Behind the Stories
I met the boy from Berlin the day before my 21st birthday. He was a director/producer at CTV’s W5. I was a journalism student at Western, at the network to observe how the program was put together. When I was accepted for the week-long internship, my professor told me I would encounter a “lovely guy and talented producer” by the name of Heinz Avigdor. That’s an unusual name, I remember thinking. Hard to forget meeting a Heinz Avigdor! Little did I suspect that within six months, I would fall completely in love with him, marry him and happily share the next 43 years with him – all of my adult life to that point.
Then, on February 3, 2015 he died, leaving me grief-stricken. My world went quiet. The days were endless. And empty. It was all I could do to force myself out of bed and put one foot in front of the other until it was night and I would go to bed, the sound of the clock ticking, marking off the seconds.
One day, several months after he died, I was cleaning out some files – a make-work project – when I came across one I didn’t recognize. Inside were copies of letters written by his father. I couldn’t recall having seen them before. But, I knew at once that they were all that remained of the story of how, and why, the family had left Berlin in 1938 for The Hague, and from there to London, and finally, Toronto.
Heinz’s early childhood was not something he’d talked about much. And, because our life had been so busy with work, travel, family and friends, I hadn’t given it much thought. But, now, my interest was piqued. I’d never met Heinz’s father, Rifat. He’d died when Heinz was only 14. But I knew he’d been a successful aeronautical engineer who’d been born in Constantinople and moved to Berlin. His mother, Else, who I had known briefly, had been a beauty. Rifat had had a good job as manager of a large aeroplane parts company and they’d lived well in the affluent suburb of Charlottenburg. But, aside from that, I didn’t really know anything about them, or why they’d left Germany when they did, and how they’d managed to get out of Holland the very day it fell to the Nazis.
I started doing some research. I scoured the Internet, where I quickly discovered the family was Jewish – something never discussed – and had had their German citizenship revoked in 1935. Heinz’s father’s name was in Hitler’s "Black Book", a special wanted arrest list to be used after a successful invasion of Britain. Suddenly, their abrupt departure made sense.
Now, I was eager to learn more.
I contacted Heinz’s only living relatives, cousins in Rome, and flew there to find out what they knew. They, too, had long ago buried their Jewish heritage, though they did confirm that Heinz’s aunt had been murdered in a concentration camp. I travelled to Berlin and toured the family home, which had miraculously survived British air attacks, trying to re-create it from Heinz’s little boy point of view. I wandered around the nearby park where I knew he must have gone with his Nanny, along the streets of Charlottenburg he would have walked with his Mama, and through the Zoo, a place he went often, one of his few memories of those early years. I took the train to The Hague and went down to the harbour at Scheveningen, where he and his family boarded a small fishing boat to cross the North Sea as bombs rained down on Rotterdam. And I talked to his sister-in-law and brother-in-law in Toronto to learn what I could from their conversations with Heinz’s brother and sister, both of whom had died before I met Heinz. For months, I gathered bits of information from different sources about the family’s life and what I knew now had been a perilous escape from Hitler’s Europe.
My first thought was to write a history for our family. But as I began to piece together the story, an interesting – and quite wonderful – thing happened. As I wove together the facts I’d gleaned with how I imagined young Heinz would have felt and acted, the history turned into his story, told in his voice.
I hope Boy from Berlin finds a wide audience because Heinz had a fascinating – and challenging – early life that has parallels with many of today’s refugees'.
Then, on February 3, 2015 he died, leaving me grief-stricken. My world went quiet. The days were endless. And empty. It was all I could do to force myself out of bed and put one foot in front of the other until it was night and I would go to bed, the sound of the clock ticking, marking off the seconds.
One day, several months after he died, I was cleaning out some files – a make-work project – when I came across one I didn’t recognize. Inside were copies of letters written by his father. I couldn’t recall having seen them before. But, I knew at once that they were all that remained of the story of how, and why, the family had left Berlin in 1938 for The Hague, and from there to London, and finally, Toronto.
Heinz’s early childhood was not something he’d talked about much. And, because our life had been so busy with work, travel, family and friends, I hadn’t given it much thought. But, now, my interest was piqued. I’d never met Heinz’s father, Rifat. He’d died when Heinz was only 14. But I knew he’d been a successful aeronautical engineer who’d been born in Constantinople and moved to Berlin. His mother, Else, who I had known briefly, had been a beauty. Rifat had had a good job as manager of a large aeroplane parts company and they’d lived well in the affluent suburb of Charlottenburg. But, aside from that, I didn’t really know anything about them, or why they’d left Germany when they did, and how they’d managed to get out of Holland the very day it fell to the Nazis.
I started doing some research. I scoured the Internet, where I quickly discovered the family was Jewish – something never discussed – and had had their German citizenship revoked in 1935. Heinz’s father’s name was in Hitler’s "Black Book", a special wanted arrest list to be used after a successful invasion of Britain. Suddenly, their abrupt departure made sense.
Now, I was eager to learn more.
I contacted Heinz’s only living relatives, cousins in Rome, and flew there to find out what they knew. They, too, had long ago buried their Jewish heritage, though they did confirm that Heinz’s aunt had been murdered in a concentration camp. I travelled to Berlin and toured the family home, which had miraculously survived British air attacks, trying to re-create it from Heinz’s little boy point of view. I wandered around the nearby park where I knew he must have gone with his Nanny, along the streets of Charlottenburg he would have walked with his Mama, and through the Zoo, a place he went often, one of his few memories of those early years. I took the train to The Hague and went down to the harbour at Scheveningen, where he and his family boarded a small fishing boat to cross the North Sea as bombs rained down on Rotterdam. And I talked to his sister-in-law and brother-in-law in Toronto to learn what I could from their conversations with Heinz’s brother and sister, both of whom had died before I met Heinz. For months, I gathered bits of information from different sources about the family’s life and what I knew now had been a perilous escape from Hitler’s Europe.
My first thought was to write a history for our family. But as I began to piece together the story, an interesting – and quite wonderful – thing happened. As I wove together the facts I’d gleaned with how I imagined young Heinz would have felt and acted, the history turned into his story, told in his voice.
I hope Boy from Berlin finds a wide audience because Heinz had a fascinating – and challenging – early life that has parallels with many of today’s refugees'.