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When asked to speak, Jose Levkovich never says no and never asks for anything in return.
Jose Levkovich, a Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, one-time international diamond dealer, father of a famous banker and Montreal resident, is now living in Jerusalem.
Les Glassman took this photo.
Jose Levkovich sits at his dining room table in Jerusalem. He wore a blue button-down shirt and black pants that he picked out for an earlier speaking engagement at a school.
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The conversation turns to his son, Tuvia, better known around Wall Street as Tuvia Levkovich, the Citigroup chief equity strategist who was a revered figure among the stock market crowd, and a regular guest on CNBC, CNN and other money talk shows.
His father said that he was a brilliant mind.
His son was hit by a car in the middle of the night. He died from his injuries a month later and is buried in a cemetery on Jerusalem's outskirts.
In 2010 there was an interview with Tobias Levkovich.
The photo was taken by Jonathan Fickies.
His father is there. The 95-year-old was once a diamond dealer, a housing developer and a friend of Israeli politicians.
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Levkovich likes to tell the story of a famous would-be client and a gem-dealing Argentinian playboy named Mario. Mrs. Picasso got away.
Levkovich was a good talker and quick study. He started a diamond business from a table in a restaurant before moving his family to Montreal. Customers would sit and negotiate. The money was well spent. Business grew.
Mario, a diamond merchant from Buenos Aires, has a reputation for wooing the ladies. He came to Levkovich on behalf of a client who wanted to sell seven paintings for $2,000 each.
There are seven art works on the table in front of Levkovich.
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What did I see in them? He said nothing. Those seven paintings could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
It's hard to imagine Levkovich sitting at home on a Tuesday evening talking about rubbing shoulders with a famous artist.
The home of Jose Levkovich is in Jerusalem.
Les Glassman took this photo.
The only member of Jose Levkovich's family to survive the Holocaust was his father. He was liberated from a concentration camp at the age of 18. He was younger when he went to work for the Americans.
He didn't talk to his children about the past. He did not want them to know what he saw. He began to write a memoir for his family and a book for a wider audience as he pushed into his 90s.
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He said that he was constantly busy.
Levkovich speaks at universities and schools. He has led educational trips to the Nazi death camp. He never says no when asked to speak, and he never asks for anything in return, even though the calendar has been disrupted by the Pandemic.
He said that surviving was a miracle.
Surviving was a miracle.
Levkovich was playing with his friends in Krakw, Poland, when a German tank rumbled down the street. The soldier asked the kids where the nearest pharmacy was.
He said that he wanted to buy some cream.
It was a brush with the enemy. Three Nazis lighting an elderly Jew's beard on fire and laughing as he screamed, being herded into a field with his parents, three younger brothers and thousands of their Jewish neighbours, and hearing the rattle of machine guns after the older were some of the memories that began crowding into the frame
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Simcha died at the hands of the Nazis. Levkovich was a slave labourer in the concentration camp. He worked in salt mines, hauled granite blocks from quarries, and collected the dead in Auschwitz. A scrap of bread and a bunk full of flies fell into the hole.
He said that you would feel your skin crawling.
He helped to destroy two Jewish cemeteries on the outskirts of Krakw to make way for a new slave labour camp. Steven Spielberg's 1993 film, "Schindler's List," made it vivid to modern movie watchers.
Amon Gth was the son of a German publisher. The Oscar nomination was for the portrayal of the commandments byRalph Fiennes. Levkovich knew Gth. He would sic on the inmates if he had two Great Danes. His right hand has scars.
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He said you would start to shiver when he passed by. This was a toy for him to kill people.
There are more brutal stories. Levkovich and another man were told to disassemble the column. They weren't going to drop bricks. Goth shot Levkovich's partner when a brick fell. He told the teenager to throw the brick.
He said he thought he was dead. He was unconscious when he was beaten.
There must be a reason for me to survive and millions to not.
One day, it was over. Levkovich remembers a soldier giving him candy. He didn't realize it was chewing gum. He was young.
He remembers thinking that there must be a reason for millions to not survive.
