education

Anne Frank exhibit on now

Created in 1995, the traveling exhibit Anne Frank: A History for Today is on display roughly 300 times a year. Mainly for school groups, people can visit the exhibit at Seaforth Armoury Nov. 11. (photo from Anne Frank House)

The traveling exhibit Anne Frank: A History for Today, hosted by the Consulate General of the Netherlands, is at Seaforth Armoury until Nov. 21. An opportunity for school groups to learn about Anne’s story and the legacy of her diary, the exhibit tours have already sold out, but the public is welcome to visit on Remembrance Day, Nov. 11.

While this is not the first time the exhibit has been in Vancouver, its presence at the armoury and museum is poignant. Started in 1920 by Scottish Canadians, infantry from the Seaforth Highlanders were on the ground in Amsterdam on May 8, 1945. They entered the city as part of the Allies’ liberating force.

Following months of battles and Germany’s surrender, the Seaforth Highlanders offered humanitarian aid to the city’s population. The close ties between the regiment and the people of the Netherlands are commemorated every year.

The school tours at Seaforth Armoury are led by volunteers trained by Phyllis Lewis, a staff member of Anne Frank House, said the house’s director of Canadian activities, John Kastner.

Arriving on Nov. 5, the exhibit required about six people half a day to set up, then there was peer training. The response to the call for volunteers was excellent, said Kastner, as has been the level of interest from local schools.

“I think the premise is from Anne Frank House in Amsterdam – there’s real value for people to become ambassadors of the message. People that are close to the same age as Anne are particularly effective when it comes to relaying the message of the diary,” he said.

Not all the exhibit’s stops are in metropolitan areas. Kastner described its journey to Anne Frank Public School in Vaughan, part of the Greater Toronto Area, then it went to Marathon, a mining community on the shore of Lake Superior, then to All Saints High School in Toronto, before being displayed at Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery (Canada’s national military cemetery) and the Dutch consulate in Vancouver, which sponsored it.

And the exhibition will keep moving, said Kastner. “It’s been very busy in 2025 – demand has been very steady and it has hardly been in storage at all.”

Created in 1995, the Canadian exhibitions are just some of the many around the world, in languages including Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, Korean, Macedonian and two forms of Portuguese. In total, the exhibit is on display roughly 300 times a year.

Paired with a 30-minute film, Who was Anne Frank?, the tour takes about 90 minutes. It comprises 11 panels of information that are the same worldwide and the 12th panel is curated specifically for the region. The version that arrived in Vancouver this week references the liberation of Amsterdam and all the panels are in both English and French, which is the case for all the Canadian showings, though the exhibit for northern Ontario is also in Inuktitut.

The docents bear a responsibility as ambassadors for Anne’s legacy and message, said Kastner. “You want people who are in classrooms, at dinner tables, in peer groups at schools, who are aware of the story, that become advocates of fairness, opponents of racism, opponents of prejudice, and we really see it in real life – that those docents become docents of the message of Anne Frank House.

“Every generation that comes through, you create a new generation that becomes familiar with the story and the messaging of Anne Frank – not only what she went through, but her optimism in a world surrounded by hate, prejudice and violence…. As people go through the exhibit, they become aware of what an important story it is,” said Kastner. “They come to realize that it is, by definition, a history for today – that it has relevance in today’s society.”

photo - Anne Frank, in 1941. The traveling exhibit Anne Frank: A History for Today is at Seaforth Armoury until Nov. 21 — Anne Frank, in 1941. The traveling exhibit Anne Frank: A History for Today is at Seaforth Armoury until Nov. 21. *(photo from Anne Frank House)*

Kastner spoke about his personal connection to Anne’s remarkable outlook and values, referencing her often-quoted diary entry of July 15, 1944: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

“I wish we could all be as optimistic as Anne was,” he said. “It was remarkable.

“There have been many periods since the Second World War when we’ve had many reasons to be pessimistic, and that’s why it’s a history for today. It’s a recurring message that continues. After 75 years, it still has relevance.”

Kastner praised the design of the exhibit, calling it “fantastic.”

