Michal Hornstein, a renowned Montreal-based art collector, businessman and Holocaust survivor, has passed away at age 95.
The announcement was made in a statement from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. In November, a pavilion that will be named the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace will open.
Born in Krakow, Poland, Hornstein was sent to the Auschwitz death camp after the German invasion in 1939. He escaped by leaping from a train and spent much of the war hiding in the forests of Czechoslovakia, later hiding in Budapest, Hungary until the Russians arrived in 1944.
Hornstein came to Montreal in 1951, founding real-estate company Federal Construction, Ltd. Over the next decades, he became a supporter of the arts, sitting on the board of trustees of the MMFA and eventually being named Vice-President.
He was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 and was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2014.
He is survived by his wife Renata and his two children.
