Hélène Cantkier Goldflus collection

Hélène Goldflus was born Hélène Cantkier, on 10 September 1931, the daughter of Natan and Therese, or Taube (née Klejtman), in Paris. Her parents, although originally from different towns in Poland, met in Warsaw and were married there in 1930. For their honeymoon, they travelled to Paris, where a cousin of Natan's lived, and decided to remain there. Hélène had three brothers, Maurice (born 1935), and Georges and Leon, who were twins (born 1941). Following the German invasion of France, her father was arrested and taken away in May 1941, and the family learned after the war that he had been deported to Auschwitz, and died there. Her mother sent her and her brother Maurice to live in hiding, and Hélène was first at a Catholic convent in Paris, and then with a family on a farm outside of Paris. The following year, she was sent to live with a family on a farm in Arquian (Burgundy), where she was reunited with Maurice and the two were sheltered during the next two years, until the liberation of France. During the occupation, their mother gave birth to twin sons, Georges and Leon, who were then raised by another family, who after the war was reluctant to give them up. Therese worked for a professor at an asylum during that time, and managed to stay in Paris and avoid arrest. Following the war, and the reunion of Therese with her children in Paris, they made plans to immigrate to the United States, and left from Southhampton on the RMS Queen Elizabeth in January 1948. Denied entry into the United States, one of the brothers of Therese, who had immigrated to Canada prior to the war, sponsored the, so they came to Toronto, where he lived. Hélène has spent the remainder of her life there, and in Hamilton, Ontario. She married Meyer Goldflus in 1951, and they had three children. Photographs, ration card, tickets, ship’s passenger list and menus, school composition notebooks, related to the experience of the Cantkier family, of Paris, France, from the years following the immigration of the Cantkier’s from Poland to France in 1930, until their postwar immigration to Canada. The photographs include images of Natan and Taube (Therese) Cantkier from their wedding, a copy print image of Taube’s parents (original photo was from 1899), photographs of Natan and Taube’s children in France, and pictures of Helene with family and friends in postwar France. Documents include various cards issued to Helene and Therese in post-war France, train ticket stubs, and ephemera from the voyage to the United States on the R.M.S. Queen Elizabeth in 1948, including a list of passengers and menus. Collection also includes written composition notebooks for classes that Helene took in French and English in France, 1945-1947.