“There’s a timeline ribbon that goes down the centre … the date and the year. Above the ribbon is what is happening in the world politically at the time. Below the ribbon is how it’s impacting people – Anne, her family and everybody else,” he explained. “The idea is that [some people think] what you see on the news doesn’t really matter…. This says, it should matter, it does make a difference. And that creates an awareness of current events, of being involved … of speaking out. Even in minor cases of prejudice, it’s problematic and [can lead] to a greater problem.”

When talking about this idea in Marathon, Kastner gave the example of name-calling. “Calling someone a name, a slur, we can see it as problematic but not the end of the world,” he said. Or, “graffiti on a kid’s locker, that’s not very nice, but it’s not the end of the world – but it leads to a huge problem when [such actions] become the norm.”

Kastner spoke highly of the 3D model of the house, which is “one of the great learning tools that goes with the exhibit.” There is power in asking teenagers, “Who can tell us where Anne slept?”

“When I went to Anne Frank House to work there, where my workspace was, I’d be looking at the courtyard and at the Annex, looking at the tree, and it’s absolutely surreal,” he said. “Being in the presence of that kind of history. There’s no replacement for that.”

It’s the same tree Anne would have seen.

“I’d be in her father’s office at the warehouse and there are all sorts of people traipsing through the house,” he said, and he’d think about “how you [would have] had to be deathly quiet, completely stationary, because people were using that office.”

Certain questions come up time and again. Students want to know how the Holocaust started, for example.

“The Holocaust didn’t start with people getting loaded on trains,” Kastner explains to the kids. “The Holocaust started with all sorts of things that Anne talks about – her bike being taken away, not being allowed to swim in the public pool, not being allowed to take public transit, then extended to larger things. Her dad not being allowed to have a job or own property.… It starts by slow increments.”

At Anne Frank Public School in Vaughan, the kids asked Kastner how Anne’s diary got published. He described the return of Anne’s father, Otto Frank, to the Annex, which had not changed since the day their hiding place was discovered. He told the students that Miep Gies, who had helped hide Anne and her family, “had taken the diary after the Nazis had left and kept it, gave it to Otto and he read through it and then said, I should publish this.”

Kastner said the kids marvel at the serendipity, the turn of events that led to “one of the most important books written by somebody under the age of 16.” He added, “The kids say that it’s amazing that [Otto] survived, that he got the book, that somebody wanted to publish it and then the idea that it’s become standard reading for millions of kids 70 years later.”

During the exhibition’s stop at Beechwood Cemetery, Kastner recalled two students asking him, “What is it about Jewish people? Why do they pick on Jewish people?” And, “Why didn’t somebody do something?

Kastner explained the scapegoat theory to these students. “It’s in Shakespearian plays, it’s throughout history: the idea of a common enemy often solidifies a group,” he said.

Each exhibition site brings different opportunities for learning, said Kastner. Getting it to remote locations can be tough but it’s worthwhile. Shipping the panels to Marathon, for example, was challenging, but Kastner applauded the motivation of the school there as “very noble and progressive.”

“Every place it goes, it has a different impact and it’s going there for a different reason,” said Kastner of the exhibition.

“The message,” he said, “is in Anne’s experience, Anne’s death – that has relevance in today’s society.”

Shula Klinger is an author and journalist living in North Vancouver.

OJC hosts Oct. 7 memorial

On the weekend of Oct. 11-12, the Okanagan Jewish Community Centre hosted a memorial exhibit to mark two years since Oct. 7. It was designed as a series of information booths, to allow visitors to engage with the material at their own pace. (photo from OJC)

On the weekend of Oct. 11-12, the Okanagan Jewish Community Centre (OJC) hosted a memorial exhibit to mark two years since the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel. The program brought together Kelowna, West Kelowna and Okanagan area residents, the Jewish community, other faith groups and allies, as well as local, provincial and federal elected representatives and some of their staff.

The exhibit, created by Mila Shapiro and Harley Kushmier, was designed as a series of information booths, to allow visitors to engage with the material at their own pace. Each station explained different parts of the story: the historical context, the scale of the violence and the hatred that drove it. Displays showed how people from all backgrounds – left or right, foreign nationals or Israelis – were targeted and suffered the same nightmare.