He wrote a list. Gth and other Nazis were on it. He volunteered to help hunt down the Americans. He received a military police uniform, a white helmet, and a jeep.
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He said he interviewed Gth's family and friends. He followed every lead until he found a German prisoner of war camp. Gth was pretending to be a soldier. He was defanged and pathetic.
I beat him. I kicked him. I spat in his face. Levkovich said he called him all the names he had called them.
Gth didn't say anything. He was hanged to death near Paszw after being convicted of war crimes.
The names of other Nazis were blurred with the passage of time. He caught up with the Paszw area factory owner who saved his Jewish slave labourers from deportation to the Nazi death camps. The Nazi hunter was asked to vouch for him.
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Levkovich said that he asked if he could find him a bottle of schnapps. chindler was not a war criminal. The people who worked for him survived.
Levkovich created his next list while working with the Polish communists to find Jewish orphans, whose parents had hidden them in monasteries, churches and among Christian families as babies to keep them from being killed. The state of Israel was home to hundreds of orphans who found homes with Jewish families.
A survivor of the Holocaust who was saved by the help of the Nazis placed a flower at the Hall of Remembrance in Jerusalem.
A photo by GALI TIBBON.
I have met some of them. He said that they are in their 80s.
Levkovich was encouraged by Jewish leaders to get a formal education and be a part of the future of Israel. He wanted to be with family.
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He said that he was alone in the world.
It turned out to be not quite. A Red Cross board at a displaced persons camp was visited by a message from a great-uncle who was looking for the parents of Levkovich.
Their son boarded a ship for South America and worked for his relative for a spell. He reinvented himself as a diamond dealer because it wasn't the right fit.
There were other games in town. Levkovich didn't buy cheap real estate in New York City because he didn't think it was a good deal at the time, and instead bought cheap real estate in Montreal, which turned out not to be a good deal over time.
His non-business related stock went up as soon as he met Perla Lederman. He said that she was his life.
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Levkovich wanted a family. They built one together. After the birth of their second child, they moved to Montreal.
He wanted his children to have the same education he never had.
He opened a cutting and polishing factory in Cuba after moving to Canada. He never met Castro.
He said they made money and he made money.
Jose Levkovich has a wife, Perla.
Les Glassman took this photo.
After the Cubans replaced the factory's diamond expert with a Communist party functionary, a mutually agreeable arrangement fell apart.
Levkovich continued to trade in precious stones, buying trips to Antwerp and partnering with five other Montrealers to build apartments in Jerusalem. He lost a bundle when Israel devalued its currency in the 1980's to stem runaway inflation, but he came out ahead.
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At his age, what does it matter? Making money isn't the most important thing. Levkovich is scrolling through his phone and looking at pictures of his family. Tuvia is holding his son. The life he created is a reflection of his revenge against Gth and the Nazi death merchants.
The phone rings. It is his daughter. After Perla died, Levkovich told his children he was moving to Jerusalem. Alone. He died at the age of 88.
A picture of Jose Levkovich's family.
Les Glassman took this photo.
He said that they all tried to talk him out of it. The whole city is my friend.
That is not an overstatement. Les Glassman and Levkovich first met a year ago. Glassman is a dentist by day, and a historian by nature, who rapped on the old man's front door asking to hear his story.
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Glassman said that Jose is a remarkable person. There is no bitterness there.
The dentist was asked by the reporter if he would visit his friend, who has hearing issues, with questions from the Financial Post. He was going to film the conversation.
Glassman said that Jose is a hero.
Levkovich is grieving the loss of his son, who was an improbability, a miracle in a story of human survival.
The birthplace of Wayne Gretzky will soon be home to Roustan Hockey, the sole surviving hockey stick maker in Canada.
The financialpost.comentrepreneur takes-his
He talks about his mistakes and regrets. He had his tattoo removed because he was stupid and ashamed of it. He wishes he could change the decision that left the scar.
He doesn't see himself as a hero. He answers the door when someone knocks because he is a survivor and fewer like him remain.
He said that they were here. We do what we can. We tell what we know.
Financial Post.
Email: Joconnor@nationalpost.com
