella, Saskatchewan farm colony, 1889-1906. Cyril has been a resident of three West Coast cities, New Westminster, Seattle and Vancouver.

A civil engineer by profession, Leonoff is also a graduate of the Public History Program at SFU. He has authored and edited a number of books and papers on engineering and historical topics.

In 1970-1974, Leonoff was the founding president of the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia. For his work, 'The Jewish Farmers of Western Canada', in 1985 he was awarded the Margaret McWilliams Medal of the Manitoba Historical Society. In 2007, he recieved the Distinguished Service Award of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies. He is currently the Historian Emeritus of the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia.

In May 1949 Cyril married Faye (nee Matlin) (December 30, 1927 - October 29, 2011) and they had three children: Blair (Betsy), daughters Anita (grandchildren Alysa and Cole) and Rosanne.

Levine, Morris, Dr.

  • Person
  • August 14, 1903-October 9, 1990

Morris Levine (Jewish name Maishe Simcha Doctorovich) was born August 14, 1903, in the Red Bank district of Manchester, England. His father, Jacob, was born in Vilna, Lithuania, coming to England with his four brothers at the very end of the nineteenth century. Morris’ mother, Sarah, was born in Smolensk, in White Russia (now Byelorussia). Sarah came to Manchester, after arriving in Hull in Eastern England. Like many Jews of that time she was travelling through England on her way to the United States of America – the new promised land. Sarah’s mother died in Philadelphia and her sister ended up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sarah did not travel on to the USA because she met Jacob.

Sara and Jacob had met in England and were married in 1899 or 1900. Their first son Samuel was born in 1901. When Morris was born, his birth registration listed his last name as “Le Vien.” His 1931 marriage certificate listed his family name as “Levene”. And when he came to Canada in 1947 he became “Levine” (rhyming with “fine”, he was probably surprised to discover was the Vancouver custom). After Sammy and Morris, Sarah and Jacob had five more children, all born in Manchester: Elsie, Becky, Bailey, Harry, and Sarah.

When Morris was a baby, the Levene family moved away from Red Bank to the district of Salford, one of Manchester’s inner suburbs. He grew up speaking Yiddish, which was the language of the street in that largely Jewish quarter of the Salford district, in the shadow of the infamous Strangeways Prison. Nowadays, the Jews have moved north to the outer suburbs of Manchester and the house on Pimblett Street is currently being used as a sweat-shop factory, staffed by Bangladeshi immigrants.

The house on Pimblett Street was small – two-up, two-down, like many English terraced-houses, without electricity or in-door plumbing. It was heated by its coal-fireplace, over which food was cooked in a large pot. Morris only ate with a spoon until he was nine years old. His parents kept an orthodox Jewish home: there are family stories that his father, Jacob, was a Hasid.

Jacob Levine worked a variety of jobs. He was described as a “cigar-box maker” on Morris’ birth certificate. He also did some street-peddling and other odd jobs. At some point during Morris’ youth, his parents set up a corner-store in their front parlour. Sarah helped out, as did the girls. Like many immigrants, Jacob and Sarah literally worked themselves into early graves by toiling for eighteen-hours a day when their family was growing. By the time they were in their forties, they were physically worn-out and increasingly supported by their children’s earnings.

Morris was the only one of the six surviving children who went to school past the age of twelve. Like Sammy before them, the girls - Elsie, Becky, and Bailey - all left school at the minimum school-leaving age: twelve. They bitterly resented Morris’ prolonged schooling because they had been required to go out to work as little more than children while he went to Manchester Grammar School on a scholarship. (At that time – and, in fact, until the present - MGS has been known as the most famous grammar schools in Britain.) Sammy emigrated to the US in 1918 (where Sarah’s parents and siblings had moved), eventually rising to become a department store manager in Jackson, Michigan. Harry, too, like his sisters, left school at twelve. He ran a little tailoring factory; he had been a sewing machine operator. Sarah died as a baby.

Morris went to Southall Street School and won an open scholarship to Manchester Grammar School at the age of eleven. Seven of the twelve open scholarships to MGS were won by Jewish boys from Southall Street School in 1914. At Manchester Grammar School, Morris blossomed into a classical scholar, completing the “Transitus” (Latin and Greek) “with distinction”. His success won him a scholarship and admission to Brasenose College, Oxford. However, he turned it down and used the funds from his scholarship to pay for his tuition at Manchester University’s Medical School, from which he graduated in 1926. As the oldest male child living in Manchester, he was expected to provide for his parents, to release his sisters from that obligation, and to provide them with modest dowries. He therefore declined the prestigious opportunity to study at Oxford and had to turn his back on employment in the John Rylands Library in Manchester.

