The volunteer of the week is Elias Aviezora! Born April 15, 1894 to a Jewish-Belarusian family, Aviezon immigrated to Canada in 1913. He served in the First World War as an ambulance driver with the Canadian Army Medical Service. Aviezora's Canadian Expeditionary Force records say that he came to Canadian from "Mosesville, Argentina"—presumably Moisés Ville, Argentina, a town of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who left the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to avoid anti-Semitic persecution and violence.
Aviezora lived in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Esteban, Saskatchewan, working as a teacher and possibly a chauffeur. In 1936 he joined the Communist Party and sailed to Leningrad via Liverpool, returning within the year. Aviezon arrived in Spain on January 14, 1937, serving with the Lincoln Battalion, and was killed in action at Jarama on February 23, 1937. Victor Hoar's 1969 classic "The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion" lists Aviezon as the first Canadian casualty in Spain.
