Oral History interview with Ben and Rita Akselrod. Rita was born in Bacau, Romania. They met in a DP camp in Austria. After the war they went to Israel then came to Canada via Italy. They worked as a peddlers then with antiques. Then started a second-hand and antique store in New Westminster. They talk about how antisemitism didn't disappear after the war.

Interview with Claire Ann Kramer. Interviewed by Cindy Rozen. Ann talks about her family's history, the Apartheid, her childhood, and her career as an interpreter. She speaks in detail about her family's experience in Germany just before World War II, and the political state of South Africa which led to the decision to immigrate to Canada.

Oral history interview with Dan Sonnenschein on his mother Bronia Sonnenschein, who was born in Vienna in 1915. Dan talks about his mother’s experience during the war. She was smuggled into Poland after the annexation but ended up living most of the war in the Lodz Ghetto before being sent to camps in 1944. After the war she moved to Prague, where she worked for the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. She got married in Prague and they moved first to Haifa Israel then Vancouver in 1950. Dan’s Father died in 1952. She got a job and raised her children as a single mother. After she retired, she volunteered with many organizations, including JCC and congress. She did a lot of work for holocaust education in BC by going on tours and giving talks to school groups and other organizations.

Oral history interview with David Rubin who was born in Transylvania, 1923. He was drafted into a working / bomb clearing battalion of the Hungarian Army in 1944. David chose to come to Canada in 1957 because he had heard it was the country of the future. The Canadian consulate chose Vancouver as his destination. Taught in Ottawa and was recommended to be the reader at Beth Israel Synagogue.

Oral History Interview with Mordechai (Robert) Edel for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Daniella Givon. Edel was born in England in 1949, but describes the life stories of him and his family spanning across Europe, North America and within Israel. These stories include his family's experience with the Holocaust and his growing up Jewish; they also detail his many professions before becoming an artist including musician or hazzan, hairdresser, and photographer. Edel's primary medium of art is oil painting which is in the impressionist style, and constantly informed by his Jewish faith and heritage. Edel tells anecdotes of some of the people he's met through his art within Canada and abroad, and his most memorable commissions along the way.

Oral History Interview with Olga Campbell for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Bill Gruenthal. Olga Campbell was born in Iraq in 1943 and immigrated to Canada at the age of five in 1948. She explains her family’s experience with both Russian prison camps and the Holocaust during WWII, where they eventually made it safely to Canada. She discusses her journey as a social worker turned arts professional, including her time spent at Emily Carr and Capilano arts schools. As a second generation Holocaust survivor, Olga discusses how being Jewish and the associated inter-generational trauma of Holocaust survivorship has informed her works. Olga is a mixed-media artist, working in digital and traditional mediums, including collage and sculpture. She also published her art in a book focused on her family’s experience of the Holocaust that has fostered connections to her story, shared herein.

Summary: Oral Interview with Pnina Granirer for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Daniella Givon as a follow-up to an interview from 2021. Pnina recalls her earliest memories of producing art at school in Romania, and learning illustration and painting home decor in Haifa. She explains how her art career truly started when her and her husband moved to Illinois as she didn’t have a work visa and thus spent her time painting and crafting. She discusses inspiration from her children, mixing medias and art genres, and the exploration of making and learning. She talks about themes in her paintings coming from universal human experiences such as identity and existentialism, and the only painting she ever did in regards to the Holocaust and its showing in Tel Aviv. She speaks about her working in galleries and pushing for galleries to be made in Jewish institutions in Vancouver. Pnina talks about the creation of Artist in Our Midst and other art crawls in Vancouver, and her experiences teaching arts on Gabriola Island. She closes with an encouraging message for upcoming artists in Vancouver and the importance of art education in the art world’s future.

Oral Interview with Sidi Schaffer for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Daniella Givon. Sidi goes over her family history in Romania, where she was born, and across Eastern Europe, and then details her immediate family in Canada. Sidi describes her artistic influences from her parents who were professional photographers after WWII, especially her mother who encouraged her to do art. Being born in 1938, some of Sidi’s earliest childhood memories are of fleeing from the Holocaust with her family. Sidi found art to be an escape from personal traumas, which eventually took her to art school in Bucharest where she met her husband, David. Sidi describes her and David’s time living in Israel, and eventually moving to Edmonton where she pursued more formal arts education. Sidi describes opportunities to show her printmaking and painted works, and teach arts across Canada. She also describes inspiration from nature, freedom of expression, and memories of the Holocaust. She outlines how the Gesher Project helped her develop as a Jewish artist, and how she produces Judaic influenced art with her sister.

Oral History of Susan Quastel. Mrs. Quastel was born in Amsterdam in 1923. During the early part of WW2 she worked at the Jewish Hospital in Amsterdam. After the war she moved to London, where she had family. While in the UK, she trained to be a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital. She then went to Israel, where her sister lived, and worked at Hadassah Hospital. During her time in Israel, she met her husband, who was from Vancouver, at the Hebrew University. She moved to Canada with him and they got married here. In Vancouver, she worked for many Jewish organizations including Hadassah, The National Council of Jewish Women, the Vancouver chapter of Canadian Friends of The Hebrew University, and the Zack Gallery.