Show Notes: Geddy From The Stetl

Are We The Only Ones Left Alive?

Geddy was born Gershon Eliezier Weinrib in 1953 to Miriam (Rubenstein) and Morris Weinrib.  While those names sound German, they are actually Anglicized from Polish, the number of migrations from their homes in Poland due to forced labor under the Nazis, then to Auschwitz and Germany, then finally to Canada forced multiple adaptations. Geddy was called “Gary” by his mother, but with thick accent it sounded like “Geddy” to his Canadian born cousins and his friends.  Elie became Lee when Geddy decided to pursue a career in music.

His parents bore the tattoos from the concentration camps in Poland.  Morris passed when Geddy was 12, and most of what Geddy learned of his parents experience came from his mother.  Geddy describes fondly like a lyric from his song New World Man:

He could be hard headed – you wouldn’t want to mess  on the wrong side of him – but he was funny, upbeat, hard-workng, proud, fulling filling the shoes of a New World Man.  He had joie de vivre.  He was able to push aside whatever demons  walked around with him.

His father, having survived SEVEN concentration camps, was the foundation of Geddy’s family.  His strength, both inner and physical, enabled Morris to survive manual labor, and his quick mind and charm guided his ability to barter and bribe.  He was able to keep a small piece of gold in his shoe, which came in handy during the early days of working in the factories in Warsaw.  Wierzbnik lay on the outskirts and was close the factories that the Nazi’s commandeered.  Jews were ordered to work or would taken off to concentration camps like Treblinka and out of the ghetto.  This was death sentence, Geddy’s father bribed and worked a network of “friends” to keep his family alive for as long as possible.

Miriam , Geddy’s mother relays the rapid changes that transformed Warsaw and the smaller Wierzbnik. Being blonde, Miriam was able to escape some scrutiny in the beginning:  she and her mother would slip off the golden stars and could pass for Poles while slipping outside the confines of the ghetto, their designated area where the Nazis confined them.  The young were assigned manual labor, as schools and learning was illegal during the Nazi occupation.  Miriam was assigned to make bricks, and that is where she met Morris.  That piece of gold that I mentioned earlier was used to secure Miriam an easier job where Morris worked.  He watched out for her, and later when they were both deported to Auschwitz, he managed to smuggle shoes to her by bribing a guard.  Prior to being deported, Morris and Miriam attempted an escape, but when Miriam twisted her ankle, Morris remained despite her urging him to flee.  That saved his life – they escape party were all captured and killed.  Morris and Miriam managed to sneak back to their barracks.

At Auschwitz both Morris and Miriam received their tattoos.  From that point on, the Nazis addressed the prisoners by number only.  While “Arbeit Macht Frei” hung over the concentration camp gates, they had no right to belongings, nor their names.  It was at Auschwitz that Miriam came to be know Josef Mengele.  At the time, the Nazi’s were collecting blood samples, and while Miriam was older than her sister, they bore a resemblances as thought they were twins.  This caught Mengele’s attention, who, according to Miriam, hand an interest in her.  For whatever reason he did not select her for his experiments.  Perhaps it was based on their exchange.

In late 1944 Morris, Miriam and those who had survived Auschwitz were transported to Germany.  The Soviets were making headway capturing territory on it’s march toward Germany, and the evidence at camps Auschwitz needed to be evacuated.  Trains and as well as death marches moved prisoners to Germany, where Morris and Miriam would remain until the Liberation in 1945.