Morris Levene married Ruby Hattenstone on August, 18, 1931; he was 28, she was 26. The Hattenstones were well-off in contrast to the Levenes. After their honeymoon in Devonshire and Cornwall, they moved into an apartment above his medical office on Ashton Road in Denton, Manchester, where he was a GP as well as doing psychiatric work. He was also the physician-on-call for the local police constabulary.

In March, 1933, Morris and Ruby’s first son, Sefton Lewis, was born in Manchester. In the late winter of 1940, during the period known as “the phony war”, Ruby and Sefton, together with a large number of aristocratic ladies and their children, boarded a ship in Liverpool which was to take them to relative safety in Canada. Ruby and Sefton came to Vancouver, living with Ruby’s widowed mother (Jane Groberman Hattenstone), as well as her sister (who was then Doris Schwartz – later Doris Berg) and her son (David Schwartz – later David Berg) on West 35th Avenue in the Dunbar neighbourhood, where they stayed until 1945. Meanwhile Morris had been enlisted in the military in England and given the rank of captain; he spent the war years in public service, continuing to work as a doctor in Manchester.

In the summer of 1945, after VE Day, Ruby and Sefton returned to England. In October, 1946, Morris and Ruby’s second son, David Cyril, was born in Manchester. A year later, after Morris’ parents had both died, the family left England from Liverpool aboard a CPR ship, “The Empress of Canada”, arriving in Quebec City in November, 1947. From there, they took the train to Vancouver. Before leaving for Canada, Morris cut all ties with his siblings in England.

When the Levine family came to Vancouver, Ruby’s mother, Jane Groberman Hattenstone, had purchased them a house on 49th Avenue, just east of Hudson Street. However, they moved almost immediately to 5990 Hudson Street, where they lived until 1989.

Morris wasn’t expecting to continue practicing medicine in Canada (he had been a doctor for twenty years by this time). He thought he could get a job with his wife’s relations, the Groberman family in Vancouver. That didn’t work out. He had to study all his basic medical courses once more in order to re-qualify so that he could be licensed to practice medicine in Canada. To do this, he went to Toronto in 1948, taking exams to gain his medical license.

Once he had re-qualified, Morris set up his practice in the Birks Building, on Granville Street in downtown Vancouver, where he employed one nurse. However, Morris was not interested in a high-overhead medical practice and he would move down-market, whenever his rent went up. In the early 1960s he moved from the Birks Building to a medical-dental building on East Broadway at Main Street. There, he maintained a low-cost, family practice and worked alone, without a nurse. In the 1970s he moved again, taking an office on Kingsway below Main Street.

Morris worked as a doctor to make a living; he had a core group of patients, mainly from the working and lower classes. At that time, there was no medicare and he often waived a fee for his services. As a family doctor, he looked after pregnant women, delivered babies, cared for infants, counseled adolescents, and was the doctor-on-call for his patients and their families. For many years, he was a geriatric-doctor working with the city’s large number of older men and women who lived alone, in retirement, or in “private hospitals”, which were located in large houses in the West End before the massive demolitions and their replacement with high rise apartment blocks.

In the 1950s Morris began to write poetry. He had a few poems published in local literary journals such as The Simon Fraser Review during his lifetime and was much more interested in this activity than in his medical practice. He was an avid reader and surrounded himself with books. He read widely and passionately – literary essays, short stories, classical Greek and Latin poets and playwrights, as well as personal favourites such as William Blake, Thomas Hardy, and John Cowper Powys. He subscribed to, and followed debates in Encounter and The New York Review of Books. He was also drawn to twentieth-century poets such as Nikos Kazantsakis, George Seferis, Osip Mandelstam, and the poet laureate Ted Hughes.

Morris had a prodigious memory and took great enjoyment in showing it off by reciting, off the cuff, favourite bits to visitors and family members before launching into a disquisition that careened from one interesting idea to another, often in no obvious order. He just loved an admiring audience, and there was much to admire and lots to infuriate his listeners. He was not particularly interested in debate since he often said that he refused to be bound down by other people’s categories.

He wrote largely for himself. His own poetry, which by the end of his life added up to many shoeboxes full of papers, was almost exclusively in the form of Shakespearian sonnets. Much of his work was composed in bed, after midnight, and seemed to have the attraction of a mental challenge. The sonnet form suited his purposes. He admired their shapely concision – the two-line turn at the end and the chance they offered, in fourteen lines to compress a great deal of word play and allusiveness.

He was not fazed by the fact that many of his listeners found his allusions opaque – and, indeed, he sometimes admitted that years later he was himself unsure of his references. He took great pride in his sense of difference, achievement, and experiences. Much of his poetry is shot through with personal reminiscences and reflections of self-discovery. He poured himself into his writing – his ghetto childhood of deprivation, parental love and sibling rivalry, his opportunities for advanced classical education, his experience of medical practice, and his life-long awkwardness in his own skin. He was ambivalent about authority, in whatever guise, and was suspicious of power, in whatever form it took.

