Lejbus Pejsach (Percy) Singer (Zyngier) was born on May 15, 1919in Ostrowiec. Son of Itcha (Isadore / Yitzchak born c.1889.) and Chaya Sura (Neiman) Zyngier  born c.1892.

Siblings  were:

Morris -b. 1910, arrived in Canada before the Holocaust

Benjamin - b. 1924, arrived in Detroit,  USA after surviving the Holocaust.

Yehoshua - b 1926

Shapse - b 1928

Cheskel - b. 1929

Yehoshua, Shapse and Cheskel died in the Holocaust along with their parents.

His family recalls his pre-war and war experience as below:

"We remember him telling us that he carried water to their apartment for his mother to cook with. One of our  fondest memories is of our father preparing kreplach for Rosh Hashanah, following the recipe he somehow remembered from helping his mother. They were delicious…

Our dad talked about swimming in the Kamienna river …Dad played soccer and skated in the winter. He managed to get a pair of skates from someone and taught himself to skate. Dad’s father was one of the managers of the Bund, a socialist movement. Due to something he wrote against the government Itche was arrested and sent to Siberia so for some time his father was not at home.

During the war Percy was, in his ownd words, "captured by the German in Opole and taken to Anopol. There I work a couple of weeks and send to Radom with many others by truck to Radom, to a military camp where they capt (kept) prisoners of war and civilians. The Jews were separated from the others. There they took us out to work every day to work to clean houses for the coming Germans. After 2 months while being at work I escaped and returned to Ostrowiec. I stayed with my family till Feb '41 when a group of young boys organized to leave and try to cross to Russia at the Shyniamowa? border.”

After leaving Ostrowiec by foot, he and a friend Harry Rubinstein somehow made their way to the border. We think that he and Harry separated at some point after crossing the border. (Harry Rubinstein ended up living in Toronto, the two of them playing cards together once a week with a group of their friends, many of them from Ostrowiec).

Dad was taken to a coal mine to work. He was not a big strong guy and he told us that even the shovel was too heavy for him and joked that he was really of no use to them…

On dad’s day off he went into the town to see if he could find work more suited to him. He was able to find a garment factory where he asked to see the manager who turned out to be Jewish and hired him, sending word to the coal mine that dad would now be working at the factory. He had experience in the garment trade since he was trained in Ostrowiec before the war.

At some point our dad was in the Russian army. We remember him telling us that he was a machine gun feeder and that he had a hernia operation while in the army. We have his medical examination paper from the Canadian government where it states that he had a tear after a hernia operation in 1943. Maybe he was discharged from the army at that time.

Dad told us that when the war ended, he was working as a clothes designer in Russia. He was designing clothes for the wives of the Russian elite therefore managed to make a relatively good living there. His boss did not want to let him leave so he made up a story that his aunt had found him and wrote to him begging him to come back to Poland because all their family were dead and he was all she had left. It was almost true, since when he did return to Ostrowiec he found that all of his family members there had perished.

He told us that he happened to meet non-Jewish Polish neighbours who laughed at the fact that our dad arrived home to find his family gone. He then travelled to Lodz. We have a document stating that he was living in Lodz where he found his first cousin Morris (Moishe) and his wife, Saba (Syma). We believe he stayed with them.

During this time, dad’s brother, our Uncle Morris filled out paperwork and arranged for dad to come to Canada. Dad first landed in New York City where he was met by his cousins, Paul, Harry and David Singer who were living in Connecticut. A few months later he arrived in Canada at the Port of Fort Erie on December 11, 1947.

When dad first came to Canada he worked as a women’s clothing designer in Toronto. One of his first positions was at Lou Larry which was a high-end establishment at that time. He was making a good living at that time and in the evenings went to school to learn English. Dad was living with his brother Morris, his wife Toby and their three daughters, Marion, Shirley and Susie. Morris was working in the men’s clothing industry for many years in Toronto at The House of Stone.

Dad married our mom, Miriam Greenberg after meeting her through friends on a blind date. They were married in 1953, managed to buy a house then had two daughters. Dad decided to change his occupation and bought a retail store they named Perco Auto and Sports with his brother Morris as co-owner and silent partner. They ran it until the late 1960’s when they sold the store... he later had various businesses.

Percy  passed away in Toronto on April 16, 2018, a month before his 99th birthday.

Photos and content courtesy of Irene (Renee) Singer Viner and Cindy Singer Beer.