After spending years disguised as a Polish peasant to escape the horrors of the Holocaust, Jack Kuper, then known as Jankele Kuperblum, was placed in a Jewish orphanage in Lublin, Poland, following the war. There was just one problem: he had forgotten his language, culture and religion, and the other kids thought he was a Polish spy.

And they weren’t the only ones who doubted his Judaism. “My whole being was such that I not only appeared like a Polish peasant boy, but in fact I had become one. I was an anti-Semite. I didn’t like the other kids, either. And I contemplated getting converted,” said Kuper, now 87, in his Toronto home.

In the end, the pull of Kuper’s upbringing was too strong. Even after living for years as a Christian, he couldn’t forget his identity and traditions.

“I remembered sitting at my zayde’s table and asking the four questions. I remembered the candles at Hanukkah burning. I remembered going to synagogue on occasion and getting a sip of wine as it was passed around,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave it behind.”

So Kuper remained Jewish and in 1947, he was brought to Halifax by Canada’s Jewish community. He ended up settling in Toronto and working at the CBC. But even as Kuper built his life in Toronto, he couldn’t forget about the life and loved ones he had lost. He began working on a memoir, which he published in 1967.

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At least 20 editors rejected the manuscript for Child of the Holocaust: A Jewish Child in Christian Disguise before it was accepted. Since then, it has been in continuous print and its 24th edition will go on sale on Jan. 29. But Kuper didn’t write his memoir expecting, or even wanting, so many people to read it.

“I wrote it because I had to. I wanted my children and grandchildren, their grandchildren, to know what I went through. I wanted to leave a legacy and I also wanted to tell what happened to my family,” he said.

Those Jews who knew they would perish in the Holocaust wanted two things above all else, according to Kuper. The first was to be avenged; the second was to be remembered. Kuper doesn’t know how to take revenge, but he does know how to keep memories alive.

“That’s what has driven me to make films and to write about those times. It’s a way of my bringing those people back, to say, ‘Look, these people existed. I remember them,’ ” he said.

Kuper is skeptical that his stories provide value in other ways. For example, he doubts that remembering the Holocaust counters anti-Semitism.

“I think there are people who may read my book who are anti-Semites and remain anti-Semites. I don’t think it’s upon us to cure that disease,” he said.

As a young boy, he learned about God and the inherent goodness of man. “It didn’t work out too well. People went to the gas chambers thinking in the last minute God will intervene … and the Germans will embrace us. And till this day, we stretch out our hands in friendship to all sorts of adversaries thinking that our goodness will somehow change them, that we are a light unto the nations,” said Kuper.

In spite of what he preaches, Kuper knows he couldn’t bring harm to another human being. He doesn’t have it in him. When he was living in Lublin after the war, he would dart through the streets, searching for Hitler, daydreaming about killing him.

“But the truth of the matter was, had I come face-to-face with Hitler and I had a gun, I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger. It somehow wasn’t a part of who I was,” he said.

Indeed, his is a story of a peaceful Jewish boy who, due to the trauma of the Holocaust, almost turned into a Christian, and into a vengeful person. But at the last moment, his basic nature won out and he was able to persevere and remain himself – just like the Jewish people as a whole.