When I think of my Bubby, the first thing that comes to mind is her voice. High and sweet and thickly accented but clear as a bell and with enough firmness to convey absolute seriousness, it would say, “Joshy, everything is good in moderation!”
But only now that she is gone—having left us in her 99th year on Feb. 7—do I realize that this statement was a lesson that she had learned at great cost and tried to impart to me after enduring great hardship and injustice that was followed by an equal measure of joy and comfort.
Moderation, stability, constancy, balance, equilibrium: this is what she represented, and came to represent to me.
When I was a child, I venerated her and her husband, my Zeyda Joseph—or Yossel as she called him. I would drive my poor parents crazy fidgeting in the back seat, with my Game Boy or a book as my only relief, asking over and over from the back seat how much longer I would have to endure the endless trip down the 401 towards Montreal so I could run into my Bubby and Zeyda‘s arms.
And while I am well aware that Montreal has sights and delights that equal or surpass any city, I was content to stay within the stretch of Cavendish Boulevard that passes near Parc Nathan Shuster, by Cavendish Mall, the Bibliotheque Publique Eleanor London—and, just down Chemin Mackle, the apartment where they lived on Avenue Armstrong for decades.
When we had to leave, I became so anxious that I often made myself carsick, for I knew it would be long months until I could eat her famous meatballs, listen to her sing “Oyfn Pripitchik,” or call for her aid as my Zeyda lovingly wrestled me into a pretzel.
But as I grew older the sense of wonder I had for Chana was replaced by a more mature appreciation for the frequently stubborn, often reserved, and sometimes melancholy person she was. I loved her no less, but I couldn’t help but notice that the delicacies she prepared were not the products of culinary magic—the meatballs were marinated in Heinz Ketchup. The apartment had no Wi-Fi, because neither of my grandparents would ever see a need for such advanced technology. Instead, there was the radio, blasting CJAD 800 at a volume that could be heard across the street as I tried to sleep, or do homework I’d brought from Toronto, at least when I couldn’t get a ride from them to seek refuge at the library.
A letter I dashed off on the word processor at the age of 13 celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary became a treasured keepsake that she kept in her bedside drawer until the day she died. I read it at my Zeyda’s funeral, because it was what they wanted, while privately feeling a little silly because here I was, a man approaching 30, reading words I had written as a pre-teen.
When I tried to repay her for her kindness by attempting to pay for a meal we had just eaten at that storied Montreal institution known as Ernie and Ellie’s Kosher Chinese restaurant, she lunged across the table and seized my credit card by one end. And while I could have won a tug of war with my Bubby who was then in her seventies, I quickly realized the futility of the situation and let her pay.
When Pauline Marois threatened to extend her minority government in the Quebec provincial election of 2014 which (I was told) would have disastrous consequences for the Jewish population of Montreal, none of my assurances that the incompetent Parti Québecois campaign would doom them on election night could comfort her. We sat on the couch in the den on election night as I counted off the rising number of seats that Quebec Liberals were leading or elected in, and even as the TV blared the words LIBERAL MAJORITY she refused to smile. (Perhaps she knew somehow what was to come in the decade ahead.)
Although I did not always understand her behaviour, I knew her actions were the product of the circumstances of her life, which I will now recount. The youngest of six children in a deeply religious family living in the Polish city of Przemysl, she came into the world on October 25, 1926. Of her entire family only she, her brother Isaac Schiffman and her sister Rivka Nadel, who started her own branch of the family in Israel, would survive the Holocaust. But even before the Nazi occupation of her home, she would know great hardship as a child, as her family itself was loving and supportive, but unfortunately very poor.
Her education, such as it was, was provided by deeply antisemitic nuns, who forced the Jewish children to stand for the whole school day while the Catholic children sat. On every page of work she produced, she was forced to write the words ‘By the Grace of Jesus Christ’, and because she and the other Jewish students could not attend school on Saturday, all the tests were intentionally scheduled on that day. And because they missed the tests they were forced to write much more difficult make-up tests when they returned.
Premszyl was under Nazi control by noon on Sept. 1, 1939, and on that day—one month before her 13th birthday—her education and her childhood both came to an end. No record of her life during the war exists or ever will exist, for she never spoke a word about it to anyone afterwards.
All of that changed when she met Yossel, a man possessing uncanny street-smarts, business sense, self-preservation instincts, and physical and mental toughness. This is of course my grandmother’s remembrance and not his, but to speak of her life story without my Zeyda is to barely tell her story at all.
During the war he came to believe that he would be the last Jew alive, and that it was solely his responsibility to survive and let the world know what had happened to the Jewish people. He did survive, and found himself conscripted by the Polish army in 1946. At that time he had already decided to desert and leave Poland and its virulent antisemitism behind forever, but when he met Chana that year and fell in love with her, he knew he would not be making this perilous journey alone. Even under these impossible circumstances, my Zeyda was nothing if not respectful of propriety and so he ended up travelling two days to obtain permission from her brother Isaac to marry her and escape with her. This demonstration of Joseph’s devotion to Chana was spectacular enough, but shortly after my Zeyda would surpass himself by smuggling her nearly 900 km away to the relative safety of Linz-Bidermichel, an Austrian DP camp.
