Most people know me as Ask Ella in The Canadian Jewish News, I've been writing an advice column in The CJN for the past 20 years. Along with my column, I'm the Operations Manager at the paper, having grown to that position through many years of working at different jobs at the paper.

In 2020 as the Covid pandemic became a reality and the newspaper business was going the way of the dinosaurs, The CJN was forced to close, which put me into retirement.

I was born to Holocaust survivors, Shoshana Gold and Fishl Burakowski, who met after the war in Foehrenwald, a displaced person's camp in Germany. Together they smuggled on an Aliyah Bet ship to make a new life for themselves in Israel. Ella and her older sister Sarah, were both born in Israel, before the family moved to Canada.

When I was 14, my mother died in front of me of a massive heart attack. When she died, she took with her every story, every experience of how she survived the Holocaust. She took with her the reason she used to scream in the night, the reason I was different than the other kids. There was so much I didn’t know.

It wasn’t until I became an adult that I was interested in the story of how she survived, but it was too late to hear it from her.
My Uncle David Gold, my mother’s brother was still alive. Using his memories I followed their journey through the Holocaust. I felt compelled to write my family’s story while he was still able to describe the events my family endured during one of the most horrific periods in human history. He passed away in February of 2017.

Writing Hidden Gold has allowed me to reconnect with my mother and walk in her footsteps through the darkest time in her life.

As a 2nd-generation survivor, I am all too aware that I am a unique link to the past and the future. Very soon there will be no one left to directly tell these harrowing stories of survival. By writing Hidden Gold, I am passing on this remarkable story, in the hope of teaching and influencing for the better, the next generations.

Hidden Gold has won an honorable book award from the Ontario Library Association and has been read by thousands of kids. My family’s suffering is used to teach so we can truly say “Never Again.”

There is a free study guide available through the website www.hiddengoldbook.com