DIALOG.......................
Music teacher spent 28 years smuggling Jews out of Syria
The Toronto Star
Copyright (c) 2002 The Toronto Star
Thursday, June 6, 2002
News
Activist's living legacy saluted
Andrew Chung, Toronto Star
In an eerie final act of international intrigue, Judy Feld Carr
secretly smuggled her last Jewish family out of Syria not an hour before
hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center in New York.
Feld Carr received confirmation that the family, including seven
children, landed in Brooklyn at 7: 30 a.m. on Sept. 11. Shortly after 8,
Feld Carr saw the terrorist attacks on television.
"The emotions were not for this world," she said. "You're happy
because the family made it, then I'm eating breakfast watching those
planes..."
Her voice trailed off: "God," she said, "works in strange ways."
But so, too, did Judy Feld Carr.
The idea that an unassuming music teacher could become immersed in a
life of smuggling, bribes, underground cells, terror, torture and secret
agents seems hard to believe.
And yet she did this, risking her own life over 28 years spiriting
3,228 Jews from Syria, a land that was hostile to them, that barred them
from emigrating and tortured family members trying to escape.
For her heroism, she was awarded the inaugural Wiesenthal Award for
Tolerance, Justice and Human Rights last night by the Toronto-based
Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
The centre, headquartered in Los Angeles, is an international human
rights organization that fosters tolerance and education about the
Holocaust, racism and anti-Semitism.
The award was dreamed up in response to a proliferation of hate
incidents across the world, especially since Sept. 11, said Avi Benlolo,
national director of development for the group.
Feld Carr is in the same league as Oskar Schindler, who saved Jews
during the Holocaust, Benlolo offered. "Ordinary people can do
extraordinary things," he said. "Actually getting to honour someone like
this, who lives in our time, is special."
Feld Carr already had been appointed to the Order of Canada last year
for her work.
"It's so exciting, and so wonderful," she said of last night's award
presented at the Toronto Centre for the Arts. "But it's also very
unusual for me because I did this work secretly for 28 years and now
it's come out into the spotlight and it's a very strange feeling. I'm
not sure what I make of it."
Born in Montreal and raised in Sudbury, Feld Carr, 63, learned at a
young age what tragedy befell the Jewish people during the Holocaust
when a couple moved in next door. The woman, Sophie - who Feld Carr
calls her "adopted mommy" - had been hideously disfigured by Dr. Josef
Mengele. Her two children had been killed at Auschwitz.
Feld Carr moved to Toronto at age 18. She attended the University of
Toronto and received a Bachelor of Education in Music. She later
received a Master's degree. She taught instrumental music at various
Toronto high schools and had three children with her husband Dr. Ronald
Feld, who died of a heart attack at age 39 while playing with their
daughter. Her world "fell apart," she said. In 1977 she married Donald
Carr, a widower and lawyer.
As a teacher, her gaze was of someone always thinking, calculating
her next move. It's a must for someone with a secret double life.
That life began in the early 1970s, when she started sending
religious books to Jews in Syria and mounting a human-rights campaign,
lobbying Parliament and the media.
Then, raising dollars bit by bit, for it became clear that the
notorious Syrian secret police, the Muhabarat, could be bribed. "The
Syrians were selling people," Feld Carr said.
She developed networks that stretched around the Middle East,
funnelling money to agents for ransom and to smugglers she considered
reliable. Secrecy was paramount.
It wasn't without danger. For the families without question, whose
members could be imprisoned or tortured if others escaped. For Feld
Carr, there were threats.
But she kept going, only for the families.
Most of the thousands have never met her. They only know of a "Mrs.
Judy." They know she's Canadian. For many, the dream is to meet her. One
owns a little kiosk in Jaffa, Israel, where he has put up Canadian flags
everywhere, hoping Mrs. Judy would see them and walk in. On a recent
trip there, she did. He cried and cried and cried.
"I did my thing," she said. "I saved Jews."
"It's the power of an individual to make a difference," Rabbi Marvin
Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said last night.
"Judy Feld Carr filled a vacuum, nobody was doing anything for (the Jews
in Syria) they were forgotten, they were rotting away."
Almost 2,000 people, many from the Jewish community, nibbled hors
d'oeuvres before filing into the main stage for a musical performance.
World-renowned cellist Ofra Harnoy and singers Michael Burgess and
Liberty Silver serenaded the audience before Feld Carr spoke.
In 1995, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin wrote to Feld Carr,
thanking her for her "hard and dangerous work."
"The Jews of Syria who were rescued and the State of Israel owe you
so much," he wrote, "and will never be able to reward you as you
deserve."