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| September 1939 was the start of a dark time for Poland. On the first of September, the Nazi Army of Germany invaded Poland. Before the month was over, Warsaw had surrendered to Germany, and Polish Jews were being put into forced labor factories and camps. It�s difficult to consider such a grim topic in the context of a Canadian rock band, but the Weinribs�the future parents of Rush�s Geddy Lee�were among the Polish Jews who survived the Nazi Holocaust. Lee�s mother, Mary Weinrib, had been born in Starachowice in the Radom district of east central Poland, the site of a Jewish slave labor factory. �My parents were in Poland at the outset of the war,� Lee said in 1977. �The Germans came in, and every man they thought could be a threat to them they took out and shot.� The Weinribs were taken to Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp where thousands upon thousands of Jews�as well as gypsies, homosexuals, anti-Nazi activists and others who didn�t fit the Nazi�s plan�were cremated and gassed. But the Weinribs survived, �which they thought was a miracle.� In January 1944, Soviet forces advanced into Poland. After years of imprisonment, abuse, forced labor and genocide, the surviving prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps were liberated. �When they got liberated,� Lee said, �they didn�t know what to do. They still lived in the concentration camp, as most people did, trying to collect themselves.� Lee said that when his parents and the other prisoners were liberated, �they thought they were the only people left in the world. Can you imagine that? They thought they were the few survivors. They were slowly informed that the world was still going on. Then they couldn�t understand why they were saved. How could it happen? How could God let it happen?� After the liberation and the end of the war, many Polish Jews immigrated to the United States, and the Weinribs planned to be among them. �They were going to go to New York,� Lee said of his parents, �but someone said it was nice in Canada.� The Weinribs changed their plans, settling instead in Ontario. They found a home in the Willowdale neighborhood of Toronto. In 1952, Glen Peart owned a farm near Hagersville, Ontario, where his family lived in the sprawling, flat, and sparsely populated countryside west of Toronto. Glen�s son, Neil Peart, was born in the hospital in Hamilton, on 12 September 1952. After a couple more years on the farm, the family moved to St. Catherines on Ontario�s Niagara Peninsula. There, Glen, a mechanic, became parts manager at Dalziel Equipment. In the two following years the Peart family grew again, first with another son, Danny, and then a daughter named Judy. Another daughter, Nancy, came later. When Neil was still a small boy, he would sometimes pick up chopsticks and play them like drumsticks on the side of baby sister Nancy�s crib. The Weinribs, meanwhile, had settled into their home in Toronto. On 29 July 1953 their son Gary Lee Weinrib was born. Gary also had a brother (Allan) and a sister. When he was a very small child, Gary would listen to his sister practicing at piano for her lessons. Afterwards, by memory and ear, he would pick out the parts she had been playing. Over 1,500 miles away, the Zivojinovich family lived in Fernie, British Columbia. Fernie lies in the extreme southeast corner of British Columbia, very close to the United States border. Fernie was very much a mining town, with most families making their living from the six mines in the region. Immigrants from Serbian Yugoslavia, the Zivojinovich family were no exception. On 27 August 1953 Ned and Mellie Zivojinovich had a baby son who they named Alexander. When Alex was just two years old, his father injured his back. The injury was chronic; he would not be able to continue working in the mines. With Alex and his two sisters to care for, their father would have to find a new means to support his family. But in Fernie there was little opportunity outside of the extraction business. So the Zivojinovich family packed up and moved east to Toronto, Ontario. �We all lived together in a real ethnic area of the city,� Alex later said. �Actually, it was great�there were millions of us living in this house, and no one spoke English on the street, but we all managed somehow to understand each other.� �My mother has a beautiful voice, and she always sang to us,� he said. �I can still recall her singing lullabies.� The future members of Rush, unaware of each other at this point, led relatively normal childhood�s. They were involved in relatively normal activities as children, and got into trouble typical of boys their age. Neil suffered a severe accident as a boy. While climbing trees, he fell and slashed open his arm, exposing bone. Fortunately, it caused no permanent muscular damage. Neil went on to take piano lessons. Gary Weinrib also had a serious accident as a boy, in which the tip of his right-hand middle finger was nearly sliced off, and his fingernail was damaged. �When the nail grew back,� he later said, �it was extraordinarily tough.� �If my mother had her way, I would have probably been a scientist,� he said. �She tells me that when I was a child, all I wanted to be was a scientist.� While in grade four, Alex befriended another boy named John Rutsey. The two boys shared some classes in school, and they lived just across Pleasant Avenue from each other. In just a few short years, the friendship would lead directly to the earliest beginning of one of rock�s greatest power trios. |
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