Dan Propp
Works by Dan Propp:
From ABC Bookworld, "Dan Propp's parents Arthur and Elsa Propp fled the Nazis to South America. Imprisoned by the Nazis after Kristallnacht, his father, who had been born in Konigsberg (later Kaliningrad) in 1890, managed to escape from Berlin by air with the assistance of a woman from the British underground. Estranged in England, he sailed from Liverpool to Hamilton, the capital of Bermuda, in 1940, en route to Chile. His mother took a ship to Brazil. They settled in Bolivia, one of the few countries willing to accept Jewish immigrants.
The Propps came to B.C. in 1950, first to Vancouver. A few months later they settled in Gibson's Landing on the Sunshine Coast where Arthur Propp, in his 60s, started the Sucre Lumber Co. After his father died in 1965, Dan Propp wrote to Elie Wiesel about his parents' experiences. Wiesel subsequently provided numerous notes of encouragement to Propp over the years, the last one in April of 2013.
Propp produced four self-published books and arranged for the publication of his father's memoirs, written in German, as Von Koenigsberg nach Kanada (2017), translated into English as Where the Straight Path Leads (2017), both available via Amazon.
Dan Propp of Steveston taught in the Surrey school system for 23 years, previously working for The Richmond Review and the Surrey Leader. He studied photography in Los Angeles during the 1960s. Dedicated to the children of the Holocaust, his collection 3 Stories opens with The Berlin Baker's Son, a story about a child of the Holocaust who searches for a sense of belonging in Los Angeles and Vancouver. Another story, A Nobody From Powell River, describes a son's upbringing in an isolated Jewish family and his attempts to untangle his parents' post-Holocaust trauma."