One of the most difficult-to-view sections showed video footage recorded by the Hamas terrorists during the attacks. The reaction from visitors was intense, with many saying it was overwhelming, but also something they needed to see to understand the scale of the cruelty.

image - poster showing Canadians who died on Oct. 7 — *(photo from OJC)*

On the Saturday evening, the guest speaker, Nitzan, shared her story of Oct. 7 to a room filled to capacity.

Nitzan, who preferred to go by her first name for this article, grew up in a small northern town in Israel, where having to take refuge in a shelter wasn’t necessarily a scary experience.

“Back then, we didn’t have Iron Dome, we didn’t have an alarm system,” she said. “We heard the whistle and then the boom.

“As we grew older, my sister moved to the south of Israel, where she fell in love and built her life in Kibbutz Be’eri, an amazing peaceful, community. Be’eri made the desert bloom.”

On Oct. 7, Nitzan’s sister sent a photo of her and her family in their safe room. “I called her, asking why they were in the safe room, what’s happening. She said the amount of rockets is insane. We’re in the safe room, but I’m not sure what’s going to happen to the people partying at the music fest – they have nowhere to go.”

A few minutes later, “She was outside with the kids and, on a video call, I said to her, what if they come?”

The family returned to their safe room, said Nitzan. But the doors to safe rooms don’t lock. “You have to hold the handle up,” she explained.

Fifteen minutes later, texts started flooding in – attackers were in the kibbutz, they were breaking into people’s homes.

“As the night went on,” said Nitzan, “they, Hamas, were burning the houses, smoking people out of their homes, shooting, killing, murdering whoever they could. They broke into my sister’s house five times. She and her husband held onto the door, not letting go, not letting them in.

“As the night went on, her texts were begging for help, saying goodbye, not thinking they were going to make it through the night.

“Her husband’s family all live in the kibbutz – his two sisters and his mom. His mom was hosting her sister, her husband and son. They didn’t make it,” said Nitzan. His mom, Pessi, her sister Hanna, husband Zizi and son Tal were all killed.

“My friend Abouya answered my texts, saying he’s holding onto the door and then he stopped reading my messages. They had shot him in the stomach, and he died at home. He was a close family friend…. His grandkids, two 12-year-old-year-olds, a boy and girl, Ynai and Liel, were being held in Pessi’s house. They were murdered with her. The terrorists gathered 15 neighbours, murdering 12 of them.”

photo - Attendees were asked to light a memorial candle — *(photo from OJC)*

Nitzan knew many others who were killed.

“I ended up in an emergency room,” she shared. “I couldn’t bear the horror. I was throwing up, sweating, shaking. When I got to emerg, the doctor told me he had to give me something to calm me down. I said, I can’t take it. If I need to make the decision to go home, I need to be able to make it. He looked at me and understood. When I saw him a few months after, he asked me, how are you doing? Did your family survive?

“They did, and I am so grateful for that.”

Nitzan spoke about the rising amount of antisemitism in Canada and around the world.

“We have to stick together, we have to find each other, support each other and find why,” she said, mentioning former hostage Eli Sharabi’s book, Hostage, in which he describes meeting Hersh Goldberg-Polin, another hostage, who was murdered in the tunnels of Gaza with five others in August 2024. Goldberg-Polin told Sharabi, “If you have the why, you’ll find the how” to survive. Sharabi talks about how this idea, also expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche (“he who has a why to live for can bear almost anything”) helped him survive 491 days in captivity.

“It has been two long years, years of hurt, of pain,” said Nitzan. “I wish for all our hostages to come home … victims’ bodies are still there. I wish for us to be united, to know that we are stronger together, that we have many friends that support us and that we are not alone.”

photo - Booth thanking community and allies — *(photo from OJC)*

The evening concluded with a Q&A session. Questions and comments ranged from the sharing of personal experiences, to questions for Nitzan, to concerns about antisemitism and the growing fear that many Jewish Canadians are now living with.