It is possible they married in secret before 1946–but it was an American chaplain, a rabbi serving with the army, who formally proclaimed them husband and wife that year in the displaced persons camp. And for 67 years they were inseparable, until Zeyda’s death tore them apart. Yet she also never hesitated to disagree with her husband and make her feelings known, often and sometimes loudly. Despite the force of my grandfather’s personality, and despite being physically small herself, she never feared him or, it often seemed, any force on Earth. The only time I ever saw her lose control of her emotions was at his funeral, where she sprawled over her husband’s casket, clutching it with her arms, weeping loudly.
But when their marriage was new they lived in former luxury apartments constructed for the Nazi elite (except now there were four displaced Jewish families to one apartment) until my grandfather heard that the Canadian government was in need of tailors. Passing himself off as one since he had been something of a tailor’s apprentice before the war, he obtained the necessary papers and he and my Bubby boarded the USS General S.D. Sturgis, a decommissioned troop transport ship, and sailed to Halifax. My grandfather was so seasick on the voyage that when they arrived in Canada in 1948 he demanded that the train only take him one stop down the line to the nearest place where Jews could be found. That was of course the city of Montreal, and that is how my Bubby came to live in the city where she would spend the rest of her life.
They started off as boarders, placed with another Jewish family by the Jewish Agency. A talented seamstress in her own right, Chana worked for Algo, the precursor to today’s Algo Industries, making ladies wear. Yossel worked alongside other tailors in another factory that manufactured men’s pants. This arrangement was short lived because my Bubby became pregnant with her first child in 1949, my Uncle Sam. Luckily for them, my Zeyda supported the new family by adding a few side hustles to his factory job. He would sell wristwatches on his lunch break, go door to door as a pedlar on weekends, and, with my Bubby’s aid, work through the night finishing fur coats which he would deliver to the furrier in the morning. Truly, they were not just husband and wife, but equal partners, and a very effective team.
Her second son, my father Reuben, was born in 1952, and while my Zeyda expanded his business connections into a thriving construction company that built homes in the Mile End neighbourhood that stand to this day, Chana devoted herself full time to her two sons. Their family was prospering, they found a stable home in Ville St Laurent, and Bubby even acquired a driver’s license and drove herself wherever she wanted. Even though all appeared well, my Bubby was haunted by the past. She never got over missing out on her education and childhood, and she felt guilty over having survived when so many were murdered. Yet if any doctor had tried to diagnose her with depression or PTSD, she would have sent them running in a hurry. Instead, she poured herself into sacrificing whatever she could to ensure her sons could attend Jewish People’s School, a private Hebrew school that was the forerunner of today’s Jewish People’s and Peretz School, even though the expense was a strain on the family.
Her sons lacked for nothing and received unconditional love, which is praiseworthy but not exactly uncommon for Jewish mothers. Where my Bubby stood apart yet again is the way she pushed herself to become a better mother as time went on and to expand her own sphere of knowledge as much as she could. She loved to read novels and newspapers, including The Canadian Jewish News in its print edition. My Uncle Sam called it an “evolution” through the decades, no doubt spurred on by her memories of her parents and a desire to do better despite never being shown what better could look like. When I wrote earlier of my grandparents seeming perfect to me, this was the fruits of my grandmother’s efforts to improve her skills as a role model for the family.
By the time I came into the world, Chana had already begun the role that she would be best known for in the community–volunteering with Meals on Wheels. From the program’s inception at the Montreal Jewish Community Centre, Bubby would deliver prepared meals to community members’ doors. These included many Holocaust survivors like herself, some of whom were totally isolated in their homes and had no connection to the outside world save for Chana. Because of her experiences, Bubby had always found it difficult to trust many people outside her own family, but it was in this role that she became legitimate friends with many of those she helped. Even after the program ended, Bubby would continue to volunteer in the coffee shop at Maimonides Hospital until her 93rd year of life. Observers could watch her pushing people in wheelchairs that were decades younger than she was, and until she physically could not, she would walk to work even in bad weather. Eventually, she also allowed others to drive her.
When my grandfather’s health finally took a turn for the worse and he was diagnosed far too late with cancer that had already caused numbness in his arm, and deteriorating eyesight brought on by glaucoma and macular degeneration, my Bubby became his caregiver right up until his final moments. She did everything in her power to keep him at home even as he went for chemotherapy three times a week and was trained by a CLSC nurse to administer medication, even tricking her husband into taking his pills.
She herself remained at home, and spent less than a week in hospital before passing away—only accepting in-home care in 2022. This change took place just months before the last time I saw her, in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, where we sat and listened to a Bonjour Chai podcast recapping the 2021 federal election. I continued to call her week by week, as she was assisted around the clock by the excellent care of nurses Victoria and Rebecca, still taking her regular walks even as she slowly slipped away. In our last conversation, though it was very difficult to understand her, she said that Zeyda was coming home, and I could only think, “No Bubby, it’s you who’s finally going to see him again soon.”
That, then, is the uncommon and by any measure heroic life and times of Chana Lieblein, written down with what I can only hope are words that will do her justice and preserve her forever. I will miss her terribly, but I do not feel weighed down with grief as I recount her life. For my Bubby would not have wanted me to put my life on pause, especially not for her sake. She would have wanted me to go on, to contribute to The CJN—the publication she read every week—to love and be loved by my wonderful life partner Devon in the same devoted way they loved one another, and to keep trying to be better and do better, and never settle for mediocrity.
I love you, Bubby.
Josh Lieblein has been the Doorstep Postings political columnist for The Canadian Jewish News since 2021.
