Stained glass window

From the Habonim Bulletin [March 1997]

“Nathan Ostrow created two beautiful stained-glass windows for the sanctuary at Congregation Habonim of Toronto” We all know that many functions in Habonim are fulfilled by volunteers and appreciate that without such helpers the Congregation would hardly be running at all. Some give their assistance occasionally as required, a few spend many hours a week on important administrative tasks. Then there is one man who devotes almost his full time to the practical maintenance our physical assets.

Nathan Ostrow can be found at our shul at almost any time, looking after the building, the grounds, the cleaning, the painting, the heating, the chair and stage arrangements, the religious implements, and many other duties. He finds time, not only to create two beautiful stained-glass windows for the sanctuary, but also to do many errands for the Congregation and, with his wife Miriam, to visit sick members and arrange the donations to the food bank. All of this is done with his pleasant, cheerful smile and good will.

Without Nathan, most physical preparations at Habonim would, if not stop, at least grind along in a much lower, less efficient gear. So, at reaching the three-quarter century mark of his life, it is only fitting that we express our deep appreciation and thanks for all his help and devotion, and wish him many more healthy, happy, content and vigorous years.

-Gangolf Herman, President Congregation Habonim

At Habonim, both Miriam and Nathan became ultra-active. Nathan, over the last forty years has been taking care of the building — everything from reupholstering chairs to the sound systems, to roof leaks, to creating the two beautiful stained-glass windows on the south wall — absolutely every detail never escaped the watchful eye of Nathan Ostrow.

In the president’s address and bulletin letter, Roger DeFreitas brings the members’ attention to the gorgeous new stained-glass window gracing the sanctuary that Nathan Ostrow has designed, created and installed in the south wall’s windows. He had been working on it in the basement for over two years. It is there still and will forever add beauty and color to every occasion at Habonim.

Source: “The Builders” by Lisa Catherine Cohen

From the Habonim Bulletin, October 2001

Habonim's sanctuary is now graced with a multi-panel-stained glass window on the North wall. This window is a gift from Ruth Baumann- Linz, a member of long standing, in honour of Margot Barnett. Margot personified the volunteer spirit at Habonim, and we thank Ruth for the beautification of our sanctuary. We also thank Ila Weiser who shepherded the project through its completion over about a year and a half It turned out to be much more work than we originally thought, but the result is splendid and we thank her, as well as the committee members who advised her, including May Marx, Max Gottlieb, Roger DeFreitas, Morton Katz and Nathan Ostrow.

The window was created by a noted Toronto area artist in stained glass Gerald Tooke, after a competition among artists. Mr. Tooke's design reflects Margot's energy in her devotion to Habonim, symbolized in images of light and action, as well as repeating circles of life. In the daytime, the windows are lighted by outside light, and at night by Habonim's lights when the building is in use.

Please make a note of the windows the next time you are in the sanctuary. An appropriate celebration will be held when Ruth is in town.

-David Goldfarb, President January

From the Habonim Bulletin January, 2008. Speech given by Vera Bernstein:

Fred Rose, my brother, spent a great deal of time chronicling the background history of not only our family but that also of the Jews of Germany during and following the period of the Holocaust.

He had the fervent wish to have a memorial created in memory of our parents, Esther and Abraham Rose, who with some 6 millions other Jews were victims of the Holocaust.

He has always admired the beautiful stained glass window on the north wall of this sanctuary and felt that a new window on the opposite side creating a balance and depicting Jewish symbols in a contemporary fashion would be a fitting memorial.

May Marx, his long-time friend, and also her family, who are here today, have been supporters of the idea and have been of great help.

Mr. Morton Katz, Architect, was part of the committee who chose Mr. Jerry Tooke, a renowned stained glass artist who has designed the windows on the opposite side, to create the Esther and Abraham Rose Memorial Windows.

Today we have a small gathering to celebrate the installment of Fred’s gift to this Congregation, and on behalf of Fred and our family, I thank all of you who have been of help in achieving its completion.

I would like to say a few words about the lives of Esther and Abraham Rose.

