On the Life of Natan Nevo Z”L

October 1930 – April 2021

Written by Shirley Shamash and Denise Nevo

We have lost our dear Natan, husband, father, father-in-law, grandfather, uncle, great uncle, friend to so many, an incredible, kind, and caring man with a heart of gold.

His life journey was anything but ordinary. He was born in Warsaw, Poland. When the Second World War broke out, his father had the wisdom to move the family (Natan, his mother, and his older brother Adek) to Russia, via incredible and difficult means of travel. This allowed them to escape the Nazi occupation in Poland and being deported to Concentration Camps, where all his uncles, aunts, and cousins perished. Soon after, the family was sent to Siberia, where Natan spent most of the war years. Thankfully, the two brothers were able to go to school there during the entire war period.

When the war ended, the family moved back to Poland, but antisemitism was so prevalent there that Natan, as a teenager, joined a group of young Jews and moved to what was then Palestine, in early 1948. In May of that year, the modern State of Israel was born, and Natan, with a group of other young Holocaust survivors, became one of the founding members of Kibbutz Megiddo, where he worked in various occupations, including theatre.

After five years, he left the kibbutz and moved to the southern city of Eilat, where he worked as a bank teller. A few years later, he wanted to study theatre and painting, and he moved to Paris, France, where he met Denise. The two of them moved back to Israel in 1965 and were married there, that year. But life was difficult in Israel at the time, Natan’s brother Adek was living in Halifax and urged Natan and Denise to move to Canada. So, they arrived in Halifax in October 1965 and have lived ever since in this beautiful city, where they raised their two sons, Igal and Amir.

Natan was the type of man who always had a story to tell and always had a smile on his face. He spoke five languages, he was charming and charismatic, and people always gravitated around him.

Despite dabbling in various careers, ranging from theatre to bank teller to property manager to university professor, his passion was always art and he loved to express himself through his paintings, abstracts as well as beautiful landscapes. These filled the walls of his art studio, in the house on Bayview Road where he lived with Denise for 30 years, before moving to the condo.

Natan loved to spend time with his five grandchildren, Zev and Phoenix in Halifax, and Itai, Sarah and Daniel in Israel, where Igal had moved and married Tamy. From the time they were able to hold a paintbrush, Natan taught them about brush strokes and how to paint. Their painting moved from paper, to canvass, to painting rocks. To this day, several of them have a passion for painting and the two little ones in Halifax, Zev and Phoenix, decided to deposit on his coffin two stones they had painted with him a short while before his death, along with some drawings they made for him, with big red hearts, to be buried with him and stay with him for ever and ever.

We just finished celebrating Passover a short while ago, he was then full of life and had a great time with his family, but he was an intelligent and intuitive man and he knew what was coming. He told his daughter-in-law, Shirley, that this would be his last Passover...

He was an incredible man who lived a full and joyous life, despite the terrible hardships he encountered along the way. We all have amazing memories of the times we spent with him that we will cherish forever. We will all miss him so much!