Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Questions for museum

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ planned exhibit Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, set to open in June, is cause for concern. While what will be in the exhibit remains to be seen and is likely not yet finally determined, the very announcement that the exhibit will happen sends out wrong signals.

What are the boundaries of Palestine? There are a wide variety of proposals, as well as significant differences in the historical territory once called Palestine. Whatever those boundaries are, Palestine is land, not people. Contrary to what the title of the exhibit suggests, the land was not uprooted; it is still there.

The reference to land instead of people is a commonplace of antizionism. The PLO is called the Palestine Liberation Organization, not the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Pervasive antizionist pamphlets, posters, placards and signs say “Free Palestine,” not “Free Palestinians.”

For antizionists, this reference to land and not people is deliberate. For antizionists, the land that is now Israel is or should be Arab, Muslim land. That a Jewish state exists on that land means to them, bizarre as it may seem, that the land itself is not free.

Let’s suppose that the museum was not aware of this connotation and what they really meant to write was “Palestinians uprooted.” One question that arises is “Why only Palestinians?” There were more Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran created by the refusal of Arab and Muslim states to recognize the existence of Israel and the consequent wars against Israel than Arabs who left Israel during and after the 1948 Arab invasion. An exhibit that addresses the woes of only one side of an armed conflict is patently unbalanced.

Also what was the catastrophe? The text of the announcement of the exhibit states “Palestinians use the word ‘Nakba’ … to describe their forced displacement in 1948.” Some Palestinians indeed use the word in that way. Others use the word to refer to the creation of the state of Israel. For still others, albeit a minority, the catastrophe was the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel and the rejection of the United Nations peace plan, which would have created an Arab state alongside Israel.

Some of those who since 1968 have self-identified as Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the 1948 war. Others fled the crossfire, as the text of the museum announcement of the exhibit acknowledges. Others still left voluntarily, with organized Arab assistance, heeding the calls of Arab leadership to get out of the way of the Arab invasion so that the invaders could target Jews living in Israel without risk of harming Arabs, a reality that the announcement of the exhibit does not mention.

Who are the Palestinians? Does the term include all those present in the territory of former British Mandate Palestine at least two years prior to the time of the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel and who left during that invasion and their descendants, as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency now does? Or, is it limited to “those persons who acquired or had the right to acquire Palestinian nationality as of 6 August 1924” and their descendants, the PLO proposal of 2012 for Palestinian citizenship?

The text of the museum announcement states that the exhibit would explore “the human rights violations related to the ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.” The immediate violation of those rights after the 1948 Israeli-Arab war was the refusal to allow those who left Israel because of the war to be locally integrated into the neighbouring Arab states to which they had gone, an integration for which UNRWA was created to facilitate. The states of arrival have kept those who left in a permanent pseudo-refugee status, intended as a permanent indictment of the creation of the state of Israel. Will the museum exhibit explore that?

Antizionists, not least Hamas, have engineered a wide variety of human rights violations and atrocities against the Arab population of Israel who left Israel and their descendants in order to shift blame to Israel for the purpose of discrediting its existence. Is the museum exhibit going to explore that?

The suffering of Palestinians is plain to see. The antizionist attacks on the existence of Israel have caused suffering for both Palestinians and Jews. In its exhibition, the museum must show awareness of the antizionist efforts to engineer and manipulate the victimization of Palestinians to discredit the existence of Israel. If the museum were to say nothing about that engineering and manipulation, it would discredit itself.

David Matas is a Winnipeg lawyer and senior honorary counsel to B’nai Brith Canada. He was a member of the original content advisory committee for the museum. Noemi Gal-Or is an international lawyer based in Vancouver.

Nakba exhibit biased

The following is the executive summary of the study The Canadian Museum for Human Rights and Its Nakba Exhibit: Bias and Animus in Process and Outcome and the Nature and Impact of the New Antisemitism in Canada, written by Dr. Bryan Schwartz, a professor of law at the University of Manitoba, and Rhonda Spivak, LLB, editor of the Winnipeg Jewish Review. It is reprinted with permission, edited for JI style and length. The exhibit is set to open in June. For a link to the full study, go to winnipegjewishreview.com.