By the 1960s, as he was increasingly drawn to his literary pursuits, he would often close his office, leaving a note on the door that emergencies should go directly to Vancouver General Hospital and all others should call him at home so that he could provide them with a home-visit in the evening. On such sunny days, Morris Levine was to be found at Spanish Banks, sitting on a deck chair reading or else composing his own verse. He was torn between his two callings and, increasingly, he became aware that his commitment to science was lagging behind the dramatic new innovations that transformed medical practice in the post-war era.

In these years, he was a quintessential family doctor – running a practice of the kind that was being out-dated by new developments in group practice and specialization. Aware of the leaps and bounds being made in medicine, when his patients needed more specialized care, he would arrange for it to be made available for them. His willingness to refer his patients to specialists created tensions with the BC Medical Plan; they thought that Dr Morris Levine was providing too much care-per-patient. In any event, Morris retired from his medical practice in the late 1970s.

Like many couples, Morris and Ruby Levine didn’t see eye-to-eye – he enjoyed the company of counter-culturalists while in contrast she wanted to be involved in Vancouver’s Jewish society. Their divergent interests and obstinate personalities resulted in a kind of stalemate. Morris had developed an alternative work and lifestyle, becoming connected to a group of “beatniks”. These young people referred to him as “Uncle”, because that was how the charismatic David Berg referred to him.

Morris was opinionated and not in the least shy about arguing passionately about anything and everything. He was gifted with a fabulous memory and remained mentally alert all his days. Intellectually, he was something of a gadfly. He was also very cheap – it was said he quit buying “LifeSavers” when the manufacturer put a hole into the candies. Before it was chic, he took great pleasure in dressing shabbily. He might have been born into an orthodox Jewish family, but Morris Levine was an atheist and a communist in his youth; as he grew older, he soon became disillusioned with party-politics and developed into something of an anarchist in his attitude towards hard-line authority of any stripe. He was always contemptuous of The Royals and suspicious of privilege. He always felt like an outsider yet he always wanted to be given the “respect” that his own position as “the Doctor” provided. Like so many people, he was a bundle of contradictions.

Morris was a terrible driver and, in the interest of public safety, gave up his license in the late 1970s, when he retired from his medical practice. No longer driving, he was isolated on Hudson Street but he remained a mesmerizing storyteller and a prolific writer of sonnets. He would recite Homeric verse with (or without) an invitation to do so. He also took enormous pleasure in composing naughty limericks.

Morris had been a heavy smoker, from the 1920s-1950s, smoking as many as four packs-a-day. Then, in the 1950s he quit “cold turkey” but subsequently he put on a great deal of weight. In 1973, while vacationing in Hawaii, he suffered a heart attack. In response to this setback, he threw himself into a rigorous program of power walking and diet restriction. His weight dropped from 230 pounds to 165 pounds in a couple of years.

In retirement, he spent a lot of time working in his garden, reading, writing poetry, and actively grand-parenting Sefton’s three children – Sara, Jason, and Ben – who lived nearby, on West 46th Avenue. He always took enormous pleasure in having his grandchildren sitting on his knee, telling them stories about “Jimmy and Teddy and Inspector Smith”. Having the grand-kids sit on his lap, rubbing his “story spot” in the middle of his forehead, he would reach back to his Manchester childhood and “gurn” - making-faces by sliding his false teeth in-and-out. Morris Levine was in his element. Later, when David’s children, Matthew and Rachel, would come to visit from Toronto, the same mad-cap antics prolonged his grand-parenting, which was a special joy to an old man.

Sometime in the early middle 1980s, Ruby became afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease. Morris tried to provide in-home care but it became increasingly difficult as she became violent, anxious, and mistrustful of anyone and everyone. In 1989 Morris and Ruby sold their house on Hudson Street, moving to Toronto to live with their son David and his family. In a state of deep depression, and feeling bereft of hope as Ruby’s mental competence slipped away, in July 1990 Morris had surgery for an abdominal aortic aneurysm. To his great surprise and disappointment, he survived the surgery.

Morris had thought that he was killing himself by electing to have this surgery. A short while after recovering from this surgery, Morris took matters into his own hands. He stopped eating and drinking. Nine weeks later - on October 9, 1990 - Morris Levine died; his death was an attenuated form of suicide.

By this time, Ruby was living in a care facility with advanced Alzheimer’s Disease. At the time of Morris’ death, she was incapable of understanding that he had died. After Morris died, Ruby lived for almost three more years, increasingly losing touch with the world around her; she died on August 18, 1993 – the 62nd anniversary of her marriage.

Both Morris and Ruby Levine are buried in a family plot in the Beth Israel Cemetery in Burnaby – a long way from Red Bank, Manchester.

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