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The Janusz Korczak Association of Canada was created in Vancouver in February of 2002 to assist the Holocaust Education in its presentation of a traveling exhibit called Janusz Korczak and the Children of the Warsaw Ghetto that opened at the Jewish Community Centre in October of 2002. The premiere also featured a lecture by Lilian Boraks-Nemetz, “A Child in the Warsaw Ghetto,” recalling her experiences as a child survivor of Warsaw Ghetto and a member of the Board of the new Association. The friendship that arose within the organization between two other board members, Gina Dimant and editor Olga Medvedeva-Nathoo, would eventually lead to Crossroads, A True Story of Gina Dimant in War and Love (K&O Harbour 2014), a biography by Medvedeva-Nathoo.
The origins of the Korczak Association can traced back to Warsaw-born Alexander Dimant whose family was stranded in the Warsaw ghetto. After he was able to escape to the Aryan site of the city, it's possible the rest of his family witnessed Dr. Korczak's famous walk with 192 orphans to Umschlagplatz to board the cattle train to Treblinka. In 1996, Alexander Dimant spearheaded an event to honour and popularize Janusz Korczak’s life and work in Canada, during preparations for an exhibition commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This event was organized by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland. After his untimely death in 1998, his wife Gina sought to continue his educational efforts. In November 1999 she organized a screening of Andrzej Wajda’s film Korczak at the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre. The popularity of this event was the springboard for the formal creation of a Korczak Association to mount further events and published its own newsletter edited by Olga Medvedeva-Nathoo.
Gina Dimant was born as Hinda Wejgsman on January 11, 1926, in Warsaw. (A younger sister, Lina Wejgsman, born in 1937, worked many years as a radio announcer in Szczecin, Poland, before moving to Canada where she died in Vancouver in 2016.) Fleeing the Nazis, the Wejgsman family wisely left their home in Pelcowizna, a suburb of Warsaw in September of 1939 and travelled by train and by foot, staying for a time in Biesankovicy, Belarus, before reaching the Soviet border where guards registered Hinda’s name as Gina. In December of 1939, the family began a six-week journey to Leninogorsk (now Ridder, in Kazakhstan) where Gina worked at the brick factory, at a timber mill and eventually at the local cinema.
As Tamara Szymanska has noted in her book review: "Crossroads follows the Wejgsmans family, their extraordinary journey in a cattle car from the eastern border of Nazi-occupied Poland to the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, and of their fight for survival there. The cold in the car was intolerable, and the Wejgsmans slept on straw, bodies side by side, trying to keep warm. They traveled for more than a month. They were sent to Leninogorsk in northeastern Kazakhstan, near the Altai Mountains, where temperatures dropped to minus 41 degrees Celsius in winter.
"After their arrival, Gina did not go to school because local authorities considered her an adult at 14 and gave her a construction job carrying bricks, four at a time. Gina reflects: “… my main memory from Leninogorsk is not what we ate there, but how terribly hungry we always were. With the feeling of hunger, you couldn’t even fall asleep and, if you fell asleep, then it was with night dreams of food until you woke up with the same daydreams.... In winter evenings when the frost was absolutely intolerable and it was inconceivable even to attempt lying in bed, so as not to freeze to death, we would pace the room in circles, single file."
At war's end, she married a Polish Jewish hairdresser in January of 1946. Crossing the Polish border to return to live in Szczecin, Gina's name was changed to Longina because the name Gina did not appear in the official Polish list of first names. Gina's son, Saul, also known as Salek, was born on February 1, 1947. Gina and Jan divorced in 1948. Gina met her second husband, Alexander Dimant, at the Jewish Centre in Szczecin. The Dimant family had lived on Mila Street in Warsaw's Jewish Quarter. [Born on September 17, 1922, his birth name was Szaja Dymant, and he died in Vancouver on March 9, 1998.]. They married in 1952. Alexander graduated with a Master of Economics from the Polytechnic in Szczecin and Gina worked in health care. In 1968, her son Salek was arrested after attending an anti-government meeting at Szczecin University. The Dimant family left Poland in September of 1969 after their citizenship was revoked.
Supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Dimants lived in Vienna and Rome before Gina and Alexander immigrated to Vancouver in August of 1970. He opened an accounting firm; she found work with the Finance Department at UBC in 1973 and stayed there until her retirement. Salek followed his parents to Vancouver in 1971 and married Rosalie Neuwirth in 1974, giving rise to grandchildren Henry "Dov" Dimant and Sally Dimant. In 1993, Alexander Dimant traveled to Poland to participate in the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In 1996, he was involved in preparations for The Warsaw Ghetto: A Pictorial Remembrance exhibition at the VHEC (April 18 to June 7, 1996). On May 3, 2013, Gina Dimant was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for her efforts in strengthening cordial relationships between Poles and Jews. Alexander died March 9, 1998, in Vancouver. Saul died May 1, 2002 in Vancouver. Gina lives in Vancouver.
Dr. Olga Medvedeva-Nathoo has written and edited three books about Janusz Korczak, including the first extensive, in English, bibliography for and about Korczak, himself a prodigious author. As a joint project of the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada and the Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland), her oddly-titled (in translation) May their lot be lighter... Of Janusz Korczak and his pupil concerns the World War II relationship between the famous Holocaust orphanage manager in Warsaw and his ward Leon Gluzman, who had been living in Canada since 1930. Having also published a collection of Korczak Association newsletters, she set about crafting one of the few biographies in English concerning Jews who were refugees in the Soviet Union during the rise and fall of Nazism.
BOOKS:
May their lot be lighter... Of Janusz Korczak and his pupil (Poland: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM 2012)
Janusz Korczak: A Bibliography (K&O Harbour 2012)
The Newsletter of the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada (K&O Harbour 2013)
Crossroads, A True Story of Gina Dimant in War and Love (K&O Harbour 2014)
[BCBW 2021] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
PHOTOS:
Gina Dimant (as Hinda Wejgsman) returned to Szczecin, Poland, in 1946. PHOTO CREDIT: Alexander and Gina Dimant fonds, item 2019.012.032. Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.
Gina Dimant receives Polish Order of Merit from Consul Krzysztot Czapla, 2013. PHOTO CREDIT: Alexander and Gina Dimant fonds, item 2018.047.003. Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.
The origins of the Korczak Association can traced back to Warsaw-born Alexander Dimant whose family was stranded in the Warsaw ghetto. After he was able to escape to the Aryan site of the city, it's possible the rest of his family witnessed Dr. Korczak's famous walk with 192 orphans to Umschlagplatz to board the cattle train to Treblinka. In 1996, Alexander Dimant spearheaded an event to honour and popularize Janusz Korczak’s life and work in Canada, during preparations for an exhibition commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This event was organized by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland. After his untimely death in 1998, his wife Gina sought to continue his educational efforts. In November 1999 she organized a screening of Andrzej Wajda’s film Korczak at the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre. The popularity of this event was the springboard for the formal creation of a Korczak Association to mount further events and published its own newsletter edited by Olga Medvedeva-Nathoo.
Gina Dimant was born as Hinda Wejgsman on January 11, 1926, in Warsaw. (A younger sister, Lina Wejgsman, born in 1937, worked many years as a radio announcer in Szczecin, Poland, before moving to Canada where she died in Vancouver in 2016.) Fleeing the Nazis, the Wejgsman family wisely left their home in Pelcowizna, a suburb of Warsaw in September of 1939 and travelled by train and by foot, staying for a time in Biesankovicy, Belarus, before reaching the Soviet border where guards registered Hinda’s name as Gina. In December of 1939, the family began a six-week journey to Leninogorsk (now Ridder, in Kazakhstan) where Gina worked at the brick factory, at a timber mill and eventually at the local cinema.
