The MacOdrum Library on the Carleton campus is expanding its collection of Holocaust education resources after receiving a monetary donation from the Israeli embassy.
The donation was made in honour of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Carleton’s Max and Tessie Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies will also co-host a virtual event Jan. 27 to discuss the relationship between Holocaust education and understanding anti-Semitism today.
Dario Chaiquin, director of cultural affairs for the Israeli embassy, said the embassy made the donation so the library could purchase Holocaust education materials.
“We at the embassy have been monitoring and are concerned over the rise of anti-Semitism and the rise of Holocaust denial, not just in the world, but here in Canada as well,” he said. “We’re always looking for ways to combat that.”
University librarian Amber Lannon said the library consulted Deidre Butler, director of the Zelikovitz Centre, about which materials to purchase.
Butler said she reached out to several Carleton history professors to generate a list of essential Holocaust education literature. All of the materials purchased with the donation will be available digitally.
“At this time many of our students are not in Ottawa,” Lannon said in an email. “Digital resources allow immediate access to Carleton students and faculty from anywhere in the world.”
Lannon said she hopes the new e-books will improve Holocaust education for students and contribute to future research.
Butler said the goal of Holocaust education is not just to remember its victims. She said studying the Holocaust helps people understand the “long historical arc of anti-Semitism” that dates back to ancient history.
To understand modern anti-Semitism, people need to understand its origins, Butler said.
“The anti-Semitism that we face today has its roots in the Holocaust … but has its own form and shape,” she said.
Hernan Tesler-Mabé, co-ordinator for the Vered Jewish Canadian Studies program at the University of Ottawa, echoed this sentiment.
“Guarding against anti-Semitism is vital,” Tesler-Mabé said, “but at the same time, it will not succeed if we don’t have a deeper appreciation of the historical forces at work that really laid the foundation for the Holocaust to occur when and where it did.”
The virtual event for International Holocaust Remembrance Day is co-hosted by the Zelikovitz Centre, the Vered Jewish Canadian Studies program, Hillel Ottawa and the Israeli embassy.
The event will feature a screening of the 2020 documentary Glass Negatives and a virtual panel discussion with the film’s researcher and director. Irwin Cotler, Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Anti-Semitism, will also speak.
Butler said she chose Glass Negatives because it showcases a growing area of Holocaust scholarship. It focuses on material culture, a concept referring to material aspects of culture such as art, tools, and other objects.
“It was about this idea of looking at those glass negatives, those film negatives, and trying to understand their historical context and the history of the people who are lost,” she said.
Butler said that research on material artifacts will become crucial to Holocaust education in the future.
“We’re at a point now when [Holocaust] survivors are aging and becoming more frail and there are fewer and fewer survivors who can speak,” she said. “We’re turning to other things to try and connect with this history, to understand this history, to make this history personal.”
The Zelikovitz Centre’s event, titled Lost Memory, Forgotten Lessons?: Holocaust Education and the Challenge of Anti-Semitism Today will take place on Jan. 27 at 7 p.m.
