The Endless Wait

David Bennett is the national director of the Department of Workplace Health, Safety and Environment at the Canadian Labour Congress in Ottawa.

Joseph Peretz of Antwerp was a Belgian Jew of Latvian origin. Following
the outbreak of World War II, he served in the Belgian army and survived
the German invasion. Early in the occupation, he was recruited into the
German forced-labor program and sent to a work camp in the Ardennes.
Although conditions were grim, the workers were paid, and travel outside
the camp was permitted. On one such foray, Peretz secured for himself an
alternative identity; he later escaped from a transport bound for
Auschwitz. For the remainder of the war, he worked for the Wehrmacht,
ostensibly repairing airfields (his work crew managed to sabotage its
own repair work without detection). After the liberation of Antwerp,
Peretz married and survived another V-rocket assault on the city.

Peretz survived the Holocaust and the murderous Nazi occupation forces
through a combination of luck, courage, and ingenuity. It’s
unfortunate that this inspiring memoir was not accompanied by any
discussion of how this book came to be written or of how Peretz’s
outlook on life changed following his immigration to Canada.