Schafer, Anna
Schafer, Anna
April 8, 1939 - May 30, 2024Anna was born April 8, 1939 in Vienna, Austria to Ernst Schafer, an Austrian Jewish writer and musician, and Susanne Arnold, a bohemian and rebellious young woman from Chemnitz in Germany.
The young family moved often : daughter Maria was born in Prague in 1935, son Joseph in Brussels in 1937. That same year Susanne contracted polio, leaving her legs crippled for the rest of her life. Anna and Regine were born in Vienna in 1939 and 1940.
When Ernst was arrested and subsequently deported to KZ Mauthausen in 1941, Susanne was left to care for the four young children alone. According to the laws of the time, it was not safe for any of them - there was a very good chance they would eventually be deported. And so Susanne gave Joseph and Maria into the care of Catholic families in Vienna. They were subsequently adopted and raised as Catholics. Anna didn’t see them again for decades.
Susanne's older sister Gretel offered to take in Regine and Anna. So the two tiny girls were sent to live out the war with their Tante (aunt) in the small town of Andorf, in the German countryside. The remainder of the war was possibly less awful for the two younger children than it might have been had they stayed in the city. But it was frightening. War planes flew constantly overhead, bombs dropped nearby, and soldiers and refugees came through the area regularly.
Anna's father Ernst was killed at the Mauthausen concentration camp in September 1942. She was not told about her Jewish heritage until she was nearly grown. Anna is considered a 2nd generation (2G) Holocaust Survivor. She suffered from PTSD as a result of living her earliest years in a war zone, and became increasingly sensitive to loud noises as she aged.
Her mother Susanne joined her remaining family in Andorf near the end of the war, which Anna considered one of the biggest traumas of her life. Tante Gretel had been a stable, trustworthy and calm mother figure. Susanne was a basket case - understandably so, considering what she'd gone through. When Susanne returned, Anna was frightened of her. Gretel stepped back from her close relationship with her nieces, and as a result Anna felt rejected by her beloved Tante, the only real mother figure she'd ever known.
Because the war had closed all the schools, Anna and Regine did not begin their education until 1945. After the local elementary school, the sisters attended high school in nearby Quakenbruck. Gretel then suggested that Anna take the one-year teacher training, the Pedagogical Seminar - teachers were badly needed after the war. Anna obeyed her aunt, but after that year she asked (she had the NERVE to ask, as she put it) for the money to attend University in Muenster, and Tante agreed.
The third year of her four year programme took place at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she studied French. Also in Paris she met an American boy, a medical student named Robert. They kept up a correspondence after she returned to Muenster for the final year of her BA.
Having fallen in love, but with no solid plans to meet, Anna wanted to move to North America with hopes of reconciling with Robert once she arrived. Her mother Susanne had a penpal relationship with a woman in Ontario - and she very much wanted her daughters to have the opportunity to leave Germany, so she fostered this connection carefully.
The family agreed to take in Anna when she arrived. She found a job in a jam factory, where she worked for a year after her arrival. Robert was nowhere to be found, but she put down roots anyway. In 1965 she applied and was accepted to the German Department at the University of Toronto, where she could teach while she worked on her Masters Degree in German literature.
And this was where she met her husband Cornelius. He'd been hired to teach a short-lived course in Dutch in the same department, and their offices were next to each other. Their daughter Joan was born the following year, and the couple separated three years after that.
By this point Anna had finished her Masters and part of her Doctorate. She was living on Toronto island with her daughter in a tiny cottage. Faced with raising a child single-handed, she elected to switch over to the Montessori teacher training program, and then moved to Hamilton so she could take a job at a private school. In 1980 she met Alex, a Hungarian refugee. They stayed together for the next twenty-five years.
Anna retired from teaching at Hillfield relatively young - I think she was in her mid 50s. She continued taking courses at random at McMaster University and after a few years was surprised to learn she’d earned yet another degree. She moved to Guelph in 1995 and started working and volunteering part time teaching ESL, Waldorf, and Montessori. She also began connecting with the Synagogue in Guelph - and also in Hamilton when she returned to the area in 2006, when her only grandchild Fritha was born. For many years she was a member of the Temple Anshe Sholom community. She became a peace activist, and joined the Grandmothers of Steel, and The Hamilton Interfaith Peace Group. She also volunteered regularly for the Hamilton Out of the Cold Program. She loved the opera, and the symphony, and any sort of dance - particularly performances by the Tottering Biped Theatre. She hosted community Shabbat dinners at her house every Friday night for many years. The old wooden table she inherited from Gretel and Susanne became a gathering place on Friday nights for Shabbat dinners, for an enormous motley cast of characters. She presided over that table for many years with gusto, and welcomed everyone with love.
In November 2020 when she was 81 years old, Anna was hit by a car while shopping for gifts in downtown Dundas. The accident broke her spine in three places, damaged her knee, and left her with a concussion from which she never truly recovered. Her life-long depression intensified, and her quality of life rapidly plummeted. With the onset of Covid, her raucous and popular Shabbat dinners had already become a thing of the past. Although she still celebrated Shabbat at her table every week, she never had another one with dozens of people, like those in her heyday. Last year she passed along the duty of the blessings and candles to her daughter, who took Anna’s place at the head of the table - on that ridiculously uncomfortable stool Anna loved so much.
She was cared for by PSWs, and began using a walker. Her life became defined by constant medical appointments and chronic pain. She fell more often. Her steps, once so fast and sure, became slow and timid and careful. She spoke less, remembered less, but remained a magnificent listener. A small steady crew of friends continued to bring meals and stories and love, checking in regularly. She declared to all who would listen that she was now ready to die.
Anna was admitted to St Joseph’s hospital on Monday May 20th, 2024 with a kidney stone. She never woke up from the operation, and moved to a palliative care room the following Monday. The level of care provided by the doctors and nurses throughout these final weeks was incomparable - compassionate and gentle and patient, from beginning to end.
She leaves behind her sister Regine (Emil) in Israel, nieces Jennifer (California) and Mirjam (Switzerland), nephews Brent (California) and Wolfgang (Austria), daughter Joan and grandchild Fritha (Dundas). Her beloved brother Joseph (Caja) passed in California only a few weeks before Anna did, and her sister Maria (Walter) in Vienna a few years before that. She also leaves an enormous group of dear friends, many of whom came to sit with her in the months, weeks and days before she passed. Theresa, both Annes, Mark, Trevor, Mary, Marnie, Jacquie, Nancy and Terry - these friendships were treasured by Anna, beyond any imagining.
Anna experienced two recurring dreams over the last few months of her life - one, in which she was seated beside her beloved Tante Gretel in front of a warm fire, completely at peace. The other, in which she was dispersing easily and gratefully into an endless and multi-coloured cosmos.
As per Anna’s wishes, there was no service. A celebration of life will take place June 23rd 2024 at 4pm at Temple Anshe Sholom in Hamilton. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to The Stephen Lewis Foundation or the Hamilton Out of the Cold Program.
