{"id":107037,"date":"2026-06-28T05:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T05:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/107037\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T05:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T05:32:08","slug":"photos-of-pre-state-israel-found-in-montreal-basement-will-be-exhibited-by-jerusalem-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/107037\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos of pre-state Israel found in Montreal basement will be exhibited by Jerusalem museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bram Freedman, the grandson of the late co-founder of Montreal\u2019s Jewish General Hospital (JGH), A.O. Freedman, and the current head of its hospital foundation,<\/a>\u00a0had noticed the photo album in his family\u2019s basement before, but never paid it much attention.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until his older brother, David Freedman\u2014a retired doctor living in the U.S. who had recently thrown himself into family history\u2014was rummaging through the family basement that they realized what they had on their hands.<\/p>\n

During a visit to Montreal, David had been in the house where they grew up\u2014their grandfather had lived there since 1939, and their parents still live there\u2014when he \u201cstruck gold.\u201c<\/p>\n

Captured by their grandfather in the early 1920s, the images include historical figures like Zionist leader and first Israeli president Chaim Weizmann, and a young Winston Churchill, decades before he became British prime minister. The collection of A.O. Freedman\u2019s photos document everyday life in British Mandate Palestine. There are photos of men and women praying together at the Western Wall without gender separation, as well as the Tower of David citadel itself. A watermelon vendor at the Jaffa Gate appears in the photos, as does Anna Ticho, the famed artist known for drawing Jerusalem\u2019s hills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI probably even flipped through the pages years ago and thought, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s nice, old pictures of Israel\u2019\u2014it wasn\u2019t even Israel then,\u201c Bram recalled in an interview with The CJN.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pictures are almost flawless after 100 years in this album, and all labelled with dates, places in Palestine as it then was, and who was in the photos, but it just didn\u2019t click for me and I was probably looking for something else at the time. But when my brother, who was in that mode of researching family history, came across it, he got very excited,\u201d Bram said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Dr. A.O. Freedman (centre-left) in Jerusalem, circa 1921. (Courtesy of Tower of David Jerusalem Museum)<\/p>\n

The 100-page album, along with a second one found subsequently, now reside with the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum.<\/p>\n

Inspired by the Freedman family\u2019s discovery, the museum recently issued a global public call for old photos, encouraging people to search their closets, basements, and drawers for images documenting the Western Wall from the late 19th century until 1968.<\/p>\n

The submitted photos could be included in \u201cEyes on the Wall,\u201d a visual exhibition planned for 2027, marking 60 years since the reunification of Jerusalem following the Six-Day War.<\/p>\n

Historic photos\u2019 importance slowly dawned on family<\/p>\n

At first, the significance of the albums didn\u2019t register with Bram, his parents, and their two other siblings, he said.<\/p>\n

After the visit, David Freedman, now an emeritus professor of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama, took the album back to North Carolina, his current home base.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s only when he dug into it and started saying, \u2018Did you know there\u2019s a picture of A.O. with Winston Churchill in this album that was in the basement?\u2019\u201c said Bram.<\/p>\n

The family soon grasped the importance of the photos. \u201cOver the course of the next few days, it became clear that there was something special there. To be perfectly frank, I\u2019m not sure that we, even then, realized that it was something that might be of historical significance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

David then asked an Israeli colleague who was in the U.S. to bring the albums to the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum to gauge their interest. Delayed, at first, by the 12-day exchange of missiles between Israel and Iran in June 2025, the album made its way to the repository last year, with the second photo album joining it in the museum archive earlier in June.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we thought it was kind of a lark. I don\u2019t think we thought that it was going to turn into something, but the museum staff were very, very excited when they saw it,\u201d Bram said.<\/p>\n

Family history, connections: Montreal, Israel, hospitals<\/p>\n

The discovery has illuminated a forgotten chapter of the Freedman family history. In the early 1920s, unable to find work as a Jewish doctor in Montreal due to pervasive quotas, A.O. Freedman spent two years in British Mandate Palestine helping to establish early medical care standards with the American Zionist Medical Unit.<\/p>\n

In 1920, the Canadian Jewish Chronicle published his letter<\/a> titled \u201cImpressions of a Canadian Zionist in Palestine.\u201d In one passage, he wrote: \u201cI like Jerusalem very much, and if the Jews will have enough faith in it we can make it the most beautiful, the most picturesque, and the most interesting city on earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1921, the same publication <\/a>described him as \u201cthe Managing Director of the [Rothschild-Hadassah University Hospital], a practical, well-known and beloved Canadian Jew,\u201d and ran another letter<\/a> in 1922 that he wrote upon his return, titled \u201cPalestine Jews Fear No Pogroms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in Montreal, Dr. A.O. Freedman went on to co-found the JGH in the 1930s, even admitting the hospital\u2019s very first patient as an ENT specialist in 1934.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dr. A.O. Freedman admitted the first patient in 1934 to the then-new Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. (supplied)<\/p>\n

