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IJPSP 4(2):268-270 (2009) • DOI: 10.1080/15551020902738292

Clues for the Children: An Old Camp Story Takes on a New Meaning

Author: Max Sucharov M.D.

Introduction

My recent curiosity with traumatic realms of no meaning that are trapped in a wordless vacuum have a deep personal grounding in my attempt to understand the silent but powerful impact of the Holocaust on myself and my contemporaries, given my birth in 1945 within a tightly knit Winnipeg Jewish Community in the Canadian Midwest. In that context, an important insight emerged unexpectedly in the recounting of a much-told childhood story. One more retelling was called for when I was approached by a fellow native Winnipegger who was writing a history of the Winnipeg Jewish Community. He specifically was asking me about hoaxes at the local Jewish summer camp. Here is what I wrote him:

The most convincing and frightening hoax took place in 1958. It began with the phone ringing during breakfast in the Chadar Ochel [Dining Hall]. Avraham Paritzky, the camp director, picked it up and then sat down in stunned contemplation. During the course of the day staff started spreading a ‘rumor’ that due to an international crisis in Israel, Paritzky (an Israeli) was being mobilized, and that Canada might be involved and that the military base in nearby Gimli might
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want to make use of the camp site and that we all were to be evacuated. The staff was quite cunning in spreading the rumor. They would take one of the campers aside as if they were sharing a secret to be kept in confidence. So everyone thought they knew something others did not know. As the day wore on, this produced a scary atmosphere of impending doom. This went on till evening when we were told to gather in the Chadar Ochel where we would be loaded onto buses for the evacuation. We were told to bring our belongings.
We entered a puzzling dark Chadar Ochel. We wondered what the Hell was going on. Suddenly the lights went on—all was revealed to be a hoax and we were served ice cream.
As I am recounting this narrative I am thrown back into how scary all this was for us children. And I have just, in the recounti

IJPSP 4(2):268-270 (2009) • DOI: 10.1080/15551020902738292

Clues for the Children: An Old Camp Story Takes on a New Meaning

Author: Max Sucharov M.D.

Introduction

The most convincing and frightening hoax took place in 1958. It began with the phone ringing during breakfast in the Chadar Ochel [Dining Hall]. Avraham Paritzky, the camp director, picked it up and then sat down in stunned contemplation. During the course of the day staff started spreading a ‘rumor’ that due to an international crisis in Israel, Paritzky (an Israeli) was being mobilized, and that Canada might be involved and that the military base in nearby Gimli might
Page 268
want to make use of the camp site and that we all were to be evacuated. The staff was quite cunning in spreading the rumor. They would take one of the campers aside as if they were sharing a secret to be kept in confidence. So everyone thought they knew something others did not know. As the day wore on, this produced a scary atmosphere of impending doom. This went on till evening when we were told to gather in the Chadar Ochel where we would be loaded onto buses for the evacuation. We were told to bring our belongings.
We entered a puzzling dark Chadar Ochel. We wondered what the Hell was going on. Suddenly the lights went on—all was revealed to be a hoax and we were served ice cream.
As I am recounting this narrative I am thrown back into how scary all this was for us children. And I have just, in the recounti

Introduction

Introduction

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