Neighbours of High Park – December Issue
For those who do not know we are the official photographers for the magazine Neighbours of Hgh Park. Since this past December we have photographed the cover story. We have met absolutely wonderful people whom we have photographed ever since. We would like to share some of their stories with you right here on our blog. What better place to start than the first one we photographed for the December issue.
We include an excerpt from the magazine itself written by our good friend Cassandra Irving.
Andrew Pressburger was born in Hungary in 1935, four years before the out-break of World War II.
“I was Jewish, so part of a persecuted minority, but that did not play a big part of my life until the Nazis took over. In Germany, the Jewish population was wiped out totally. But Hungary was different. The governor of Hungary was allowed a little leeway until 1944 when Hitler didn’t feel the liquidation of the Jewish population was rigorous enough, so he sent in an occupying army and removed the governor and took over. They then began to deport Jews to Auschwitz under the direction of Adolph Eichmann,” says Andrew.
Fortunately, Russia invaded before Andrew’s family was deported to the camps and the country was liberated from the Nazis before they could do anything more. “In a way, I owe my life to them, brutes though they were,” says Andrew, referring to the occupying Russian army. “It (communism) was the lesser of two evils.” Andrew was a 10-year-old when the war finally ended in 1945. Though the Nazis were gone, he describes this period of his life as “going out of the frying pan and into the fire” as life under the communist regime was very oppressive.
It was an honor to meet this man and hear his story. He made me feel at home and asked a lot about me, even though I was there for him. Stay tuned for more posts from our Neighbours of High Park sessions as this was only the first in many tremendous stories.
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