The proposed Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), titled Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, is not a balanced exploration of displacement. It is a partisan exercise in the demonization and delegitimization of Israel – driven from its inception by a process whose composition predetermined its outcome.

A publicly funded national museum exhibiting biased content that vilifies one national/ethnic group’s homeland constitutes a discriminatory denial of equitable human rights education.

The process and work product – to the extent it is already available – are not consistent with the CMHR’s statutory mandate under the Museums Act, the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA), the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism adopted by both Canada and Manitoba, and the ethical codes of the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) and International Council of Museums (ICOM).

The bias is structural and traceable. The CMHR assembled a Palestinian Content Advisory Network whose membership was kept opaque – referenced once in the 2022/23 annual report and then deleted. Investigation reveals that its members hold views that are hostile to Israel and not sustainable on a fair-minded analysis of history and current realities.

Ramsey Zeid, president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba and member of the advisory network, has publicly called Zionism a “disease that must be destroyed,” accused Israel of genocide, rationalized the Oct. 7 massacre as Palestinians “biting back,” and condoned violent intifada with language such as “intifada revolution … scorch the earth.” Other advisory network members have framed Israel as an apartheid settler-colonial state, endorsed the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, advocated one-state solutions that would deny the right of the Jewish people to their own state, have accused Israel of genocide at its founding and in Gaza, and compared Israel to the Nazis. The CMHR cannot credibly claim that work product shaped by this group is free of bias and animus rather than driven by it. By including persons with such views in an official advisory committee, it has extended official recognition and an aura of respectability to them.

The process excluded and marginalized the mainstream Jewish community at every stage. There was no public consultation of the kind that accompanied the Holocaust gallery. The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada withdrew its partnership with the CMHR over the exhibit. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) warned that the exhibit would deliver an incomplete and unbalanced narrative that would omit Jewish refugee experiences. The Abraham Global Peace Initiative (AGPI) wrote to the CMHR, the minister of Canadian Heritage and the prime minister requesting suspension.

Jewish organizations who supported the exhibit are fringe anti-Zionist groups, such as Independent Jewish Voices (constituting at maximum 0.2% of Canadian Jews, this report places them around 0.0025% of Canadian Jews), the United Jewish People’s Order (expelled by the Canadian Jewish Congress in 1951, and whose membership has never surpassed their 1950s numbers, placing it well below half a percent of Canadian Jews; it seems that their largest attended event in recent years was around 350 people total) and the Jewish Faculty Network (less than 0.05% of Canadian Jews). IJV and UJPO were involved with the organization that organized a Nov. 2, 2025, panel at which the exhibit’s director discussed her involvement in the exhibit.

The exhibit’s content is equally one-sided. The CMHR’s potted history, as per its website, attributes Palestinian displacement primarily to Jewish and Israeli armed forces while omitting critical context: Jewish acceptance of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, repeated Arab rejection of two-state solutions, the invasion by five Arab armies to destroy the nascent Jewish state, over a century of lethal anti-Jewish violence in Mandatory and Ottoman Palestine (documented from at least 1834), the ethnic cleansing of approximately 850,000 to 900,000 Jews from Arab countries after 1948, and the documented pattern of rejectionist violence against moderate Palestinians who favoured coexistence.

The very term “Nakba” – originally coined to describe the catastrophe of Arab armies’ failure to destroy Israel – has been recast to frame Israel’s founding as an illegitimate catastrophe, implicitly justifying campaigns to eliminate it. The CMHR exhibit instead insists that “Nakba” refers only to the displacement of Palestinians and avoids acknowledgement of Arab rejection of the two-state solution, of the right of Israel to exist as the Jewish homeland, and the armed invasion of Israel by the armies of five Arab states aimed at Israel’s destruction.

