John Colomby was born January 10, 1936 in Breslau, Germany.  John was too young to remember any of the atrocities that befell his family before the war, but his older sister did remember them, as did his parents, and the story John tells here is built from their memories.  The family had been living a comfortable life in Breslau, with John’s father running a successful furrier business.  Nazi restrictions began to intrude on that as the 30s wore on, and with Kristallnacht in 1938 John’s father and grandfather were arrested and taken to Buchenwald.  John’s mother very courageously went to the Nazi headquarters in Breslau and demanded their release.  An officer relented and agreed to this, though it would take a month or more before they were released; the same officer also told John’s mother that they should leave Germany, and she began to make plans, settling upon the city of Shanghai as a destination.  John’s father did not want to go, but there were no other possibilities, so they purchased tickets and made the long ocean voyage.  Once in Shanghai, a Jewish Committee helped to settle them, and the family ended up in the slums of Hongkew, a sprawling neighbourhood they shared with impoverished Chinese, all the while under Japanese occupation.  John and his sister attended school, and did all the normal things that children would do, albeit in a very different and new environment.  They had to stay there for a time after the war as they were stateless; John recalls an uncle in New York did his best to get them out, and he eventually suggested that they try Canada instead.  They did that, and after a long arduous trip and a considerable period of time they arrived in Toronto in a snowstorm in January 1948.  They lived with family at first, gradually adapting to their new lives and circumstances.  John fit into his new neighbourhood well, and his cousins made the transition much easier; he began to attend school and was bar mitzvahed, and he was near the top of his class at Vaughn Road Collegiate.  He went on to a successful career in accounting, marrying and raising his own family.  John Colomby visited Crestwood in March 2025, where he shared history with Mr. Masters’ Grade 10 history class.