A tribute to Bronia Cyngiser, of blessed memory

by Maxine Fischbein

(AJNews) – When Bronia (née Karafiol) Cyngiser passed away on Friday, July 26, the Calgary Jewish community lost one of its most cherished icons. Her family and friends walked reluctantly through the gates of the Beth Tzedec Memorial Park as Bronia, who touched the hearts of countless individuals in Calgary and well beyond, was laid to rest.

If Bronia could have spoken to us at that moment, she would have told us to feel grateful as we gathered at the cemetery. I will explain this by and by.

The phrase “end of an era” was uttered by quite a few people on that sad day. That term is used so liberally that it has been rendered nearly meaningless, but in this case, it was spot on.

It is hard to imagine that we will soon live in a world without living Holocaust survivors. It is especially painful to think of our shtetl without Bronia and her husband—truly her beshert—Sidney (Sucher) Cyngiser, who predeceased her just one year earlier when he passed away, on June 27, 2023 at the age of 99.

Born in 1932 in Radom, Poland, Bronia was, as her daughter Francie highlighted in her loving eulogy, robbed of her childhood when the Nazis invaded Poland. The Karafiol home became part of the Radom Ghetto, where Bronia’s family was forced to share one room with eight other people. During one Nazi roundup, Bronia’s uncle hid her in a shed together with her mother and sister, padlocking the door, which faced the street beyond the ghetto. They nearly froze to death before he was able to safely retrieve them.

Bronia survived forced labour in a munitions factory at the Starachowice concentration camp until she was sent by cattle car to Auschwitz where she cried as the number A 141152 was painfully tattooed on her forearm.

Selected for work, she was later forced on a death march to Bergen-Belsen where she witnessed, in rapid succession, the deaths of her mother and her sister, less than two weeks before the camp was liberated.

It was a year until Bronia discovered that her father was alive. By then she was recovering from tuberculosis at a hospital in Vaihingen-Enz, Germany.

One can scarcely bear the thought that a woman as beautiful as Bronia experienced some of the worst indignities and cruelties humankind (using the term loosely, of course) could inflict on anyone, especially an innocent little girl.

One of Bronia’s most amazing qualities was her fierce resolve to live a life that radiated light rather than darkness, love rather hate. The Nazis, having murdered nearly everyone she loved, were not going to steal her soul too.

The hospital at Vaihingen-Enz became a place not only of healing but of love when Bronia met Sucher Cyngiser who was also convalescing there. Sid, as he came to be known, was also from Radom, though they hadn’t known each other there.

Their romance blossomed from hospital through Displaced Persons camps until Sid proposed to Bronia in Stuttgart in 1949.

There was still a journey to go.

Sid immigrated to Canada, settling in Calgary in 1949, with the help of his paternal great-aunt, Bella Singer. Bronia later immigrated with her father to the United States where they lived and worked in New Jersey. During a visit to Calgary, Bronia and Sid were married at the Singer home on February 18, 1951. They honeymooned in Banff.

Bronia and Sid did not speak much, at first, about their experiences during the Holocaust. Their community was, perhaps, not ready to listen.

“People were sorry, and they felt for you, but it was hard for them to understand. When you started to tell the stories people just shook their heads — she lived through the war, maybe there’s something wrong [with her],” Bronia later recalled.

“I have a tattoo and people would ask me what this was. After a while, I would say, ‘Well, I have a bad memory; it’s my phone number.’ And that was the end of it.”

Sid and Bronia rebuilt their lives, working hard and raising up their children Harvey and Francie.

“Our Children are our greatest accomplishment,” Bronia often remarked. She and Sid took much pride in the fact that Harvey and Francie pursued careers in the caring professions, Harvey as a pharmacist and Francie as a physician.

The births of their children and, in the fullness of time, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren were stunning affirmations of life, each simcha a victory because Bronia and Sid knew that for them life never held any guarantees.

Every moment was a blessing, their gratitude in all ways evident.

Bronia, in particular had a way of bringing this quality out in others. Those who facilitated for her when she shared her testimony at the annual Holocaust Education Symposium could sometimes literally see the lights go on for high school students in her sphere.

It was challenging to get kids back to their buses because they lined up to speak with her, to hug her, to promise her they would bear witness…after going home and hugging their parents.