The museum’s diversity policies require representation of multiple perspectives, especially on contested histories, which in this case requires presenting sources that nonviolent Palestinian villages were allowed to stay, multiple Arab sources showing calls by Palestinian leadership and Arab states for evacuation of villages to further the Arab war effort, or leave rather than give the nascent state of Israel legitimacy…. Since Israel is an open society, multiple lines of scholarship diverge. That is not the case in Arab states, which have not opened their archives. Nor is it the case in the Palestinian Authority, where President [Mahmoud] Abbas made “Nakba denial” a crime subject to jail terms.

The exhibit, as Zeid’s own statements make plain, rests on a double game. The exhibit is presented as a collection of individual personal narratives – merely “telling stories” about the effects of displacement, yet it simultaneously advances “the story” that is supposedly the single overall historical truth. The audience is expected to accept these personal narratives as historical fact, even in the context of an advisory network whose documented members variously call Zionism a “disease” or a virus that must “be destroyed” and adopt other epithets that demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state.

It is known that oral histories can contain varying degrees of fact and can be coloured by “collective memory” – political perspectives on past events that are widely shared but may not reflect fairly or fully the actual events of individual lives in earlier generations. Judging from the composition of the Palestinian Content Advisory Network, we can expect these stories to be infused with negativity towards Israel and a lack of any historical context.

In practice, we can expect that many or all narratives in this exhibit may be an occasion to vilify Israel, from its foundation until the present. For example, it may speak of checkpoints without mentioning the suicide bombings that necessitated them, of displacement without mentioning Jewish acceptance of partition and Arab rejection of it, of suffering without acknowledging that it was Arab rejectionism and aggression that created the refugee crisis in the first place.

The “personal story” framing is a shield against accountability: it permits the museum to disseminate a partisan political narrative while disclaiming responsibility for its historical claims. This exhibit will contribute directly to the rising tide of antisemitism that has made Canada an increasingly dangerous place for its Jewish citizens, as documented in … this report.

This selective framing constitutes the “Three Ds” of antisemitism identified by Natan Sharansky and popularized in Canada by former justice minister Irwin Cotler: demonization, delegitimization and double standards applied to Israel. It occurs at a time when Jews face the highest per capita hate-crime targeting of any group in Canada (Statistics Canada). Many Jewish Canadians feel unsafe in their own country, even though both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Prime Minister Mark Carney publicly affirmed Zionism and Israel’s right to exist and prosper. Those are the rights that the advisory network has dismissed for this exhibit.

The CMHR, in the aftermath of the genocidal attack on Israel in 2023 and the ongoing brutalization of hostages, allowed an unauthorized pro-Palestinian “die-in” inside the museum. This “die-in” was allowed while refusing a request from supporters of Israel for a counter-demonstration, a disparity that exemplifies the institutional bias at work. [CMHR vice-president of exhibitions] Matthew Cutler’s public statements at the time made it unmistakable that the museum had already promised off the books, without public consultation from the Jewish community, to include an exhibit that focuses on the contested oppression of Palestinians by Israel.

Officials of the CMHR have, on the public record, favoured anti-Israel fringe groups while showing disrespect for the groups that represent the overwhelming majority of Jewish Canadians. The museum has not been transparent with the general public or the mainstream Jewish community. This invites the question of how transparent museum bureaucrats have been with the museum’s own board of trustees, who are responsible for fulfilling the museum’s mandate and maintaining its reputation.

The exhibit in its current form must be halted. The CMHR must commission an independent historical review by balanced, credentialed experts. It must require transparent public consultation, including meaningful engagement with mainstream Jewish Canadian organizations; ensure the exhibit includes parallel refugee stories, Arab rejectionism, the full context of the conflict; and conduct a governance audit of curatorial processes to prevent future partisan capture.

Proceeding instead risks CHRA complaints, further reputational damage and continued erosion of public trust in a taxpayer-funded national institution whose mandate is to promote universal human rights, not to serve as a vehicle for the delegitimization of the Jewish state.

