TORONTO — Sol Zulauf is a World War II veteran with dementia. He can’t remember every detail from the war, but he knows why his story needs to be told.
Debra Stuart is helping her father, Sol Zulauf, share his war stories through the Jewish War Veterans of Canada.
“It’s important,” he said in his Toronto home. Over and over again, he repeated the phrase.
Zulauf, 87, signed up for the war when he was 19 years old. He wanted to join the air force, but was colour-blind. Instead, he joined the infantry and later the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps, where he helped with the supply and maintenance of weaponry.
Sitting on his couch, gazing into space, Zulauf slowly shared some of his memories.
“I forget a lot, I remember a lot,” he said.
A few details take him awhile to remember, others, like his time on potato peeling duty, come with ease.
“I was peeling spuds in England,” he said, later admitting, through giggles, that he was put on potato duty for running off to go skating with a girl.
“All of a sudden you hear a noise. I didn’t know what the noise was. I thought it was a flying bomb,” he said, adding that he jumped up from his seat to look out the window.
Zulauf turned out to be right. The force of the bomb knocked out the glass of the kitchen window. If the soldier hadn’t moved from his chair, he would have been covered in glass.
Zulauf also remembered landing on Normandy Beach in 1942.
“I went on the beach from the landing craft,” he said. “It was all bombed out by the American and Canadian aircrafts.”
The veteran, who drove a tank in the war, eventually worked his way from Normandy into Belgium, Holland and, eventually, to Germany.
These are the stories that he has told his children and grandchildren over and over. And they are the stories that the Jewish War Veterans of Canada are trying to preserve. The organization works to commemorate Canadian Jewish war veterans. Currently, they’re getting help from the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, and are set up in the Lipa Green Building. Their newest project is a wall of memory, which would hold the names of Canadian Jewish war veterans. While the location of the wall has yet to be decided, the group has already collected about 356 names.
The Toronto district of the Jewish War Veterans has a board of nine people. In 2009, the group’s Toronto branch had about 300 members, most of whom were war veterans. Only a handful of members or volunteers were part of a younger generation.
Without this generation, experiences like Zulauf’s may never be heard, said Ev Bluestein, the committee’s secretary.
“I’m 86. Health-wise, it’s very difficult to get active people,” he said. “The point is, if we can get the young people, somebody’s son, somebody’s grandchild… then we’ll be able to branch out.”
When asked what will happen to the organization if it doesn’t get enough younger members and volunteers, Bluestein has a simple answer.
“We will,” he said.
For Bluestein, who fought in World War II in an infantry battalion, the organization is about more than just memories. It’s about pride.
“We want to give the Jewish population pride that we involve ourselves on a higher scale than any other type of person. We fought well, and we had our losses and we want to be remembered,” he said.
Debra Stuart, Zulauf’s daughter, also wants the veterans to be remembered. Stuart, whose father is a member of the Jewish War Veterans of Canada, has started volunteering for the organization. As an expert in marketing and public relations, she’s helping the organization with marketing and putting up a website.
Recently, she has become aware of the possibility of a decline of membership in the organization.
“It would be… attributed to the elderly members becoming ill. They’re dying off. I, for one, really want to remember my father’s stories,” she said. “It’s very meaningful to me.”
Stuart understands the importance of commemorating veterans.
“They fought for our freedom. We want to make sure that children and grandchildren continue to feel proud of what these people did for their country,” she said. “I’m proud of my father.”
For more information or to become a volunteer, call 416-635-2883, ext. 5181, or e-mail Ev Bluestein at [email protected].
