Israel Isaac (Srul) Kopyto
Husband, father, zaida, alte zaida, tailor, writer, survivor. Born June 23, 1915, in Seroczyn, Poland. Died June 20, 2011, in Toronto of an infection, aged 95.
No one knows exactly what made Israel Kopyto and his wife, Frieda, escape Poland for Russia against the advice of their families only three months before the German invasion in 1939. But it was a decision that saved their lives and left an indelible imprint on Israel's consciousness.
From his days of rebellion as a secular Jewish activist and militant socialist in prewar Warsaw to supervising the production of uniforms for Red Army soldiers as a master tailor in Soviet Russia during the Second World War, Israel lived through the greatest turbulence that the last century had to offer.
One of five children of Herschel, a shoemaker, and his wife Mindel, Israel attended a local Cheder (Jewish religious school). At 13, he was sent to Warsaw to learn the tailoring trade.
His entire family was killed during the war. Although he became a severe critic of the anti-Semitic campaigns of Joseph Stalin in the 1940s and 1950s, Israel never tired of telling everybody within earshot that the Red Army had saved his life.
With the war over, he and Frieda spent four years in a displaced persons camp near Ulm, Germany, and five years in Tel Aviv. Still restless, Israel settled with Frieda and their two young children, Yakov (Jack) and Herschel (Harry), in Toronto, where he went to work in the Spadina Avenue garment industry the day after arriving in the city.
Israel's interest in politics and the world never wavered. He and Frieda were often seen at demonstrations. Although eventually embracing the State of Israel, not always uncritically, as a source of security for the Jewish people, he continued to aspire for a better world for all.
Israel had a sharp mind and an equally sharp tongue. A self-educated intellectual with no more than a few years of grade school, he ended up taking university classes at York University in 1979 and 1980, and writing op-ed articles for The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and other papers. He spoke five languages and wrote in four. His interest in and knowledge of Yiddish culture, literature, poetry, politics and history knew no bounds.
The last decades of his life provided him the security that his earlier years lacked. After Frieda's death from cancer in 1991 marked the end of a caring and collaborative relationship, he experienced more than a decade of joy in his friendship with Paula Mintz.
A lively spirit like Israel's cannot long withstand the infirmity that comes with old age. With his body becoming a prison in the last two years of his life as Alzheimer's symptoms became more dominant, his will to live shrivelled. He died surrounded by his two sons and their families in Toronto, the city where he had finally found stability and peace.
By Harry (Herschel) Kopyto, Israel's son.