Funeral services were held this week for Bernard (Berl) Laufer, president for many years of the Toronto branch of the World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Associations and member of the national executive committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress, who died here at the age of 63. Mr. Laufer was born in Bendin. Poland and was active in the Zionist youth movement there before World War II. With most other Polish Jews, he was deported to Nazi concentration camps and was among the survivors at Bergen-Belsen when it was liberated by Allied forces.
Subsequently, Mr. Laufer helped organize the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Bergen-Belsen which served as a representative body to the military government and control commission in the British zone of occupied Germany. Later he became a member of the presidium of the World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Associations. He was co-chairman of the CJC’s central region’s annual Holocaust Memorial Assembly held last April and was associated with various publication ventures of the World Federation and its annual awards.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
