Wrestling with Life: From Hungary to Auschwitz to Montreal

George Reinitz · Richard King

ago 2017 · Footprints Series Libro 25 · McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

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George Reinitz was twelve years old when he and his family were taken from Szikszó, Hungary, and deported to Auschwitz, where many of his family members were killed. As a boy on the brink of adolescence, he experienced the horrors of a Nazi death camp. Following his liberation he returned to his hometown where he remained for a few years before immigrating to Montreal in 1948 as part of the Canadian Jewish Congress’s War Orphans Project. In Wrestling with Life, George Reinitz recounts his vivid memories of childhood and his experiences in one of the worst places humans ever created. He recalls being tattooed with an unclean needle, eating raw potato skins to stave off hunger, watching his father get whipped in the face, and looking after the horses of SS officers. In Auschwitz he learned and used survival skills that he later applied in the commercial realm. George settled in Montreal and became a world-class wrestler, competing internationally and carrying the flag for the Canadian team at the 1957 Maccabiah Games in Israel. After working in a number of jobs he found his calling in the furniture business, eventually founding Jaymar Furniture, a leading manufacturer and a company that still operates successfully in Quebec. Wrestling with Life is a moving account of a child’s survival under the most difficult of circumstances. It tells the story of one man’s hard-won success as a businessman and athlete.

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George Reinitz is a Holocaust survivor, athlete, and businessman. He lives in Montreal.