Joe Schlesinger was born to a devout Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, on May 11,1928.
15 Facts About Joe Schlesinger
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Joe Schlesinger was raised in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, where his parents, Emmanuel and Lilli Schlesinger, owned a cleaning supplies shop.
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Joe Schlesinger appears in and narrates the 2011 documentary Nicky's Family about Winton and the kindertransport.
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Joe Schlesinger pursued a journalism career after the war, first working at the Prague bureau of the Associated Press in 1948 as a translator.
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Joe Schlesinger fled Czechoslovakia after its Communist government began arresting journalists, crossing the border into Austria.
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Joe Schlesinger arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax and travelled across the country to Vancouver to join his brother, who had immigrated to Canada earlier under the Canadian Jewish War Orphans Project.
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Joe Schlesinger then left Canada and edited for UPI in London and the International Herald Tribune in Paris.
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Joe Schlesinger described his early career in an interview with Czech public radio Radio Prague, aired on March 21,2005.
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Joe Schlesinger retired from full-time employment in 1994, but continued to produce essays and special reports for CBC News.
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Joe Schlesinger continued to produce occasional documentaries for the CBC and write commentaries for the CBC News website into his eighties.
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Joe Schlesinger was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1994.
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Joe Schlesinger was nominated for 18 Gemini Awards, winning three, for "Best Reportage" and "Best News Magazine Segment".
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Joe Schlesinger was awarded the John Drainie Award and "Best Performance by a Broadcast Journalist ".
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Joe Schlesinger held honorary doctorates from the University of British Columbia, the Royal Military College of Canada, Dalhousie University and Carleton University.
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Joe Schlesinger died after a prolonged illness on February 11,2019, at the age of 90, in Toronto.