avatar SALLY ALBANz”l

KAZAKHSTAN

Photography by David Amoils

Sally was born in Tarnow, Poland on March 12, 1921 and passed away in 2020.

When the war was imminent, Sally, her father and brother went to Russia and were planning to return to Poland to get her mother and two sisters. However, the war broke out and they could not get back. They were put into a concentration camp in the Ural Mountains in Russia, as they had no papers. They were never reunited. Sally married her boyfriend Sam while she was in Russia. She also had her first child and only son, Henry, while she was in the camp.

They survived the war because of her husband’s strength and care and went back to Poland to look for relatives afterwards. They were only able to find one. At the time, The Haganah were there to help those who wanted to go to Israel, but Sally and her husband wanted to go to America.

They walked a long way with an eight-month-old baby and wound up in Germany, where they waited two years to get to Canada. They saw an ad for tailors in Canada and decided to go.

They came on a ship called the General Black. Sally was very seasick and then found out she was pregnant with her first daughter, Evie. When they arrived, they rented rooms in a house for immigrants and found work, her husband as a tailor and Sally doing piecework at home. They bought a house and rented out rooms. Then, she got a job as a seamstress on Eglinton at a store called Bergers and went on to have one more daughter, Gloria. She is most proud of her children, all of whom are university educated. She is so happy to have a family, as she lost so many of them in the war.

Sally liked Baycrest and kept herself very busy here. She took part in initiatives including Baycrest’s centennial calendar and interview projects, led by Bonnie Lawrence Shear.