Remembering the Holocaust: A Winnipeg couple’s story of survival

© 2020, Christian Cassidy

May 26, 1960, Winnipeg Free Press

I had intended on writing a short, amusing post about the morning of May 26, 1960 when Winnipeg was in the grips of its smallest, and one of its shortest, strikes. It turned into something much larger after looking into the story behind the business owner at the centre of the strike and its timing in relation to today's Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The business involved  was Sam Fleisher and Co., a meat company at 346 Dupuy Street in St. Boniface. The firm purchased cattle, slaughtered them, then sold the meat wholesale to butchers and restaurants.

Top: Samuel and Regina ca. 1936 (Fleshier family via video)
Bottom: Laszckow, Poland is the red pin near centre of map (JewishGen)

Sam (Simcha) Fleisher was born in 1908 in Laszczow, Poland. A cattle dealer by trade, he first met Regina (Rivka) when he visited her village to purchase cattle in the mid-1930s. He continued to call on her and the two were engaged in the fall of 1936 and married on January 31, 1937. They then relocated to Laszczow, Poland where they owned and operated a flour mill.

Two weeks after Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Stalin ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland. Due to its location in the east of the country it was the Red Army that first made it to Laszczow. The military confiscated the mill and Sam was arrested for being a rich businessman causing Regina to move back in with her mother. Sam soon escaped from jail and joined her.

In 1941, the Nazis arrived and the region's Jews were rounded up. Sam and a pregnant Regina were removed to the Jewish ghetto in the small town of Blaszkowa, Poland. Residents were also used as forced labour at nearby farms.

Ruins of the former synagogue at Laszczow (Galacian Traces)

The Fleishers' daughter, Miriam, was born in the ghetto on November 5, 1941. Not long after, the SS declared that all young children in the ghetto were to be put to death. The Fleishers approached a Catholic bishop they knew as a customer of their former mill. He and the Mother Superior of a nearby Roman Catholic convent agreed to take the baby, create a cover story for her identity and raise her there.

In 1943, the surviving Jews in the ghetto were cleared out. Many, like the Fleishers, went to labour camps, others to Belzec extermination camp. Regina escaped after she was left for dead after a mass shooting and she eventually made her way back to the orphanage where she had left Miriam. She lived on the grounds outside the house until harvest time, then was allowed to live inside.

As for Sam, he also escaped from his labour camp in the summer of 1944 and made his way back to the orphanage and lived amongst the cows until the war was over.

The Fleishers ca. 2000s (obituary photos)

Life after the war was difficult. The family first lived in a hut in Crakjow, Poland and Sam collected war orphans to bring home and live with them. Miriam, who had been taken from the only home and family she ever knew, had a hard time adjusting to this "new" family. Regina said that she also found it difficult to think of them as a family again after all they had been through. The birth of thier second child, Frank, on May 23, 1945 helped change that.

The Fleishers then moved to Lipnitz, Poland where Sam opened a meat business, but hostilities were still strong between Poles and Jews. They didn't feel like real citizens and decided to leave for Canada after a couple of years.

The family first settled in Montreal, but did not like it there. A friend of Regina's told her about Winnipeg and the large Ukrainian and Polish communities here, so they moved west.

356 Stella, right side of the duplex, (Google Street View)

The family first appear as "Fleicher" in the 1950 Henderson Directory which means they would have arrived there in the latter part of 1949 when data for the guide was collected. Sam is listed as a cattle dealer and they rented three rooms for $28.00 in the upstairs of a house at 356 Stella Avenue at Aikins Street. Mike Swick, owner of Progress Candy on Jarvis Street, was the homeowner and lived downstairs.

Now settled, it didn't take the Fleishers long to get back on their feet.

In 1950, the couple gave birth to their third child, William. By 1952, Sam got his drivers licence and bought his own truck and is listed as a cattle dealer and driver. The family had also moved to an apartment block at 192-B Burrin Avenue.

It was around 1955 that the firm of Sam Fleisher and Co. wholesale meats was established at 346 Dupuy Avenue off Marion Street in the meat packing district of St. Boniface. The site was home to a an abattoir and rendering plant that a number of small meat companies called home. The building was likely brand new as the previous one, Farmers' Abattoir, was razed by a fire on December 28, 1953.

At around the same time the Fleishers bought a house at at 425 Kilbride Avenue in West Kildonan where they would live for decades to come.

May 26, 1960, Winnipeg Tribune

It was during this time that the unique labour dispute dubbed "the smallest strike in Canada" by the Winnipeg Free Press took place.

Sam Fleisher and Co. had been a one man show until Sam took on W. M. "Bill" McPherson as a labourer in early May 1960. McPherson had signed up to be a union member at the meat firm he had been hired away from, but had not yet paid his dues. The union, however, considered him a member and applied for certification of Sam Fleisher and Co. as a union shop. Fleisher refused and a one man strike vote was taken. The Free Press reported: “Mr. McPherson had voted unanimously Wednesday to go on strike at a vote held at the plant.”

McPherson witha  small sign hit the picket line before 7:00 a.m. on May 26, 1960. At 8:00 a.m., officials from the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union arrived to negotiate a new contract.

Fleisher didn't put up a fight. He said he knew he would lose as most of the other shops in St. Boniface had recently unionized. McPherson got about $15 more per week in salary and a reduction from a 50-hour work week down to 40 over the two years of the contract. The strike lasted less than two hours.

The Free Press noted that “There were no hard feelings before or after the strike. Mr. Fleisher and Mr. McPherson have known each other for about a year and have been on good terms.”

December 2, 1975, Winnipeg Tribune

The company moved in 1975 when Farmers' Abattoir announced they were adding a $140,000, two-storey packing plant extension and other upgrades to the old building.

According to to Sam's obituary he retired in 1978 at the age of 70. The company was sold off and continued on under the Fleisher name for at least a couple more decades.

Sam Fleisher died on September 28, 1988 at Seven Oaks Hospital. Regina died on February 10, 2007 at Sharon Home. The Rivke Fleisher Memorial Scholarship Award was established at the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba in her honour.

Memorial at Łaszczów (Virtual Stetl)

Back in Laszczow, after the war, as with many Jewish cemeteries in Poland, the gravestones were removed and used for pavement and fill and the land for was used for growing crops and housing.

In 1994, the land was fenced off, symbolic headstones erected and a monument was placed to honour of the village's Holocaust victims. In Polish and Hebrew it reads: “The monument to commemorate the blessed Jewish martyrs of Łaszczów killed by the Nazi murderers during the Second World War 1939-1945."

Sources:
- Rivke (Regina) Fleisher obituary
- Samuel Fleisher obituary (see below)
- Miriam Fleisher obituary
- Oral history interview with Regina Fleisher and Miriam Fleisher (1988) Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives website (Transcript)
- Remember Jewish Łaszczów Genealogy Group
- Laszczow International Jewish Cemetery Project 
- Łaszczow Virtual Shtetl