As Tamara Szymanska has noted in her book review: "Crossroads follows the Wejgsmans family, their extraordinary journey in a cattle car from the eastern border of Nazi-occupied Poland to the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, and of their fight for survival there. The cold in the car was intolerable, and the Wejgsmans slept on straw, bodies side by side, trying to keep warm. They traveled for more than a month. They were sent to Leninogorsk in northeastern Kazakhstan, near the Altai Mountains, where temperatures dropped to minus 41 degrees Celsius in winter.
"After their arrival, Gina did not go to school because local authorities considered her an adult at 14 and gave her a construction job carrying bricks, four at a time. Gina reflects: “… my main memory from Leninogorsk is not what we ate there, but how terribly hungry we always were. With the feeling of hunger, you couldn’t even fall asleep and, if you fell asleep, then it was with night dreams of food until you woke up with the same daydreams.... In winter evenings when the frost was absolutely intolerable and it was inconceivable even to attempt lying in bed, so as not to freeze to death, we would pace the room in circles, single file."
At war's end, she married a Polish Jewish hairdresser in January of 1946. Crossing the Polish border to return to live in Szczecin, Gina's name was changed to Longina because the name Gina did not appear in the official Polish list of first names. Gina's son, Saul, also known as Salek, was born on February 1, 1947. Gina and Jan divorced in 1948. Gina met her second husband, Alexander Dimant, at the Jewish Centre in Szczecin. The Dimant family had lived on Mila Street in Warsaw's Jewish Quarter. [Born on September 17, 1922, his birth name was Szaja Dymant, and he died in Vancouver on March 9, 1998.]. They married in 1952. Alexander graduated with a Master of Economics from the Polytechnic in Szczecin and Gina worked in health care. In 1968, her son Salek was arrested after attending an anti-government meeting at Szczecin University. The Dimant family left Poland in September of 1969 after their citizenship was revoked.
Supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Dimants lived in Vienna and Rome before Gina and Alexander immigrated to Vancouver in August of 1970. He opened an accounting firm; she found work with the Finance Department at UBC in 1973 and stayed there until her retirement. Salek followed his parents to Vancouver in 1971 and married Rosalie Neuwirth in 1974, giving rise to grandchildren Henry "Dov" Dimant and Sally Dimant. In 1993, Alexander Dimant traveled to Poland to participate in the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In 1996, he was involved in preparations for The Warsaw Ghetto: A Pictorial Remembrance exhibition at the VHEC (April 18 to June 7, 1996). On May 3, 2013, Gina Dimant was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for her efforts in strengthening cordial relationships between Poles and Jews. Alexander died March 9, 1998, in Vancouver. Saul died May 1, 2002 in Vancouver. Gina lives in Vancouver.
Dr. Olga Medvedeva-Nathoo has written and edited three books about Janusz Korczak, including the first extensive, in English, bibliography for and about Korczak, himself a prodigious author. As a joint project of the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada and the Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland), her oddly-titled (in translation) May their lot be lighter... Of Janusz Korczak and his pupil concerns the World War II relationship between the famous Holocaust orphanage manager in Warsaw and his ward Leon Gluzman, who had been living in Canada since 1930. Having also published a collection of Korczak Association newsletters, she set about crafting one of the few biographies in English concerning Jews who were refugees in the Soviet Union during the rise and fall of Nazism.
BOOKS:
May their lot be lighter... Of Janusz Korczak and his pupil (Poland: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM 2012)
Janusz Korczak: A Bibliography (K&O Harbour 2012)
The Newsletter of the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada (K&O Harbour 2013)
Crossroads, A True Story of Gina Dimant in War and Love (K&O Harbour 2014)
[BCBW 2021] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
PHOTOS:
Gina Dimant (as Hinda Wejgsman) returned to Szczecin, Poland, in 1946. PHOTO CREDIT: Alexander and Gina Dimant fonds, item 2019.012.032. Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.
Gina Dimant receives Polish Order of Merit from Consul Krzysztot Czapla, 2013. PHOTO CREDIT: Alexander and Gina Dimant fonds, item 2018.047.003. Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.
