PART TWO
Lillian Freiman Mother to all
As Europe lay ravaged in the aftermath of World War I, Lillian Freiman, the wife of a wealthy Ottawa businessman, A.J. Freiman, could not sit idly by. Being a tireless worker and a brilliant organizer who in 1917 founded Canadian HadassahWIZO, Lillian pre-arranged families looking to adopt children, chartered a boat, the S.S. Scandinavian, and sailed for Antwerp, Belgium. This daring Canadian Hadassah-WIZO mission was a partnership, with the Canadian Jewish Congress, which coincidentally was headed by her husband. On August 19, 1921, the rescue mission returned to Quebec with 150 Ukrainian Jewish orphans, including a few babies, which Lillian is said to have transported in her arms, to families waiting to adopt them.
As
mentioned in Part One, (which you can read by clicking on the icon to the left) published in the Spring 2022 issue of ORAH, Lillian Freiman founded Canadian Hadassah-WIZO in 1917. Despite her busy home life (she was married with three children), Lillian hosted meetings, opened her home to new immigrants, supported countless causes, supported veterans, raised funds for those in need, established the first agricultural school for women in Israel (CHW Nahalal Youth Village), travelled the world to fight injustice, and, as you are going to read in the following article, oversaw the transport of 150 Ukrainian Jewish orphans to Canada. 30
ORAH Magazine FALL 2022
One hundred years later, Lillian Vineberg-Goodman, marvels at the heroism of her great-aunt and great-uncle, Lillian and A.J. Freiman, that changed the lives of the orphaned children and left a lasting legacy through their descendants. The Freimans also adopted one of the children, Gladys Razovsky, who Vineberg-Goodman explains, “grew up very much a part of the family.” Joseph Presament was one of the rescued orphans, who at the age of 12, found himself starting a new life with an adoptive family. (In the above group photo, Joseph is immediately to the right of the man standing in the back top row.) Joseph’s granddaughter, Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, explains that her grandfather was lucky to be able to come, as so many children were not well enough to make the journey, and the new life was initially not easy. “He didn’t have the best relationship with his adoptive family, and he wasn’t able to finish high school or pursue his dream of being an artist, but he had a life and he was able to build a family. And he had all those years in Florida with his grandkids at the pool.”