On Sunday, Liel, who also didn’t want her surname used for this article, shared her story about Oct. 7. She spoke about the loss of someone very close to her and the continuing impact that day has had on her perspective and sense of community. As well, she discussed the challenges on Canadian and American university campuses, describing how painful it has been to witness the reactions and divisions that have emerged.

“We can’t stop talking about the victims of the seventh of October,” said Liel, the more than 1,200 “innocent people who lost their lives in senseless violence,” and those who were kidnapped.

“We can’t forget about the heroes of that day,” she said, talking about the soldiers and civilians who fought hard that day, the “heroes that saved countless lives by sacrificing themselves. We must keep all of their memories alive by continuing to remember them and talk about them, and share their stories.”

“As a Jew, I carry the weight of my ancestors’ pain and resilience. Our voice must never be silent,” said Kushmier about why it was important for him to help create this exhibit. “The pain in Israel and in the Jewish diaspora has been profound, yet we rise above the hate. We stand as ourselves, stronger and united, showing the world that we will endure, heal and continue to thrive.

“Every generation of our people has faced hardship, but we have never been broken,” he said. “Through centuries of persecution, we have built communities, told our stories, and held onto our faith. Our people are strong, and our unity is our power. In the face of hatred, we choose love and life.”

Shapiro said the Oct. 7 massacre hit very close to home, and her family lost someone very close to them at the Nova music festival.

“My land and my people are suffering and I believe it’s critical to bring historical facts and context to the forefront, so others can truly understand the roots of this conflict,” she said. “Only through education and awareness can we make change toward truth and justice.

“In addition, in the aftermath of such a horrific tragedy, I believe it can be deeply healing to come together in mourning – to honour and remember those who were brutally murdered, massacred, burned and tortured. Their lives were taken in unimaginable ways, and we owe it to them and to ourselves to remember their names, their stories and their humanity. Mourning together is not just an act of remembrance – it’s an act of resistance against forgetting.”

In a city where the Jewish community is small but strong, the exhibit was a chance to learn, to bear witness and to connect, said Kushmier and Shapiro, who thank Nitzan for sharing her story.

They also thank their families and the volunteers, including Bitachon (security) members, who assisted with the two-day exhibit, which was funded by donations from the Okanagan Jewish Community Centre and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, and included material from StandWithUs.

Samantha Kushmier is a member of the Okanagan Jewish Community, and mother of exhibit organizer Harley Kushmier.

New fall lecture series

White Rock South Surrey Jewish Community Centre’s first-ever Fall Speaker Series, starts Oct. 29, with a talk on Jewish immigration to Canada. (image designed by Chloe Heuchert)

On Oct. 29, I will help launch White Rock South Surrey Jewish Community Centre’s first-ever Fall Speaker Series, which will also feature presenters from the Jewish Genealogical Society of British Columbia and the Jewish Museum and Arch-ives of British Columbia over the coming months.

For my presentation, I will give an introduction to the history of the Jews in Canada and some of the adversities they have had to face. I start off with the first known Jewish settlers, who came here in the 1760s, following Britain’s conquest of New France. So, Jews first came to Canada when it was under the British colonial rule. While there were no legal restrictions on them, the opportunities for integration into public life and to hold public office were limited.

One of the earliest Jewish settlers was Aaron Hart, a fur trader who lived in Trois-Rivières, Que. The Hart family was influential over generations and laid the groundwork for Canada’s first Jewish community, in Montreal, in the late 1760s.

Most formal Jewish communities – which grew into the ones we inhabit now – were established in major Canadian cities during the 19th century. Most of these Jewish Canadians would have been small business owners, farmers and traders. While small in number, they established the first synagogues and communal organizations.

During the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, a significant surge of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe occurred. Between 1880 and 1920, Canada’s Jewish population grew from a few hundred to tens of thousands. These individuals found jobs as garment workers, shopkeepers and tailors, among other things, contributing to the industrial economy. They formed organizations, published English and Yiddish newspapers, held social gatherings, etc. In the larger community, Jewish immigrants were regularly at the forefront of labour, social justice and human rights movements, in part because of their own experiences with marginalization.

