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Rush frontman Geddy Lee is mourning the death of his mother, Mary Weinrib, who died this past week at the age of 95, just a few weeks shy of her 96th birthday.
Weinrib died on september 8 as revealed in an obituary from Benjamin’s Park Memorial Chapel. Her bond with her son was recently on display as Weinrib appeared with Geddy Lee on Dave and Virginia Grohl’s From Cradle to Stage series. During the chat, Lee spoke of growing up in a house where he was aware that his parents had been holocaust survivors. See a clip from the series below.
According to her obit, Mary grew up in Wierzbnik, a Jewish shtetl that was part of Starachowice, Poland, which was occupied by the Germans beginning in 1939. She worked at a labor camp at the munition’s factory in Starachowice and the concentration camps at Auschwitz, where she met and fell in love with her husband Morris Weinrib, and at Bergen-Belsen, where she was finally liberated in April 1945. Reunited and married in 1946, Mary and Morris emigrated to Canada.
Mary was an early supporter and a fixture at Rush concerts. When the first Rush album was released, Mary plastered the windows of her store with Rush posters and gave albums away to any kids who wanted them but didn’t have the money to buy them. In addition to From Cradle to Stage, Mary also appeared in the 2010 Rush documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage.
As part of her obit, the family has asked that donations be made in Mary Weinrib’s name to the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.
