At U of T's annual Soldiers' Tower ceremony, one man shares his
story about living, working, and surviving in Nazi Germany. On a
grey, gloomy day last Friday, the bells in U of T’s Soldiers’
Tower rang out across downtown city blocks. Veterans and
citizens of all ages gathered before the ornate stone and
stained glass for the annual Remembrance Day ceremony. Not a
single jacket or lapel was without a poppy as speakers gave
speeches, organizations placed wreaths, and the university choir
sang hymns. Among the crowd, 84-year-old Gary Knopf stood with a
green beret on his head and medals on his chest. As a teenager
in Nazi Germany, being in school allowed Knopf to avoid forced
labour. He survived bombing raids and the Battle of Berlin, the
final battle that ended the war in Europe in May 1945. Knopf’s
father was Jewish, so when Nazis began rounding up Jewish people
and shipping them off to concentration camps, he left the family
and fled to Shanghai with some 100,000 other refugees—the only
place that would take