While Jewish immigrants had thriving communities, they also faced adversity. Antisemitism dates back millennia, before there was even a word for it. In the context of the first Jewish settlers in Canada, Jews were often treated with suspicion and faced social exclusion. Certain professions, institutions and clubs were closed to them. Different publications and political figures depicted Jews as a threat to Canadian morality and economic stability. Restrictive measures were put in place in the 1910s and 1920s, as Jews were seen as “undesirable.” The 1923 Immigration Act severely restricted Jewish and other immigration. (Most notably, it effectively banned Chinese immigration.)

Antisemitism continued to be prevalent during the interwar years, becoming more organized and explicit. Hotels, social clubs and resorts often displayed signs barring Jews and there were several groups advocating for even more restrictive policies. The government of William Lyon Mackenzie King was antisemitic and, during the Second World War, only permitted a small percentage of Jews into Canada – the attitude of “none is too many,” in reference to Jewish immigrants, applied. Many Jewish boys and men were put into internment camps and the government imposed strict financial responsibility requirements on those wanting to sponsor others to enter the country or be freed from internment. While immigration policies began to loosen after the Holocaust, antisemitism is an ongoing challenge in Canada.

White Rock South Surrey Jewish Community Centre’s new speaker series was created to highlight and celebrate Jewish heritage and identity in Canada. Its goal is to engage the community in exploring Jewish genealogy, culture and history, while encouraging intergenerational dialogue and a personal connection to the past. Ideally, it will serve as a platform for education, reflection and preservation of Jewish life in Canada, inspiring attendees to delve into their own histories and contribute to the broader communal narrative.

To register for any of the series talks, go to wrssjcc.org.

Chloe Heuchert is an historian specializing in Canadian Jewish history. During her master’s program at Trinity Western University, she focused on Jewish internment in Quebec during the Second World War.

Human rights in sports

The seventh annual Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights, organized by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Vancouverites Zena Simces and Dr. Simon Rabkin, and Equitas-International Centre for Human Rights Education, takes place Oct. 23, at noon, via Zoom. It tackles the topic of The Match-up Between Human Rights and Sports: How Both Can Win Well in Today’s Landscape.

According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “sport is anchored in human rights values. It promotes fairness, non-discrimination, respect and equal opportunities for all. As it reaches billions, including young people, it is a conduit for societal change through empowerment and inclusion.” Despite being anchored in human rights values, sport also faces human rights-related challenges through various forms of discrimination be it sexism, racism, ableism, classism or others. The Oct. 23 dialogue will explore the benefits of sport as a force for good in upholding human rights, the challenges currently faced by the Canadian sport system, and pathways to strengthen the balance between sports and human rights so that both win by promoting well-being for all.

The expert panelists featured will be Bryan Heal, Jeff Adams and Armeen Kadwa. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions and share comments.

Heal is social impact research lead with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), heading such initiatives as the MLSE Foundation’s Change the Game research program for youth in Ontario.

Adams, a labour, employment and human rights lawyer, is a Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame inductee. He won three gold medals in the Paralympics: twice in the 800-metre (1996 and 2000) and once in the 1,500-metre (2000) wheelchair racing events.

Kadwa is founder and executive director of the nonprofit Hijabi Ballers, which is dedicated to creating positive sport experiences for Muslim girls and women.

The panel will be moderated by Wendy MacGregor, a consultant, educator and lawyer, and founder and executive director of Athlete Zone. She has a master’s in law on abuse and maltreatment of athletes. Her published work focuses on the root causes of sport violence, maltreatment prevention, power imbalance and wellness in sport.

To register for the free public event, go to humanrights.ca/event/matchup-between-human-rights-and-sports.

– Courtesy Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights

Ruta’s Closet reissued

Lady Esther Gilbert speaking at Vancouver City Hall April 8, when Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim proclaimed Ruth Kron Sigal Day in the city. (photo by Keith Morgan)

Ruta’s Closet, the Holocaust narrative of the late Vancouverite Ruth Kron Sigal, is being reissued for a new generation of audiences – and the book’s author is ensuring the survivor’s inspiring story of survival and resilience reaches the widest possible global audience.

Vancouver journalist Keith Morgan, who completed the book shortly before Kron Sigal’s passing, at age 72 in 2008, has updated the publication – and created an extensive range of multimedia projects to expand the impact of the written volume.

