Skyline of Toronto, Canada. Photo Credit: Aaron Davis, Wikimedia Commons, June 2020.

JNS.org – Two Holocaust survivors were among the 135 Canadians recently appointed to the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honors.

Max Eisen from North York, Ontario, was honored “for his contributions to Holocaust education, and for his promotion of transformational dialogue on human rights, tolerance and respect.”

Eisen, who was born in Czechoslovakia, published in 2016 his memoir “By Chance Alone” about his experiences during the Holocaust, including his deportation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where most of his family were murdered in gas chambers, and surviving a death march in 1945.

Similarly, Rose Lipszyc from Thornhill, Ontario, was recognized for her “inspiring discourse as a Holocaust educator and for her thought-provoking presentations on the subject.” Lipszyc survived the Nazi extermination of Jews in Poland during World War II by fleeing a forced march of Jews and later posing as a Polish child worker. She is a speaker at Toronto’s Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre.

The Order of Canada was created in 1967 and recognizes “outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation,” according to the website of Canada’s Governor General Mary Simon, who announced the 135 appointees on Wednesday.

This year’s list also includes Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl for his leadership as head of the Beth Tzedec Synagogue in Toronto, and for “fostering interfaith dialogue throughout Canada and beyond.”