PROFILE: INSPIRATIONAL PHILANTHROPY – Paul Goldstein – A Force of Nature

By Michael Brooke

To those in the insurance and financial world, he is known as a legend — a 40-year member of the Top of the Table club where the top one percent of all insurance agents reside.

To the 700 children of Netzer Ariel, in Israel, he is known affectionately as Saba (grandfather) Paul. A playground, a hall, many classrooms, a library, a day care center, a place of worship and a music room. This is just a partial list of where Paul Goldstein has donated his money. In helping out the community of Netzer Ariel in Israel, Paul views his philanthropy as an act of redemption. “I cannot bring back the children who were lost in the Holocaust, but as one of the few survivors, I feel that there is no greater act of redemption than to provide the Jewish children of this generation with the opportunity to fulfil their potential, the opportunity that 1,200,000 children of my generation never had.

There is no easy way to say it: Paul Goldstein’s childhood was the stuff of nightmares. Before World War Two started, he had the misfortune of belonging to a family with an extremely abusive father. My home was a very violent environment.”

Paul recalls when he was six years old and it was time for him to go to school he wound up in a very unusual situation. “In Antwerp, Belgium, where I was born, one could choose to be taught in Flemish or in French. My father decided to put me in the Flemish side for grade one and then try the French side for grade two.”

“Here I was, a little Jewish kid in grade one, learning about the valiant Flemish fighters going up against the French. Of course, this wasn’t part of my history, because we were Jewish and my family’s roots were from Poland. But as a result of this propaganda, I became a Flemish nationalist brainwashed to hate anything from the French side.”

Paul’s fellow Jewish classmates who attended the French part of the school, became sworn enemies of the Flemish kids. “At recess, we would divide into two camps and re-enact battles in the schoolyard. We hated each other and the fighting only stopped once we all heard the bell ending recess.”

When it came to his next year in school, Paul was put into the French side. “Before I knew it, I had switched sides and had become a French nationalist. Now at recess, I was fighting my former Flemish speaking classmates.

Each new year of school, Paul was switched from either the Flemish or French side. “I know what it means to be brainwashed as a child. If we had weapons during recess, we surely would have killed each other.”

A Life Turned Upside Down

On May 10, 1940, the day Nazi Germany invaded Belgium, at the age of 7, Paul’s life was turned upside down. For more than two years, the Nazi’s went about sowing the seeds of destruction of the Jewish community. They imposed curfews, encouraged people to boycott Jewish businesses and forced Jews to wear a yellow star. “Nazi teachers were placed in my school and would beat up the Jewish kids regularly. I saw everything changing, but I had no idea why this was happening. It has taken me a lifetime to understand and piece together why this happened to me, my family and the Jewish population.”

In January 1942, Paul’s father was shipped off to a slave labour camp on the Atlantic coast of France. “One Friday night, when my mother and brother and I set out to send a package to my father, we noticed Jews being rounded up and being put into a big moving truck. I saw a little old lady begging on her knees not to be taken into the truck. I saw the officer grab her and throw her into the truck. The scene is forever engraved in my soul. I later learned that everyone rounded up in that truck, were murdered at Auschwitz. If I had been in that truck, I wouldn’t be here now.”

Paul’s mother decided to hide him and his brother with a Christian couple. While his mother had the best of intentions, it turned into a horrendous two-year ordeal for Paul and his brother. This woman took the children into a small village outside of Antwerp and starved and beat them for two years. “It was absolute torture and no one ever explained to me what was happening or why it was happening.” In the village that Paul was staying there were many other Jewish children who came from his school. Like him and his brother, they were put into hiding. But he was the only one who spoke Flemish fluently (as a result of his schooling). This meant he could blend in. “All the other Jewish kids were denounced and people turned them in for a $40 reward.” Paul and his brother were the only two Jewish children who survived from the village.

After surviving this horrendous nightmare, Paul and his brother were reunited with their parents when Belgium was liberated by the Canadian Armed Forces in fall of 1944. His father had escaped from a train to Auschwitz and his mother was of the few survivors who, in September 1944, were liberated in the transit camp through which close to 25,000 Jews had been sent to the death camps.

