In this video, Freda Shiel describes the interview process that she and her family went through in order to obtain Canadian visas. She remembers having a hard time adjusting to life as a DP kid when they arrived in Winnipeg. Source: Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, 1989
[00:00-00:06]
Video begins with inter-title in white text on black screen while instrumental music plays and fades into the next frame: Freda Shiel's father was sponsored to come to Canada as a farmer in 1948. Canadian immigration officials interviewed the family before issuing their visas.
[00:07-00:35]
Cut to Holocaust survivor Freda Shiel, sitting in front of a grey background, and looking to the right of the camera. The camera shows her face and shoulders as she speaks during an interview conducted in Winnipeg in 1989.
>> Freda Shiel: And so we went into an interview.
[00:12-00:19]
The name “Freda Shiel” and the location of the filmed interview, “Winnipeg”, appear in white text above Freda's right shoulder.
>> And the Canadian consul naturally only spoke English. And there was a Polish gentleman, a translator, who was there translating the conversation. And he starts interviewing my father and my mother. Now as I mentioned before, my father was a little man. And he was going as a farmer?
[00:36-00:43]
Cut to black-and-white photograph of a man and woman standing together with their young daughter in front of them. They are standing outside and the man wears a suit, and the woman and child wear dresses. The photo caption appears in white text in the top-left corner, “Freda and parents, 1947”.
>> I mean, no way was he a farmer. So he started asking us various questions about where we had been…
[00:44-00:46]
Cut to Freda Shiel in front of the camera.
>> and where we were going, and why…
[00:47-00:59]
Cut to same black-and-white photograph with zoomed in picture of the man in the suit. The photo caption appears in white text in the top-left corner, “Israel, Freda's father, 1947”.
>>…and what type of work my father was going to be doing. At one point, the interviewer says to him, “Let's see your hands.” You know, to see if they were hands that could really work the land and so on.
[01:00-01:42]
Cut to Freda Shiel in front of the camera.
>> My father stretched out his hands, and as I say, he was a small man. When he did that, I started to cry. Because I felt that my father did not have the big hands, and that this was it. And I started to cry. And the consul looked at me weeping there, and he asked, “Why is she crying?” So my mother, being the smart lady that she is, said, “Well I guess she wants to have her own home already, not to be wandering.” And when he heard her say that, he took his stamp and he started stamping all the papers.
[01:43-01:48]
Cut to second inter-title in white text on black screen while instrumental music plays and fades into the next frame: Freda was 9 years old when she and her family arrived in Winnipeg in July 1948.
[01:49-02:24]
Cut to Freda Shiel in front of the camera.
>> I started school, I went to the Talmud Torah day school. And in those days I was just a DP kid. That's it. It was a very, very difficult adjustment for me, because the year and a half that I had spent in the DP camp was a real positive experience. We were all the same, we had fun. Zionist organisations and so forth. It was great. And here, you were the kid, the DP kid, who had a hard time with the language at first, and so on.
[02:25-02:34]
Music plays for the remainder of the video. Three credit pages appear in white text on black screen: Interview conducted by Emily Shane, Second Generation Group, Winnipeg, 1989, Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada
Images: USC Shoah Foundation
Directing: Helgi Piccinin; Editing and Colorization: Michaël Gravel, Helgi Piccinin; Audio Mix and Original Music: Pierre-Luc Lecours. [Logo for Chaire de recherche du Canada en patrimoine ethnologique]
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, copyright 2017.
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End of transcript.