MONTREAL — Wolf Bronet should have been smiling, but he wasn’t. After all, the 86-year-old leader of the YM-YWHA Wolf Pack running group, with his wife, Henia, looking on, had just been named Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel’s (CMDA) first-ever ambassador-at-large. The ceremony took place at the organization’s national board meeting at its Montreal headquarters.
As his wife, Henia, looks on, Wolf Pack leader Wolf Bronet, right, accepts a plaque from Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel past president Norton Segal, naming Bronet as the organization’s first ambassador-at-large.
CMDA president Joseph Amzallag and national executive director Arnold Rosner advised Bronet in a letter that he got the title because of his “ongoing commitment and dedication to CMDA.”
Translated, it’s because Bronet has been instrumental, along with such running veterans as Bill Novick, Reevin Pearl and Evelyne Soussana Van Hille, together with other Packers, in raising money to purchase ambulances for Israel’s emergency service.
The most recent Wolf Pack ambulances – numbers six, seven and eight – included standard and mobile intensive care units.
The purchase price for the units has gone up from $105,000 to $120,000, and Bronet, now working on raising funds for ambulance numbers nine and 10 – as it happens, they are manufactured in Beloeil, Que., by Demers Ambulance – still keeps a raggedy pile of papers with a running dollar count of how close to the final goal they are.
In other words, Bronet should have been smiling, but he wasn’t. And he wasn’t, because as a survivor of Auschwitz, he could no longer stomach what he considers the unprecedented levels of hatred and vilification now being spewed upon the Jewish people and Israel.
This has been especially the case of late, he said, in the wake of the May 31 incident in which Israeli commandos stormed a flotilla of Turkish vessels bound for Gaza and which resulted in the deaths of nine people.
Especially vile and infuriating, said Bronet, was the response by the Turkish vessel to the Israelis, to “go back to Auschwitz.
“That is why I am calling these ambulances commandments numbers nine and 10,” Bronet said. “It is our way to help Israel.”