His son, and Bram and David\u2019s father, 98-year-old Dr. Samuel O. Freedman, is a respected former president and medical research director of the JGH and former dean of McGill University\u2019s medical school, from which he had graduated in 1953. He later became known for discovering a blood test for cancer called CEA.<\/p>\n

For Bram, the uncanny discovery highlights the deep connections between the Montreal family and the Israeli medical system.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, this is really about connections and linkages of the Jewish world,\u201d Bram said. \u201cEven to this day, if I walk into the conference room in the JGH ENT department, there\u2019s a picture of my grandfather because he was the first chief of ENT. That juxtaposition of his leadership role here at the Jewish General Hospital, and the fact that he had spent two years in Palestine running the Hadassah Hospital as the medical system was being created, it\u2019s a very meaningful connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

The photo albums now reside in the museum\u2019s climate-controlled special archive in Jerusalem\u2019s Old City, with future plans to conserve and fully digitize the images, pending funding, so they can eventually be viewed by the public.<\/p>\n

At least two of A.O. Freedman\u2019s photos are set to be featured in the exhibition in 2027, and Bram says the plan is for at least one family member to attend the opening in Israel next year.<\/p>\n

In Montreal, Bram plans to invite JGH staff, its heritage committee, and the Quebec Association of Jewish Physicians for an event in September, linking with museum staff in Jerusalem via Zoom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people will get a kick out of a connection between the Jewish General Hospital and early Palestine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Of the 100-year-old photos, and the articles by or about\u00a0his grandfather\u00a0in\u00a0Canadian Jewish Chronicle,\u00a0Bram Freedman says there\u2019s one line that stays with him the most, from the article published in 1921.<\/p>\n

During a tour of the Rothschild-Hadassah hospital he was running, his grandfather had explained to the reporter why there were no private wards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe consider such arrangements in hospitals with such limited accommodation-space, an immorality. We have classes in payments of fees, but in manner of treatment all are equal, Jews and non-Jews alike!\u201d A.O. Freedman said in the article.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That quote reveals much about A.O.\u2019s character, his grandson Bram says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was clearly his motto, and I think the approach of the early medical establishment. We have to remember what Palestine was like in 1920. It was a pretty rough and tumble place, and when you look at the photos, there\u2019s photos of him with fancy people, and then there\u2019s photos of him in the streets and with everyday people. I think that gave me a little bit of insight,\u201d into the grandfather he never met who\u2019d travelled from Montreal to pre-state Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a pretty adventurous thing to do to travel to Palestine in 1920, to participate in the creation and the founding of the medical community in Palestine,\u201d said Bram.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI got a little bit of insight into him, and you know, he didn\u2019t have to do that. He didn\u2019t have to go. He clearly believed in the emerging state and that he had something to contribute and he actually did something about it. It\u2019s not like hopping on a plane today, not an easy trip to get to Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The album\u2019s journey from a box in the basement to a major Jerusalem archive still amazes him. It also brought to light a habit Bram hadn\u2019t realized he shared with his grandfather.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m known in my family as the person who prints and labels photos, and my kids always used to make fun of me,\u201d Bram laughed. \u201cI would tell them, \u2018If somebody\u2019s looking at these 30 years from now, how are they going to know when it was from and where it was?\u2019 So maybe I get that propensity from my grandfather.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Meticulously labelled photos taken by Dr. A.O. Freedman in Jerusalem in the early 1920s were found in a photo album in the family basement in Montreal. (Courtesy of Tower of David Jerusalem Museum)<\/p>\n

For the museum\u2019s curators, the Freedman collection amounts to a historical gift they couldn\u2019t have predicted, and one that\u2019s priceless.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is something profoundly moving in the moment when an intimate private photograph transcends its original purpose and becomes an important historical testimony,\u201c wrote Dr. Shimon Lev, curator of the \u201cEyes on the Wall\u201c exhibition.<\/p>\n

Eilat Lieber, the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum\u2019s director and chief curator, echoed the sentiment, thanking the Freedman family for bridging private memory and public history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe album now ceases to be only personal but becomes part of the shared story of Jerusalem,\u201c Lieber said. \u201cIt ensures that future generations can see not only how Jerusalem looked, but how it lived\u2014through the eyes of someone who truly saw it.\u201c<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jonathan Rothman is a reporter for The CJN based in Toronto, covering municipal politics, arts and culture, and security, among other areas impacting the Jewish community locally and around Canada. He has worked in Canadian online newsrooms and on multimedia creative teams at the CBC, Yahoo Canada, and The Walrus. Jonathan’s writing has appeared in Spacing, NOW Toronto (the former weekly), and Exclaim! magazines, and The Globe and Mail. He has also contributed arts, music, and culture stories to CBC Radio, including an audio mini-documentary report from Brazil.<\/p>\n


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