Tragically, the sons had to face further abuse from their father for the next number of years. “He kept us like prisoners. My father took out all his anger about the war on his family. We were beaten daily. It was ten years of hell.” The family also lived in poverty. “We had lost everything in the war and had no money for shelter and furniture. We started out living in a court yard with orange crates for furniture” recalls Paul.

On top of losing most of his extended family to the death camps, Paul also encountered a tremendous amount of antisemitism after the war. Despite this extremely painful situation, Paul managed to complete high school (where only four percent of the students graduated) and did two years of compulsory military service in the Belgium army. He eventually found work at a bank, but quickly determined it was not a life he wanted.

$200 and A Dream

Paul realized he had no future in Belgium. Despite huge numbers of people wishing to leave places like Holland, Italy and France, very few Belgians wished to emigrate. He was determined to leave and contacted the Canadian embassy to make arrangements to leave. Oddly enough, his request to leave Belgium was handled extremely rapidly as there was no waiting list. Paul arrived in Canada at the age of 21 with $200 in his pocket. “I had no profession, no contacts, no family and I spoke no English.” Since he spoke French fluently, Paul wound up in Montreal.

At the age of 23, Paul started a job at the Montreal YMHA that allowed him to have free access to the gym. He started working out up to five times per week for hours at a time. This fanatical devotion propelled him to becoming an award-winning bodybuilder and weight lifter. “I was nominated for the 1956 summer Olympics in Australia, but I couldn’t go because I didn’t have the finances to compete internationally. People who view my photo as a bodybuilder can’t believe it’s me. And, for the record, I never took any steroids or performance enhancing products!”

Over the course of the next decade, Paul developed a hugely successful career in the packaging industry. He was offered a position as vice president at a large company. But something happened that took his life into a completely different direction. Israel’s capture of Aldolf Eichman in May of 1960, his trial in Israel in 1961 and his execution in 1962, led to a resurgence of Nazism around the world — including Canada. “As a Holocaust survivor, I couldn’t believe it. Fascism was starting to gain in popularity and people started displaying swastikas. Even one of Quebec’s most notorious fascists, Adrian Arcand came out of the woodwork.” Paul and his fellow survivors formed an organization to fight this neo-Nazi resurgence. Since Paul spoke a number of languages and had received a BA in political science at Sir George William’s College (now called Concordia), he was chosen to lead this group. It was called The Survivors of Nazi Oppression. Paul was its executive director at first and subsequently became its national President.

“I was so emotionally disturbed by what happened during the war, that I started to devote all my time to the organization — it became all consuming” recalls Paul. He explained to the packaging company, with whom he had been for 10 years and in which he had risen to the top, that he couldn’t accept the job as vice-president because he was spending a huge amount of time fighting race hatred. “I did a huge amount of volunteer work for this organization and they offered to pay me a salary if I would work full-time for them. Unfortunately, after three months, they ran out of money and they didn’t support me any further. I fell flat on my face. It was the biggest setback in my life. I was in shock.”

Paul found himself back to square one and was completely disillusioned. In 1966, he went back to Belgium for a couple of months to reassess his situation. Paul was given a wide range of opportunities in his home country including job offers and a chance to marry into a very wealthy family. “I said ‘no’ to everything. I wasn’t going to admit defeat. I wanted to succeed in Canada.” When Paul returned to Canada, he was completely broke and had no idea what he was going to do next.

It just so happened that Paul had met a life insurance agent in the Organization of Survivors of Nazi Oppression, who felt that he might be a good insurance salesperson because of how well Paul spoke in public — especially when he gave a speech in three languages in front of Parliament Hill, flanked by Prime Minister Lester Pearson and a number of government dignitaries.

Despite many misgivings about working in the insurance industry, Paul agreed to meet for a job interview. Once he found out how much the top performers were making, Paul was on his way. “My reason for signing up was simple. I felt confident that whatever anyone else could do, I could also do.”

“The company gave us a stupid pitch and made dozens of calls trying to get appointments. It was so frustrating and I was ready to give up. I decided to do two additional calls, just to see if the sales theory was legitimate. On the 11th call, I made a sale.” By the end of the month, Paul was the leading new agent in the branch. The turnover was enormous — about 98 percent of the agents left each year. But Paul worked hard bringing in new business and eventually he moved up to branch manager.

Paul brought his family to Toronto in the early 1970’s after living through the FLQ crisis. “I really felt the country was falling apart — there was widespread panic with kidnapping and bombs being put in mailboxes.” When Paul arrived in the city, he didn’t know anyone. He spent three years studying tax laws and making contacts. Eventually, the business started to grow and Paul became one of the top 1 percent of insurance agents in the world. He accomplished this remarkable feat each year for four straight decades.

A Thirst for Knowledge

Paul has spent a huge amount of his life learning and reading. One of the things that puzzled him was why do Jews, after 2,000 plus years, still have to fight for survival. “Everyone who I met kept telling me, ‘well, you know so much about antisemitism, why don’t you write a book.’” But Paul wasn’t interested in writing about his feelings or opinions — he wanted to do scholarly research. So, he decided at the age 81, to go back to school, get his Master’s degree and become an academic.

He first tried to enrol at the University of Toronto and dutifully applied online. He was immediately rejected. “They said I was too old because I had graduated university too many years before and that I had no current support system.” Paul was adamant about becoming a student and wouldn’t take no for an answer. He eventually convinced Woodworth College to allow him to take three Master’s courses. “I wasn’t in the Master’s programme, but they wanted to see if I could qualify for this kind of academic work. I wound up getting three A’s.”

Paul so impressed one of his professors that she went to the admissions board on his behalf asking that he be granted permission to the Master’s programme. The university accepted Paul and he went back to being a full-time student while at the same time running his insurance business. He received A’s in all his courses and for his thesis, he received an A+. This was the first time in six years that a student in the political science department had received this mark.

After he received his Master’s degree, Paul decided to do a PhD on the Balfour Declaration.

Prior to embarking on this mission, he admits he knew nothing about this piece of history that is so closely associated with the creation of Israel.

Paul found himself at a university conference in June 2017 marking the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and that’s when he decided, at the age of 85, to start his PhD. At the age of 88, he completed the work. The Serendipitous Evolution of The Balfour Declaration was published by Cambridge Scholars Press to wide acclaim. As Dr. Elad Ben-Dror of the department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel, wrote in his review of Paul’s PhD dissertation, “I believe that this is an important and worthwhile work and the contribution of a new perspective on the history of Zionism.”

A Journey of Discovery

What is extraordinary is that Paul’s life mirrors that of this critical part of history. In his introduction he writes: “Each element, regardless of shape or size, played an essential part in the functioning of the whole, while the absence of one of them would have altered the outcome of the entire process,” As he told The Times of Israel in an interview in November of 2021, “I feel the same way about it as I do about the fact that I survived the Holocaust. Both were against all odds. The element of happenstance is so frightening and daunting. We see how little is due to human agency. There is a higher force at work. The things we can’t control can overthrow the things that we can control.”

As he rounds the corner into his 90th year, Paul’s intense drive is something to behold. It’s also very difficult to put into words. When I mentioned that he was truly a force of nature, he replied with a wry smile. “My best friend Joe Dickstein, who passed away about eighteen months ago, followed my career and was amazed by what I had accomplished. He too called me a ‘force of nature.’”

As our conversation wound down, Paul became philosophical and began to share even more wisdom and insights. “Every human being has dreams, ambitions and natural resources to achieve them. Not pursuing these to the maximum of our ability is wasting this amazing one-time opportunity that life has given us.”

“I’ve done many things in my life that created tremendous change but I never took credit. The people I worked with took all the credit. I was only interested in the impact. The greatest acts of heroism and good deeds are done anonymously.”

“I’ve done a lot of introspection and I find that the journey of life is not only a journey about discovering the world. It is also a journey of discovering yourself. As you go, as you learn and as you acquire different perspectives, you start to understand what has motivated you. You keep looking back and examining your strengths and decisions and the goals you set. Every time the picture gets more complete. It’s like climbing a mountain. As you get higher up the mountain, your perspective widens and the panorama changes. You see things that you didn’t see before.”

One of Paul’s favourite subjects in university was Greek philosophy and he greatly admired the writings of Pericles. “He was a prominent Greek politician and general, who played a major role in developing democracy in Athens in the 5th century B.C. One of his sayings really resonated with me — in fact, I believe I could have written it myself.” Paul says this is his message to all philanthropists in the world and that he wishes to have it engraved on his tombstone: “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

Michael Brooke is a Toronto-based freelance writer and founder of Time For My Story, a service helping individuals document their legacy in the form of a professional memoir.