In this video, Paul Herczeg explains how he ended up in Montreal in 1948. Paul arrived in Halifax with a group of fellow war orphans aboard the USS General SD Sturgis, and chose to join his friends in Montreal. Source: Montreal Holocaust Museum, 2007
[00:00-00:07]
Video begins with inter-title in white text on black screen while instrumental music plays and fades into the next frame: In January 1948, Paul Herczeg travelled to Canada with fellow war orphans aboard the USS General SD Sturgis.
[00:08-00:22]
Cut to Holocaust survivor Paul Herczeg, sitting in front of a black background, and looking to the left of the camera. The camera shows his face and shoulders as he speaks during an interview conducted in Montreal in 2007.
>> Paul Herczeg: Halifax, we arrived in Halifax. Of course they…
[00:14-00:20]
The name “Paul Herczeg” and the location of the filmed interview, “Montreal”, appear in white text above Paul's right shoulder.
>> …kept us on the boat for a while. Then at night, we went through again, customs, and some officials with our papers and whatnot.
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Cut to black-and-white photograph of a group of six young men standing aboard the deck of a ship, looking at the camera with stern faces. Paul Herczeg is second from the right. Instrumental music plays in the background and the photo caption appears in white text on the right-hand side of the frame, “War orphans aboard USS General SD Sturgis, 1948”.
[00:33-00:42]
Cut to Paul Herczeg in front of the camera.
>> The only documents I had is the papers which we got from Feldafing when we arrived there, the one I had in Gauting, which was the American army, plus the visa. There's nothing else.
[0043-00:55]
Cut to black-and-white paper copy of a document form. The camera pans down to show the small portrait photograph of a young man. The photo caption appears in white text on the left-hand side of the frame, “Paul Herczeg's immigration visa, 1948”.
>> There's no documents from before the war. [Laughs] I didn't see too much of Halifax. All I remember, the first impression…
[00:56-01:41]
Cut to Paul Herczeg in front of the camera.
>> I got out on the pier and I see a huge stand of fruit. Oranges, and grapefruits, and apples, which is a revelation to me. There are mountains in there, and we're dying to have – although, at that moment, not because we were sick, but as we got out of the boat, all of a sudden we got our appetite back, you know. And I would have loved to eat it but didn't have much, I didn't have money to buy it to begin with. I had no money at all, on us. And they told us, “Don't worry about it. You get on the train and you get fed” and all this. So we got on the train, overnight train to Montreal. And this is when the decision came, where do you stay? You going to stay – you want to go to Toronto, want to go to Montreal? You want to go to – a few of them stayed in Halifax, not that many.
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Cut to black-and-white photograph of an outdoor brick wall of a building, with rope hanging diagonally on the right, and the sign “Welcome Home to Canada” is boarded to wall in big block letters. The photo caption appears in white text on the left-hand side of the frame, “Pier 21, Halifax, 1950”.
>> They asked us what our preference is. So we had no preference because we didn't know Canada. I know how Winnipeg, how far it is.
[01:52-2:22]
Cut to Paul Herczeg in front of the camera.
>> Distances, which we know today 8,000 km right across Canada. This was something, for a European mind is very, very strange. You cannot comprehend it. So, even the overnight train to get to Montreal overnight, was a long train trip. But they got on the train, they fed us very well. Then I remember having breakfast in the morning. They got us together, and that's where they asked us, “Where do you want to go? We'll make separation…”
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Cut to black-and-white photograph of eight young men and women grouped together aboard the deck of a ship. The photo caption appears in white text in the bottom right, “War orphans aboard USS General SD Sturgis, 1948”.
>> …“your preferences are okay, but if we cannot manage that way, you'll have to go wherever we're going to send you.” I preferred Montreal, and all my group…
[02:37-02:48]
Cut to Paul Herczeg in front of the camera.
>>…because we already have a couple friends who came in three months prior to Montreal. We knew there were here. So I said we're coming here to Montreal, we have our friends here, from our group who came earlier. And that's how I ended up in Montreal.
[02:49-02:58]
Music plays for the remainder of the video. Three credit pages appear in white text on black screen: Interview conducted by Barry Stahlmann, Witness to History Program, Montreal, 2007, Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Images: Paul Herczeg Family Collection, Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 (DI2013.1027.1)
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.