Tommy Dick (1925–1999)

Tommy Dick was born in Budapest, Hungary, to a family that had converted from Judaism to Christianity. In March 1944, when the Nazis invaded his homeland in World War II, he was a teenager who discovered that he was still considered a Jew and targeted for death. He was sent to forced labor camps and sentenced to death for trying to escape. Through a combination of luck, his own wit and determination, and the courageous acts of others, he managed to survive to the end of the war. He then traveled across the Hungarian-Austrian border to get to the American zone. He spent two years in Linz, working for the International Refugee Organization, as his fluency in English, German, and Hungarian was of great assistance in the displaced persons camps. In 1948, he emigrated to Canada and worked as a laborer on a hydroelectric dam in Stewartville, near Ottawa, after which he lived in Montreal for three years. He then settled in Calgary, where he started his own business manufacturing aluminum windows. In 1954 in Vancouver, he married Lilian Jacklin, with whom he had two daughters. At age 36, he enrolled in law school and went on to practice law for 30 years. His memoir Getting Out Alive (French translation, Objectif: survivre) was published posthumously in 2007 as part of the Azrieli Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs.