{"id":88577,"date":"2023-12-08T14:23:01","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T14:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebritytidings.com\/?p=88577"},"modified":"2023-12-08T14:23:01","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T14:23:01","slug":"geddy-lees-my-effin-life-a-tale-of-personal-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebritytidings.com\/lifestyle\/geddy-lees-my-effin-life-a-tale-of-personal-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Geddy Lees My Effin Life: a tale of personal evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

And no wonder. His Polish Jewish parents, Morris and Mary, met and fell in love as teenagers in the Majowka labour camp in Poland, before being transported to Auschwitz where they barely survived.<\/p>\n

Now 70 and one of the world\u2019s most renowned bass players, having performed with Canadian rock megastars Rush over five decades, Lee knows just how precarious their existence was amid the unimaginable brutality and horrors of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

It is a story of love and survival he recalls in his thoughtful, deeply poignant new autobiography, My Effin\u2019 Life, already a bestseller and a million miles away from the typical ego-laden rock star memoir.<\/p>\n

Rush, who sold more than 40 million albums over a 38-year recording career, naturally play a huge part in Geddy\u2019s story, but his parents\u2019 escape and the impact on his childhood defines him.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the first half of My Effin\u2019 Life focuses on his parents.<\/p>\n

It was the offer of a piece of bread that first brought Morris Weinrib and Mary Rubinstein together in 1939.<\/p>\n

Determined to help the young girl, Morris bribed a guard to give her work in his unit processing liquid iron.<\/p>\n

Later he paid for shoes for her.<\/p>\n

Astonishingly, their love was to endure for the next six agonising years until they married and emigrated to Canada.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There, Mary constantly recycled in forensic detail her early life which included their later transportation in cattle trucks to Auschwitz on July 28, 1944.<\/p>\n

After surviving both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, Geddy\u2019s parents were married in the guards\u2019 quarters of the latter camp following its liberation by British forces on May 5, 1945.<\/p>\n

Geddy, now 70, recalls: \u201cIt made me angry to hear what they\u2019d seen and suffered at the hands of the Nazis. I\u2019d wish that Hitler would magically appear in front of me so I could vanquish him myself with brute force.\u201d<\/p>\n

While his father never talked about the horrors of the war, his mother almost couldn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother spoke as if telling these stories to her kids was the most natural thing in the world. I can tell you that it wasn\u2019t, yet it seemed somehow OK at the time,\u201d Geddy continues.<\/p>\n

During their four months at Auschwitz, Mary, her mother and sister lived in constant fear of the gas chambers.<\/p>\n

She and her sister also had their blood taken by a team working for Josef Mengele, the sinister SS chief medical officer in charge of selections.<\/p>\n

At one point Mary\u2019s sister told Mengele himself that she couldn\u2019t give any more blood.<\/p>\n

Recalls Geddy: \u201cHe turned to her and replied coldly, \u2018What do you need blood for? We need it.\u2019 In her mind, sharing with her children this six-year nightmare was not just a way of passing her own history along to us, but a way that we could help the world \u2018never forget\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

After surviving Auschwitz and Birkenau, Mary carried the legacy of these brutal formative experiences for the rest of her life, even having reached the safety of Canada.<\/p>\n