Abraham Rose married Esther Farber in Leipzig in 1914. He had found his first job at age 17 at the local branch of the Mercedes Shoe Company and in 8 years had worked his way up to become the manager. Newly married and enterprising of spirit, he decided to open his own business and did in the small of town of Boma, 30 km south of Leipzig, where he opened his own shoe store in the spring of that same year.

A few weeks after the opening date, WWI broke out and he was called up to serve in the army, which in those days did not discriminate on racial grounds, and in fact included field rabbis to look after the spiritual needs of German soldiers of Jewish faith. He was wounded towards the end of the war but recovered, and with the war over returned to Boma, where Esther meanwhile had borne him 2 daughters, Herta and Alice, over a period of 6 years.

He opened the shoe store which he renamed Kaufhas Britannia, and he added men’s and boy’s wear. The immediate post years were very hard as Germany struggled to get economically on its feet as the so-called Weimar Republic. Eventually the smalls store allowed our father to move his family – which meanwhile had increased by a son Siegfried and two further daughters, Gene and Vera – to Leipzig so his now 5 children would have a chance to get a better education, and he commuted daily from there to his store. With his larger home and his children in good schools, prospects for a normal, happy family life looked good. Then in 1933 Adolph Hitler was voted chancellor, and his National Socialist or Nazi Party, took power, and declared white Aryan supremacy and racial discrimination into law. Jews were first declared second-class citizens, and then were persecuted with increasing severity in all sectors of existence.

Jewish businesses were slowly destroyed by government ordered boycott and later by defacement of store windows, vandalism and harassment of the owners and operators. With a family of 7 to feed, clothe and educate Abraham Rose’s existence was being strangled, as were other Jewish businesses in Hitler’s Germany. With no relatives abroad the prospects of emigration of a large family were bleak.

Then in November 1938, the action to become known as Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), his store was torched by Nazi storm troopers and totally burnt out. He and his son were arrested and taken to separate concentration camps, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, where at that time the later camp commandant of Auschwitz was second in command.

Father and son had to sign that they had set fire to the store themselves, so that the complete cost of rebuilding the burnt out store for subsequent forced sale could be confiscated out of the remaining assets of the family. The family home in Leipzig was also forcibly sold, and also at a price well below the real value. What was left over was impounded toward the collective fine the Nazi regime imposed on all the Jews of Germany.

Meanwhile, in the spring of 1939, a group of Quakers in England, who had become aware of the plight of the Jews in Germany, collected enough money to guarantee the immigration of what they considered to be the most urgent cases. They sent an emissary to Germany to negotiate with the Commandants of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps which resulted in the release of 14 of the youngest inmates, which included the then 17 year old son Siegfried, who was thus able to escape to England where he was able to arrange for the rescue of his 4 sisters.

Unfortunately, the outbreak of WWII on September 3rd, 1939, prevented the rescue of their parents Abraham and Esther Rose who by then were forced to live in the cramped quarters of a so-called Judenhaus (Jews House), reserved in various inconvenient locations for second class citizens, with reduced food ration and increasing deprivations, culminating in their deportation in September 1942, to Ghetto Theresienstadt in the then occupied Czechoslovakia, a German Protectorate.

Esther Rose died there in February 1943 of hunger and typhus. Three months later Abraham Rose was deported from Ghetto Theresienstadt to the Extermination Camp Auschwitz with a trainload of older Jews no longer fit for forced labor and he was killed in the gas chamber on arrival.

The family home in Leipzig, which according to city hall records was bought in 1929 for 111,500 Reichsmarks, was sold in 1939 for only 75,000 Reichsmarks.

Our parents, Abraham and Esther Rose, gave us the strength, both mental and physical, to withstand the trials and tribulations we grew up with in Leipzig, Germany. I hope that I can pass some of these attributes on to my children, David and Suzy, and Alysha, Laura Emily and Brendan.

My sisters, Fred and I, are still in regular communication with each other, Herta in Bergen, Norway, Alisa and Gene in Jerusalem, and Fred and I here in Toronto. They or other members of their families hope to come see this memorial glass window on a future occasion.

This beautiful stained-glass window commemorates the lives of our parents, Abraham and Esther.

Click HERE to view a virtual tour of the stained-glass windows from the original Habonim building now located in the Esther Ghan Firestone Celebration Hall in the New Habonim building.