For 45 years in a row, Sam Hershenhorn has walked the Walk with Israel and this year, months after turning 90, he will take on the challenge once again.

Hershenhorn hasn’t missed the walk since the annual fundraiser began in 1970. It’s important to him, he says, because of his experience growing up.

The Toronto resident was born in Poland in 1926 and raised in an orthodox Jewish family. He said he was beat up at public school because of his religion for three years, starting when he was only 6-years-old.

“Anti-semitism in Poland was very fervent. I got beat up many times,” he said. “This was a place that my family thought was not conducive to bringing up children.”

Hershenhorn’s parents decided to move to Canada in 1935 when Hershenhorn was 9-years-old, just four years before the Nazis would invade and force Jews into concentration camps.

At first, it was a struggle to learn English and adapt, but he felt welcome in Toronto’s small Jewish community.

“It wasn’t large then, but there were all the supportive things a Jewish community needed,” he said.

Today, Toronto’s Jewish community has about 200,000 members. During last year’s walk – put on by the UJA non-profit organization -- 17,000 people participated.

Money raised by participants of the walk go directly towards agencies in Israel that are partnered with the UJA, including programs that support Israel’s Ethiopian community, hospitals, universities, job creation and youth employment.

Back in 1970, the event was called The Walk for Survival and the route was around 26 kilometres long. The total amount raised was $50,000.

Last year, the walk raised around a million dollars, according to Dan Horowitz, the UJA Federation’s editorial director.

Hershenhorn said on May 29, he’ll be walking on behalf of about 445 people who have sponsored him. Last year he said he raised $45,000 and this year he hopes to hit his goal of $60,000.

He’ll have most of his family by his side, which is one of the driving factors pushing Hershenhorn to fundraise and walk.

“They are the future,” he said, “What we’re doing we feel should be continued for the next generation and the generations after that.”

Hershenhorn’s daughter, Shira Benson, said she has early memories of her parents giving back to the Jewish community. Her parents sponsored a camper at Camp Shalom for many years and the walk was another way to help others who were less fortunate.

“He’s more committed now than he was in his younger years,” Benson said. “He has a great love of Israel, having come from a poor immigrant family and having to work really hard to get to the point he’s at today.”

Shira Lester, a senior campaign associate from the UJA Federation, has worked closely with Hershenhorn after meeting him last year. Lester did some fundraising with him and over time, they became good friends.

“I think that people are very impressed with the fact that he is at his age, so youthful and so energetic,” she said. “He truly believes in the cause. He’s had a very interesting life.”

At 16, Hershenhorn left school to become a draftsman, the person who “tells a factory supervisor how to make a certain piece of metal,” he said.

He was also a radio operator for the Canadian Air Force in the Second World War in 1943 and then, less than a decade later, he married his wife and had two children.

And now, with his children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren by his side, Hershenhorn said it’s more important than ever to “show everybody that we’re doing it regardless of age.”

He said he went out to the first Walk because it was an activity he could do with his family with the object of fundraising for Israel.

“The walking just shows that we’re there in the forefront supporting this little country who seems to be at the butt end of all the jokes around the world,” he said. “Everybody’s against them. Everyone’s trying to find a way of demeaning them. Anti-semitism is very rife. We’re trying to fight that right to the very root.”