Bolivia, South America, was one of the few countries that accepted Jewish immigration in those dark years. In Sucre, where an instant and sizable Jewish community evolved, my father was a part of the board for a section of a cemetery allotted to the Jews. His memoirs brought life back in detail to so many stories about those refugees, their legacies and how they helped each other in this city almost ten thousand feet above sea level.
My parents married in Sucre, Bolivia, where I was born in 1944. In 1950, we came to Vancouver and, a few months later moved to Gibson’s Landing where Dad, already in his sixties, operated a sawmill called Sucre Lumber Co. I went to school there from grade one to grade twelve. This small picturesque village by the water is where the CBC popular series “The Beachcombers” was later filmed.
Finally, properly edited and proofread, my father’s memoirs have been published in their original German, Von Koenigsberg nach Kanada and translated into English as Where the Straight Path Leads. Both are available from Amazon, or by contacting me.
There are so many emotional memories, (as faint as they may be) over the many years and it is difficult sometimes to truly process for us who were and always will, and continue to be, the ‘children’...
Dan Propp is a retired school teacher and photographer. A self-taught musician, he sings the old time songs – with accordion – at seniors’ homes throughout British Columbia's lower mainland.