Our rights in the age of AI

Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, chief executive officer and founder of Parity, gave the keynote address at the Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights. (photo from rummanchowdhury.com)

Data and social scientist Dr. Rumman Chowdhury provided a wide-ranging analysis on the state of artificial intelligence and the implications it has on human rights in a Nov. 19 talk. The virtual event was organized by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg and Vancouver’s Zena Simces and Dr. Simon Rabkin for the second annual Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights.

“We still need human beings thinking even if AI systems – no matter how sophisticated they are – are telling us things and giving us input,” said Chowdhury, who is the chief executive officer and founder of Parity, a company that strives to help businesses maintain high ethical standards in their use of AI.

A common misperception of AI is that it looks like futuristic humanoids or robots, like, for example, the ones in Björk’s 1999 video for her song “All is Full of Love.” But, said Chowdhury, artificial intelligence is instead computer code, algorithms or programming language – and it has limitations.

“Cars do not drive us. We drive cars. We should not look at AI as though we are not part of the discussion,” she said.

screenshot - In her presentation Nov. 19 at the Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights, Dr. Rumman Chowdhury highlighted the 2006 Montreal Declaration of Human Rights. — In her presentation Nov. 19 at the Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights, Dr. Rumman Chowdhury highlighted the 2006 Montreal Declaration of Human Rights.

The 2006 Montreal Declaration of Human Rights has served as an important framework in the age of artificial intelligence. The central tenets of that declaration include well-being, respect for autonomy and democratic participation. Around those concepts, Chowdhury addressed human rights in the realms of health, education and privacy.

Pre-existing biases have permeated healthcare AI, she said, citing the example of a complicated algorithm from care provider Optum that prioritized less sick white patients over more sick African-American patients.

“Historically, doctors have ignored or downplayed symptoms in Black patients and given preferential treatment to white patients – this is literally in the data,” explained Chowdhury. “Taking that data and putting it into an algorithm simply trains it to repeat the same actions that are baked into the historical record.”

Other reports have shown that an algorithm used in one region kept Black patients from getting kidney transplants, leading to patient deaths, and that COVID-19 relief allocations based on AI were disproportionately underfunding minority communities.

“All algorithms have bias because there is no perfect way to predict the future. The problem occurs when the biases become systematic, when there is a pattern to them,” she said.

Chowdhury suggested that citizens have the right to know when algorithms are being used, so that the programs can be examined critically and beneficial outcomes to all people can be ensured, with potential harms being identified and corrected responsibly.

With respect to the increased use of technology in education, she asked, “Has AI ‘disrupted’ education or has it simply created a police state?” Here, too, she offered ample evidence of how technology has sometimes gone off course. For instance, she shared a news report from this spring from the United Kingdom, where an algorithm was used by the exam regulator Ofqual to determine the grades of students. For no apparent reason, the AI system downgraded the results of 40% of the students, mostly those in vulnerable economic situations.

Closer to home, a University of British Columbia professor, Ian Linkletter, was sued this year by the tech firm Proctorio for a series of tweets critical of its remote testing software, which the university was using. Linkletter shared his concerns that this kind of technology does not, in his mind, foster a love of learning in the way it monitors students and he called attention to the fact that a private company is collecting and storing data on individuals.

To combat the pernicious aspects of ed tech from bringing damaging consequences to schooling, Chowdhury thinks some fundamental questions should be asked. Namely, what is the purpose of educational technology in terms of the well-being of the student? How are students’ rights protected? How can the need to prevent the possibility that some students may cheat on exams be balanced with the rights of the majority of students?

“We are choosing technology that punishes rather than that which enables and nurtures,” she said.

Next came the issue of privacy, which, Chowdhury asserted, “is fascinating because we are seeing this happen in real-time. Increasingly, we have a blurred line between public and private.”

She distinguished between choices that a member of the public may have as a consumer in submitting personal data to a company like Amazon versus a government organization. While a person can decide not to purchase from a particular company, they cannot necessarily opt out of public services, which also gather personal information and use technology – and this is a “critical distinction.”

Chowdhury showed the audience a series of disturbing news stories from over the past couple of years. In 2018, the New Orleans Police Department, after years of denial, admitted to using AI that sifted through data from social media and criminal history to predict when a person would commit a crime. Another report came from the King’s Cross district of London, which has one of the highest concentrations of facial-recognition cameras of any region in the world outside of China, according to Chowdhury. The preponderance of surveillance technology in our daily lives, she warned, can bring about what has been deemed a “chilling effect,” or a reluctance to engage in legitimate protest or free speech, due to the fear of potential legal repercussions.

Then there are the types of surveillance used in workplaces. “More and more companies are introducing monitoring tech in order to ensure that their employees are not ‘cheating’ on the job,” she said. These technologies can intrude by secretly taking screenshots of a person’s computer while they are at work, and mapping the efficiency of employees through algorithms to determine who might need to be laid off.

“All this is happening at a time of a pandemic, when things are not normal. Instead of being treated as a useful contributor, these technologies make employees seem like they are the enemy,” said Chowdhury.

How do we enable the rights of both white- and blue-collar workers? she asked. How can we protect our right to peaceful and legitimate protest? How can AI be used in the future in a way that allows humans to reach their full potential?

In her closing remarks, Chowdhury asked, “What should AI learn from human rights?” She introduced the term “human centric” – “How can designers, developers and programmers appreciate the role of the human rights narrative in developing AI systems equitably?”

She concluded, “Human rights frameworks are the only ones that place humans first.”

Award-winning technology journalist and author Amber Mac moderated the lecture, which was opened by Angeliki Bogiatji, the interpretive program developer for the museum. Isha Khan, the museum’s new chief executive officer, welcomed viewers, while Simces gave opening remarks and Rabkin closed the broadcast.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

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Note: This article has been corrected to reflect that it was technology journalist and author Amber Mac who moderated the lecture.

Autograph book resurfaces

Susi and Mænni Ruben, Copenhagen, 1960s. Mænni Ruben’s autograph book, compiled in Theresienstadt, is the focus of a new online exhibit launched by the Victoria Shoah Project. (photo from Victoria Shoah Project)

The Victoria Shoah Project has launched a virtual exhibit of an autograph book compiled by Mænni Ruben, a Danish violinist and graphic artist held prisoner at Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp outside of Prague.

The 1945 Theresienstadt Autograph Book Exhibit features panels and the 40-page book itself, which is replete with signatures, sketches and aphorisms from Ruben’s friends and acquaintances who were also incarcerated at Terezin.

The book records the closing period of the war as survivors were being liberated. It is a story not only of the horrors of Nazism, but of long-lasting friends, and the music and art that united them during dreadful times.

Ruben died in 1976 in Copenhagen. Though he never lived in or visited Canada, the book remained with his widow, Susi, who remarried after his death and settled in Victoria. Upon her passing, in 2018, the book came into the hands of Rabbi Harry Brechner of Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El. He subsequently showed it to member Janna Ginsberg Bleviss, who became the coordinator of the exhibit project.

“When the rabbi showed the book to me last year, I could see right away that it was special and should go to a museum. It is in remarkable condition for being 75 years old and is a tremendous addition to Holocaust studies,” Ginsberg Bleviss said.

“I was fascinated by the book – who were these people and what happened to them? Reading the pages filled with optimistic greetings, illustrations and pieces of music was like finding a hidden treasure, waiting to be opened. I wanted to discover who these people were and hear their stories,” she added.

“This virtual launch [which took place Aug. 20] is meant to honour both Mænni and Susi, and the memory of those whose lives intersected in space and time in the Theresienstadt camp. None of the artists, musicians, composers or rabbis who wrote in the book are alive, but we can sense their lives through their traces here,” said Dr. Richard Kool, a member of the Victoria Shoah Project.