First issued as a fundraising initiative for the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Ruta’s Closet was later published in the United Kingdom, with distribution there reaching new audiences.

The book recounts the harrowing survival story of the Kron family, imprisoned in the tiny Shavl (Šiauliai) ghetto in Lithuania, through the eyes of the youngest daughter, Ruta (later Ruth). Their survival against Nazi persecution hinged on the courage and resourcefulness of her parents, Meyer and Gita Kron, as well as the bravery of non-Jewish rescuers. Depicted with novel-like narrative power but rooted in rigorous research and eyewitness testimony, the memoir vividly portrays atrocities such as mass murder, a Nazi ban on Jewish births and the deportation of children to Auschwitz, while also shining a light on courage, compassion and human resilience amid the evil.

Kron Sigal didn’t live to see the book in print but she saw the final draft.

“She said to me shortly before she died, ‘You are going to carry on telling my story, Keith, aren’t you?’ And I said, of course I am,” Morgan told the Independent. “So, I took that on as a mission.”

Surveys indicating widespread ignorance of Holocaust history, combined with skyrocketing antisemitism, motivated Morgan to launch a series of Ruta’s Closet-related projects.

“We updated the book and decided it was time to go basically worldwide with this,” he said.

In addition to the re-release of the hard-copy, Morgan and his small team of colleagues recorded an audiobook and released an ebook. They revamped the existing Ruta’s Closet website and made it more interactive.

Working with Bill Barnes, a local radio producer, Morgan developed a 25-segment podcast.

“We are doing Zoom interviews with people around the world who are a part of a driving force behind an imaginative, creative initiative in spreading Holocaust awareness and education,” he explained. “I’ve got Ruth’s kids – Michael, Marilee and Elana – each week doing an introduction for book clubs.”

The VHEC has produced a downloadable guide for book clubs, as well as a teacher’s guide to the book, which makes it additionally relevant as British Columbia’s education curriculum mandates Holocaust education this year for the first time as part of the Social Studies 10 coursework.

“The beauty of it, for British Columbia, is it’s technically a local story,” Morgan said. “It’s about Ruth. It’s about somebody who came here and did a lot for her adopted society.”

photo - Journalist Keith Morgan, author with Ruth Kron Sigal of Kron Sigal’s memoir, Ruta’s Closet, is ensuring that her story of survival and resilience reaches the widest possible audience — Journalist Keith Morgan, author with Ruth Kron Sigal of Kron Sigal’s memoir, Ruta’s Closet, is ensuring that her story of survival and resilience reaches the widest possible audience. *(photo from Keith Morgan)*

Morgan, who spent many years as the crime reporter at the Province newspaper, met Kron Sigal when his editor asked him to take on a more uplifting assignment and begin a series about people doing good works at home and abroad.

“Somebody said, ‘Oh, you should talk to Ruth Sigal,’” who was sharing her Holocaust story with students. “I went to meet her. I was very impressed. She told her story and it had an amazing impact on me. I just knew this was an important story to tell.”

He found immediate support from Dr. Robert Krell, the founding president of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

“Robert Krell kind of took me under his wing – he was a close friend of Ruth – and he said, ‘I’ve got just the guy to introduce to you, who will be really helpful to you for pulling the story together.’”

The person was renowned historian Sir Martin Gilbert.

“The British schoolboy in me thought, ‘How do I curtsy?’” Morgan joked.

Morgan met Sir Martin in London and got a one-on-one master course in writing about the subject.

“He looked me right in the eye and said, ‘You have to tell the story as though you were writing it for your newspaper and make it accessible to all people,’” Morgan recalled. “Sadly, Martin died [in 2015], but Lady Esther Gilbert took up his mantle and, since then, she’s been an ally and was very important in this edition in terms of going through it, adding bits here and there.”

She spoke at a ceremony at Vancouver City Hall on April 8 this year, when the mayor proclaimed Ruth Kron Sigal Day in the city.

Kron Sigal’s story resonates profoundly with people, according to Morgan.

