Abbou, Miriam

Miriam Abbou was born August 27, 1945 in Poland, though she went with her mother to Germany when she was about a year old. Her parents survived the Shoah in Poland, as they both had forged “Aryan” papers.  Miriam’s mother was arrested and detained at one point and sent to the infamous Plaszow concentration camp; she was fortunate to survive her time there before going on to be a slave labourer on a farm in western Germany.  Miriam’s father survived with two sets of identification papers as he had to be careful of not just the Germans but also their Ukrainian collaborators.  When the war was over they made their way to a Displaced Persons camp in Germany.  That is where Miriam’s earliest memories are from.  Miriam is a different kind of Holocaust survivor; though born after the war, her mother was pregnant when the war ended in May 1945, and under international legal definitions that makes Miriam a survivor under Article 2 of the fund administered by the Claims Conference.  Miriam had always considered herself Second Generation, a child of survivors, but her research has led to this different truth.  She and her parents left Stuttgart in 1949, on their way to Pier 21 in Halifax.  From there they made it to Toronto, settling in the Bloor-Ossington neighbourhood at first.  Miriam began to go to school, quickly picking up English.  She grew up in 1950s-60s Toronto, sharing in Canada’s postwar “Golden Age”.  Later Miriam went to Israel, where she reconnected with long lost family and met her husband; they returned to Toronto, where they raised their own family.  Over time, Miriam’s interest in the Shoah – and in her own family history – grew, and she did extensive research to trace their wartime history.  That has also led her to become an educator, something Crestwood students experienced when they interviewed her at Baycrest in December 2025.