A number of panels show the powerful drawings of artist Hilda Zadikow, whose husband, sculptor Arnold Zadikow, died at Theresienstadt. One depicts the coat of arms of Terezin under a Magen David made of barbed wire. Another features three sad, grey sketches of the camp itself. In a third, there is a happier scene of colourful opera figures.

Her inscription in the autograph book reads, “Your old friend Hilda Zadikow wishes you all the best and delight in beauty.”

A poignant message comes from Rabbi Leo Baeck, an intellectual and leader of the German Jewish community and the international Reform movement, who wrote: “What you forget and what you don’t forget, that is what decides the course of your life will take.”

Pianist Alice Sommer Herz, the subject of the 2007 book A Garden of Eden in Hell and the 2013 Oscar-winning documentary The Lady in Number 6, was another prisoner at the camp. Sommer Herz, who died at age 110 in 2014, wrote in Ruben’s book: “In memory of music at Theresienstadt and in strong hopes of a better future.”

And a touching note comes from Miriam Pardies, someone Ruben seems to have known only in passing: “We know each other only from having greeted each other in a friendly way, but that too is a good memory,” she writes in the book.

“There is a huge educational value to these pieces for students learning about the Holocaust, or for researchers who want to continue exploring the stories of these most interesting people during an important time at the end of the Second World War,” remarked Brechner.

Ruben and his family were sent to Theresienstadt in 1943. A place where the Nazis kept prominent Jews, the camp housed musicians, intellectuals, artists, religious leaders and hundreds of children. In 1944, the inmates performed a concert for German visitors and the visiting International Red Cross – the performers were forced to act as though life at the camp was normal.

Losing his father at the camp, Ruben returned home after the war. A few years later, he met his wife. They married and both played in the Copenhagen Youth Orchestra – she on cello and he on violin. Mænni Ruben also worked as a graphic designer and Susi Ruben as a fashion designer; they were together for 24 years.

After her husband died, Susi Ruben’s company sent her to Israel, where she met Dr. Avi Deston. They married in 1978 and went to South Africa for 13 years, where Deston taught physics at the University of Transkei. On his retirement, they came to Victoria, in 1992.

The autograph book will be donated to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg for their Holocaust gallery. To view the virtual exhibit, go to terezinautographbook1945.ca.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Museum tries to instil hope

Canadian Museum for Human Rights researcher and curator Dr. Jeremy Maron discussed some of the issues the museum faced in deciding what to exhibit. (photo by Rebeca Kuropatwa)

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg is one of the newest museums on the block. Dr. Jeremy Maron, a CMHR researcher and curator, discussed some of the issues the museum faced in deciding what to exhibit. The March 4 brown-bag lunch meeting at the University of Manitoba was open to students and the general community.

Maron’s main work at the museum is on the fourth floor, an area dedicated to the Holocaust. Displays on three perimeter walls take a case study approach, emphasizing themes closely related to the Holocaust as well as universal human rights.

“The first theme we look at is the abuse of state power,” he said. “This wall explores how Nazis used and deployed instruments of state power, such as the police, judiciary, laws and regulations, and even education to undermine human rights … and acquiring total dictatorial control of German society, promoting their racist and antisemitic ideology, targeting Jews and other specific groups for social exclusion and persecution, ultimately culminating in genocide.”

photo - Dr. Jeremy Maron makes a point at a March 4 meeting in Winnipeg — Dr. Jeremy Maron makes a point at a March 4 meeting in Winnipeg. *(photo by Rebeca Kuropatwa)*

Maron said the modern nation state, in its ideal sense, is supposed to be the guarantor of human rights. But, in reality, the centralized power of the modern state very often sets the stage for it to be the worst violator of human rights.

“The case of Nazi Germany is a good example of the centralized power and the capacity for it to be mobilized toward the violation of human rights, rather than protection,” he said. “There are many other stories in the museum in which state power is also being utilized in such a manner.

“The second thematic wall in this gallery … moves on to look at persecution and targeting of specific groups in Nazi Germany. This wall explores the increasing intensity of systematic oppression under the Nazis.”