On one occasion, a teenaged girl arrived at Symposium with a broken heart and thoughts of suicide, having experienced a tough home life and a nasty breakup with her boyfriend. After Bronia’s presentation, that girl told her she knew she was going to be okay. If Bronia could survive the camps and the loss of nearly everyone near and dear to her, that young lady knew she could find the inner strength to cope with her own challenges.

Bronia may truly have saved a life that day—a whole world if you measure the mitzvah in Talmudic terms.

Much has been written in the pages of this newspaper, its predecessor publications, and in the general media too, about the impact Bronia and Sid Cyngiser made within the Jewish community and well beyond it.

Though they started their new lives in Canada with very little, they worked hard, prospered and shared generously, helping to build the Jewish community and contributing to society at large. There are few Jewish organizations that haven’t benefited from their generosity and active participation.

Like other Holocaust survivors, Bronia and Sid were horrified when it came to light in the mid-1980s that Eckville, Alberta High School teacher Jim Keegstra was poisoning his students’ minds with Jew hate and Holocaust denial. Bronia and Sid were among the first survivors to speak at the annual Holocaust Symposium, addressing thousands of kids and their teachers through the years.

In 1984, Bronia and Sid established a Second Generation Fund that continues to support Holocaust education and remembrance in Calgary. They endowed scholarships, especially in support of Holocaust education and human rights, and funded the establishment of a Holocaust Education Collection at the Mount Royal University Library. In 2003, Bronia and Sid paid tribute to their son Harvey’s labour of love by establishing the Cyngiser Family Jewish Film Festival Fund, an endowment that will support the annual festival—founded and directed by Harvey— in perpetuity.

Fittingly, Bronia and Sid were honoured many times through the years.  In 2005 they were invited to the United Nations as part of the Canadian government’s delegation to an unprecedented special session of the UN General Assembly commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps.

Three months later, Bronia and Sid were invited by the local government in Vaihingen-Enz, Germany to speak at a memorial service also marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation. One can scarcely imagine their emotions as they returned to the site of Sid’s cruel oppression as a forced labourer, which, ironically, was the same place their romance blossomed.

Among other tributes, Bronia and Sid were feted as honourees at the 2010 JNF Negev Dinner in Calgary. In 2013 they were honoured by Immigrant Services Calgary with the Immigrant of Distinction Lifetime Achievement Award.

A loving couple, one could scarcely imagine one of them without the other. Sid often garnered more attention because he was the more front-facing of the two of them, but Bronia was a force. They strengthened one another. Sadly, though, Sid’s passing proved a knock-out blow to his beloved bride of 72 years.

During their particularly moving eulogies at Bronia’s funeral, her daughter Francie and granddaughter Jenna referred lovingly to the “Bubbyisms” she regularly shared with them.

Many reading these words no doubt also carry with them some bit of practical advice or inspiration that Bronia sprinkled liberally and with lasting effect.

One that I hold close to my heart made it just a little easier to enter the cemetery on the day Bronia was laid to rest.

Twenty five years ago, my maternal grandmother passed away.  The first condolence call I received was from Bronia.

“You’re lucky,” were the first words she said.

“Ok,” I thought, “This is going to be weird.”

But it wasn’t. What followed was a profound reframing that will always light the path for me during times of loss and grief.

“You were able to bury your grandmother,” Bronia told me. “You were surrounded by a community. You have a place where you can cry for her and remember her. We did not have that.”

It felt like Bronia was standing beside me two decades later when we buried my father. On the most difficult day of my life, I was able to feel grace and gratitude as we showed him the respect and dignity that Jews have too often been denied throughout history

My father passed away at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. The isolation caused by this health emergency was challenging for everyone, but particularly devastating for Holocaust survivors like Bronia and Sid.

As Francie said in her eulogy, COVID robbed them of their final years just as the Holocaust had stolen their youth.

Friends and community members cried with the Cyngiser family as they laid their diminutive yet larger- than-life mother, grandmother and great-grandmother to her eternal rest.

During the Shoah, just two weeks before she was liberated, Bronia Karafiol sat crying beside the pile of bodies onto which her mother had been heaved, until a kindly friend of the family gently took Bronia’s hand and led her away.

Some eight decades later, many loving hands carried Bronia’s casket to a beautiful, Jewish resting place where she was buried with the time-honoured rites and dignity she deserved. She was surrounded by family and friends who will forever love her and a community that will always remain grateful for all she did to make this still-troubled world a better place.

Maxine Fischbein is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter.