Chana Szpilman Wallace survived two concentration camps

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Chana Szpilman Wallace has seen humanity at its very worst, suffered harrowing losses, been in places where a brutal death was virtually guaranteed.

But she refused to give up on life. Even in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, Wallace's faith was unbroken.

Family and friends say her optimism and strength of spirit is the reason she's now a century old.

"I always was thinking when I was at the camps that I had to outlive the Nazis. And I did it, thanks to God," said the North York woman, surrounded Sunday by descendents celebrating her 100th birthday.

A Polish Jew who lost nearly everyone she knew during the Second World War but new built a new life in Canada, Wallace said she never thought she'd live to be 100.

"Sometimes I'm pinching myself because I'm still alive, it's unbelievable."

Born into a musical family in which everyone played an instrument, Wallace is a cousin of Waldyslaw Szpilman, whose own story of survival during the Holocaust was told in a book and movie called The Pianist.

"Our house was a very happy house full of music and singing. Every day was good," she recalled.

Married at 18, Wallace was a mother by 20 and at 22 she had another son who died soon after birth. After the 1940 Nazi takeover of Poland, she survived years in a labour camp where prisoners were shot at random.

In September 1944, she was transported to Auschwitz, spared the gas chamber but trapped in something like a hell on Earth.

"Every morning I would wake up and another friend next to me would be dead," Wallace would later tell her family.

"We were starving and we were freezing. The only reason I survived is because I had dreams every night that my mother brought me food."

Wallace was alive in Bergen-Belsen when Canadian soldiers liberated it in April 1945, but her parents and all but one of her seven siblings were dead. She learned her son Liebela survived the camps only to be shot by Polish soldiers. She was reunited with husband Jankiel Lustig, who soon died in his sleep.

Alone in Germany in 1948, Wallace decided to come to Canada. She arrived by ship, sponsored by a brother-in-law and speaking no English. In 1950, she married David Wallace and the couple ran two businesses in North York, a newsstand and then a women's clothing store on Yonge Street north of Lawrence called the Lillibeth Shop.

After her second husband died in 1963, Wallace devoted herself to her remaining brother Leo Spellman and his family, which she adopted as her own.

Spellman, now 94, praised Wallace as a "second mother" whose job in Poland was taking care of him, the youngest child, while the rest of the family worked. "She raised me good," he said.

Wallace became "the glue that holds our family together" and "her effortless faith in God" and resilience helped heal her and inspire others, said Helene Shifman, her niece.

"Happiness is something she chooses," Shifman said. "It is a decision she makes every day."

The world has changed, but Wallace hasn't: she's still an optimist, said Rabbi Joseph Kelman of Beth Emeth. "Maybe Chana doesn't have a teaching degree, but she has taught her family a great deal."

Earlier in the evening celebration at a Vaughan dining hall, Wallace danced a traditional Jewish Hora, her hands clasped to her relations, arms raising and lowering as she moved around the circle. A chair was there for her comfort, but Wallace continued dancing with a little girl, a great-great grandniece.

"I'm still cooking, I'm still shopping, I'm still going for a walk every single day," she said, adding her memory's still pretty good. "I still know what I'm talking about; that's the most important thing."

When her famous cousin Szpilman was in Toronto for a concert some years ago, Wallace cooked dinner and he said he never ate such good food. "He kissed me and hugged me that I did it," she remembered. "I think I made my chicken soup and noodles."

In 1997, Wallace shared her story for the Survivors of the Showa documentary, a Stephen Spielberg project videotaping Holocaust survivor testimony, because she thought it was important people never forget what happened.

"I have a lot of bad dreams at night but (in the morning) I put them aside," she said. "I have a family and I have to live for them."