Zenia was one of nine children of Baruch and Freidl Zagdanski - three of whom survived the Holocaust. The Zagdanskis were a tight-knit family who revelled in Jewish learning and study. As a child, Zenia demonstrated entrepreneurial and communication skills beyond her years.
Her formal Jewish and Polish education was cut short by the emergence of the Nazi party. The Zagdanskis were allowed to remain in their home, although it was boarded up to indicate the division between the Jewish and non-Jewish areas of town.
In 1943, Zenia and her sister Bella were put on a transport train to Auschwitz. Although Auschwitz was a place of unspeakable horrors, Bergen-Belsen was even worse. When they were finally liberated, Zenia and Bella were extremely thin and suffering from typhus.
Anxious to leave Germany, they were overjoyed when a cousin in Toronto contacted them and sponsored their passage in 1948. Soon after her arrival Zenia met Holocaust survivor Percy Zaifman, and they were married in 1951. They had four children, Helen, Doreen, Bernie and Cecile.
Percy and Zenia were opposites in many ways. Percy was a man of few words while Zenia was talkative and outgoing. At parties, she loved to dance while he preferred to stay on the sidelines. Their business styles were also different. When they bought a grocery store in London, Ont., Zenia was not keen on giving people credit while Percy let people buy now and pay later.
In 1960, Percy and Zenia entered the world of real estate and started what became the Z Group, leveraging one property after another to create a leading development company in Southwestern Ontario. In 1987, Percy died after a long and difficult respiratory illness. Zenia had helped keep him alive for more than 10 years, long after doctors had given up hope.
Zenia encouraged people to think big. As a businesswoman and a mother she was a tireless worker who would burn the candle at both ends. She was a late-night shopper, going for groceries at all hours of the night when the whim struck her.
Zenia nurtured her business like her children, always taking time to actively listen to people. She never retired and had an office at Z Group right up until her death. In her later years, CNN was her preferred connection to the world. Whenever I called, though, she would turn down the television to listen to my trials and triumphs. "We have to care for each other," she'd say. "There aren't that many of us left." Being a child of survivors and her niece, I knew what she meant.
Deborah Bojman is Zenia's niece.