Carleton’s Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship kicked off Holocaust Education Month with a luncheon at the Kehillat Beth Israel synagogue on Nov 7.
The event titled “80th Anniversary of Kristallnacht: What Shards Remain?” is one of 18 events listed on the Jewish Federation of Ottawa’s website aimed to educate the public about the Holocaust throughout the month of November.
Michael Berenbaum, founder of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, delivered a keynote address, and Niv Ashkenazi played the “Violin of Hope” —an instrument salvaged and restored from the Holocaust.
The Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, was a night in 1938 when police raided Jewish communities and synagogues throughout Germany and Austria. It has been described as a pivotal event leading up to the Holocaust.
Holocaust Education Month has been an annual occurrence each November for the past 10 years in Ottawa, but Susan Landau-Chark, associate director of the Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies at Carleton, said the month is especially important to highlight anti-Semitism.
“More people are actually turning out to these events because of this complacency—‘it can’t happen here and it’s not going to happen again’—is not true, and I think there’s a lot of concern,” she said.
According to her, these events urge people “to be more willing to listen before rejecting, listen before criticizing, and listen before abusing.”
“This is about creating conversations, not digressive debate,” she said.
Mina Cohn, the director of the Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship (CHES), said in an email, that this year’s launch event is especially important for young people.
“It is important for every student on campus, not just Jewish students,” she said. “The lessons of the Holocaust are universal and teach us that when there are signs such as we see now, of a right-wing environment fostered by various leaders, everyone should voice their concern.”
“Today’s rise in anti-Semitism in Canada and around the world is something we could never have imagined,” she added, “It is the young who should speak out loud and clear against discrimination of any kind.”
Dario Chaiquin, a third-year political science student at Carleton, said Holocaust Education Month is extremely important because of the motto surrounding Holocaust education.
“The motto is ‘never forget’ because the idea is that if we are always conscious of the fact that this tragic event happened, then we prevent it from happening in the future,” he said.
Chaiquin said this month is also important because of a recent shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, which happened on Oct. 27.
“We’re at a very critical time where we need to pay more attention towards—and call out—anti-Semitism, and we can do that by educating people about the Holocaust,” he said.
Photo by Lauren Hicks