According to Maron, the Allies did not fight the Second World War specifically because they were trying to save the Jews in Europe. However, their winning of the war ended the Nazi massacre of Jews, which continued nearly up until the day of the Germans’ surrender.

“Another exhibit, from which we try to draw human rights connections, is a large digital study table in our Breaking the Silence gallery, also on level four,” said Maron. “This gallery looks at breaking the silence specifically as a human rights act.”

Human rights violations are always accompanied by silence, distortion, justification, minimization and denial, he said. Perpetrators want to hide their crimes; victims who survive may feel scared for themselves or their families, or feel ashamed; witnesses and bystanders often look the other way, so the cycle continues.

The goal of the CMHR is to encourage people to speak out about these violations, to drag the violations out into the light of day and pursue justice, recovery and reconciliation, he said.

“This particular exhibit, Breaking the Silence … looks at a wide scale of human rights violations, putting an emphasis on how people have responded to them in order to break silence,” said Maron. “We tried to place the emphasis of the human rights response in this particular case. It’s a question of focus that tries to adopt a forward-looking perspective, rather than one that is trying to wholly examine the past in and of itself.”

While some visitors feel that the message and exhibit is too watered down, Maron said this was necessary to a certain degree, as the museum’s main focus is to educate and not to horrify or shock.

“It’s not just a sense of sensitivity we think about, it’s also a question of a fact,” said Maron. “Sometimes, when confronted with material that is explicitly horrific, even for someone like myself who has worked on this material extensively, it almost can shock you into silence as it overwhelms you. I think back to when I was doing my master’s in 2005. I went on a Holocaust commemoration tour [and] we toured Auschwitz. After you go through the gas chambers and you see the walls and the showerheads, you get back on that bus and you are just beaten down. You are sitting there and the guides are trying to debrief and talk, but no one wants to talk because they are beaten down.”

While the CMHR does not back away from the truth or gloss over troubling aspects, they choose to visualize these histories differently, he said. One of the concepts the museum is designed to highlight is that everyone’s actions are the result of choices, and that the consequences of these choices are not inevitable.

“That’s not to say that there are not constraints on choices,” said Maron. “If you’re in the midst of a particular human rights catastrophe and you do something like hide a potential victim in your attic, it’s very possible that you might be targeted as well. So, there are constraints on choices in certain historical circumstances. But, it’s still important to consider that these are choices and actions, and what happens isn’t inevitable. Some objects in the museum speak to some of the less obviously consequential choices that individuals might have made that allowed the Holocaust to be perpetrated on that scale.”

While Maron understands that it’s impossible to know for sure what a single individual could have done, with his display, he hopes to create a deep and meaningful reflection for CMHR visitors and, especially, students.

How to convey a history of conflicts accurately without reigniting tensions is another challenge the museum has taken into consideration, by using careful word choices and avoiding blanket statements. But, maybe the most important aspect and aspiration for the CMHR is ensuring that visitors leave with a sense of hope.

“This hope is not a naive hope that everything is going to be OK, but that … hope is possible as long as we promote the human rights of everyone, and the idea that hope is possible if people are willing to make hard choices and take action,” said Maron. “So, again, we hope our visitors leave with the idea that change is possible if people are willing to do something, while silence and acquiescence is the ally of rights violations.

“Until atrocities are recognized and acknowledged, until people believe action is possible, cycles of violations will continue. Such cycles, we hope, our museum, in some small part, can help improve by inspiring a lot of hard work and devotion by our visitors, who may become dedicated human rights advocates and defenders.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Museum of Human Rights hopes to inspire

Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum of Human Rights is now open for visitors. (photo from CMHR-MCDP)

The Sept. 19 opening ceremonies for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) were broadcast live on several networks, and live streamed on the CMHR website (humanrights.ca). The opening celebrations lasted through the weekend, with more than 40 performances at the Forks market and downtown Winnipeg, including free public tours of the museum and a concert on Saturday night, featuring Buffy Sainte-Marie, A Tribe Called Red, Shad, Marie-Pierre Arthur, Ashley MacIsaac and others.

The excitement among museum staff was palpable ahead of the opening weekend, said Matthew McRae, a museum representative. “Everyone here, whether they started two years ago or two months ago, has put in so much work to make this project happen. It’s truly amazing to watch all the little bits I’ve worked on coming together to make a whole. What’s more, this is really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

McRae has been with the museum for two years, researching gallery content and gathering background on different feature stories for the museum’s core exhibits. When asked to pick his favorite story from the museum, he said, “There are lots of amazing stories I’ve had a chance to research during my time here, so it’s hard to pick just one. However, the story Wilcox County High School’s first integrated prom, held in 2013, is something I’m very happy it made its way into the museum. The school, located in southwest Georgia, in the U.S.A., had never had an integrated prom.

“In 2013, Mareshia Rucker and her friends decided they wanted to be able to go to prom together, regardless of their skin color or background, and so they fundraised and organized their own integrated prom, despite opposition from some members of the community. Their story got picked up by the international media and, in the end, the school announced it would hold an official prom for all its students in 2014.”

McRae conducted an oral history with Rucker and the young woman’s prom dress will now be featured at the museum. “A prom dress is not something you would normally associate with human rights, but that’s perhaps what’s so neat about it,” said McRae. “It tells people that human rights struggles can come in all sorts of forms, and it tells people they are still going on today, all around us.”

Ensuring people from around the world can access and use the museum’s content and knowledge base has been a major focus. While the museum does not have specific projections for online attendance, McRae said, “We are expecting people to log on from all across Canada and the world. There will be lots of chances for people to feel connected to Canada’s new national museum.”

The museum will continue working with various community groups, human rights organizations, academics and stakeholders. There are plans to organize and participate in many events, including lectures, panel discussions and art projects.

“This will involve anything we can think of to build awareness and education about human rights and to encourage public discussion from multiple perspectives,” said McRae. “We will pilot a national student program in 2015 and hope to eventually bring students from across Canada here for an immersive educational experience in human rights.”

The museum has also developed programs for school groups and the public, so all ages can make the most of having a human rights education hub in Winnipeg.

“Above all else, the museum will be a place of inspiration where people can learn about the many different ways people as groups and individuals have worked to promote human rights, resist violation and overcome adversity,” said McRae. “This is the only museum in the world solely devoted to human rights awareness and education, and we explore human rights concepts with an international scope, but through a uniquely Canadian lens.

“As the first national museum established outside the National Capital Region, the CMHR will be a source of Canadian pride – not to mention an iconic piece of architecture already being noticed around the world.”

“Gail Asper fought to have her father’s dream become a reality,” said Stephanie Lockhart, who attended the opening ceremonies with her husband. “She brought this incredible dream to life. What a tremendous gift for our children, our children’s children, and for many generations to come. To be able to visit this place and have the opportunity to learn all about our human rights – the history, for good and bad – their view of human rights will be transformed and actualized because of what they will have learned in this spectacular place.

“For me, the museum truly represents one of the most significant accomplishments articulating the dignities of humankind. All human beings are born free and equal with dignity and rights.”

MLA Andrew Swan, minister of justice and attorney general, said, “I was truly inspired by the opening ceremonies…. As a lifelong Winnipegger and Manitoban, I am fiercely proud that the CMHR is located here, the first national museum outside of Ottawa/Hull.

“My favorite moment was watching [singer] Maria Aragon – a young woman from a local school and daughter of an immigrant family – perform at the opening.”

Winnipeg City Councilor Jenny Gerbasi was also in attendance. “There was a significant inclusion and a feeling of deep respect for Aboriginal, Inuit and Métis communities throughout the event,” said Gerbasi. “I was very moved by the words of Dr. Wilton Littlechild, when he talked about ‘a new spirit and a hope for positive change … a call to action and honoring the human rights of all people.’

“The umbrellas had to come out as rain started prior to and throughout the ceremony … but it did not dampen the spirits or the sense of excitement of the audience.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.