“We can all relate to what happened to Ruth and her sister Tamara,” he said. “It also tells us compelling stories about how, through their own devices, they basically survived and helped others along the way. We also see what other members of the family did to help the broader community.… We get this family story, which, in itself, is very dramatic, but we also get this wider picture of how a community in the ghetto work with each other, help each other.”

Morgan sees Kron Sigal’s narrative as an inspiration not only because of her survival against the Nazis but in all she did after becoming a Canadian.

“Ruth came here, an adopted country, and spent 25 years at the Women’s Resource Centre and the VHEC Child Survivors Group,” said Morgan. “That’s an example to everybody: come into a new society, an adopted country, and just roll up the sleeves and get working. Isn’t that an example to anybody that comes in?”

No less a triumph, Morgan said, is the family Ruth and her husband, Dr. Cecil Sigal, created.

“You look at that family and you think, ‘Victory!” he said. “Because they beat Hitler.”

Teaching about Shoah

Lise Kirchner, director of education of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, demonstrates the online exhibition Fragments in Focus: A History of the Holocaust (photo by Pat Johnson)

The school year that begins next month is the first in British Columbia to include mandatory Holocaust education in the curriculum. As teachers throughout the province prepare to address this challenging topic in the classroom, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre has unveiled a wide-reaching online exhibit to both assist educators and to launch students into independent exploration on the complex network of moral and historical issues the subject raises.

In October 2023, the BC government announced that Holocaust education would be mandatory in the Grade 10 social studies curriculum beginning in the 2025/26 academic year. Many teachers were already addressing the topic as part of Social Studies 10, which covers the Second World War. An elective course, Genocide 12, also exposes students to the history of the Shoah. However, this is the first year that it will be impossible for a student to complete Grade 10 in the province without some exposure to the Nazis’ attempts to destroy the Jewish people and other groups they deemed undesirable.

While mandating that the topic be covered, the ministry of education’s guidelines for learning outcomes are extremely vague. Lise Kirchner, director of education of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, said teachers have great flexibility in how to address the topic – and how much time to give it.

“The teacher can choose to spend four minutes, four hours or four months on the subject,” she said.

Given that many teachers will be seeking trusted resources to teach this material for the first time, the VHEC’s exhibit promises to deliver everything educators need to address the subject effectively, no matter how much class time they allocate to it.

“Over the last 18 months, the VHEC has been working with the ministry of education to articulate this new learning standard for Social Studies 10 and also to develop teaching resources to support educators as they implement Holocaust education in the classroom,” Kirchner told attendees at the VHEC’s annual general meeting in June, where she demonstrated the new online resource.

The exhibition is called Fragments in Focus: A History of the Holocaust. It has been produced with the support of the Digital Museums Canada investment program and the financial support of the Government of Canada. The website is in English and French and meets accessibility standards for people with disabilities.

The online exhibit showcases more than 160 primary sources, including artifacts, survivor testimonies and archival records from the VHEC’s collections, presenting the history of the era through these items.

Fragments in Focus explores Jewish life in Europe before the war, the Holocaust and its impacts, and postwar Jewish life. Users can explore digital 3D models of artifacts, engage with an interactive map and hear from survivors – most of those featured settled in British Columbia after the war – adding human faces and stories to the artifacts and the broader history.

Accompanying the Fragments in Focus exhibit are 20 integrated learning activities and a comprehensive teachers’ guide, providing everything required to navigate the exhibit, construct a complete unit on the Holocaust or supplement existing lessons using unique primary sources, according to the VHEC.

The VHEC’s education team is also available to support educators as they prepare to cover these topics, offering training workshops throughout the province.

Textbooks, which earlier generations might associate with high school, are mostly a thing of the past. Online resources have replaced most hard copy resources, making Fragments in Focus both relevant and accessible.

Historical introductions to each of the exhibit’s sections lead into artifacts, and students can then pursue their own explorations by finding out more about the individual associated with the item, their experience of survival and their life after the war.

For example, students can view a recipe book created by Rebecca Teitelbaum while she was an inmate in Ravensbruck women’s concentration camp. Risking her life, she stole paper, pencils and thread to compile the collection of favourite foods. The tiny booklet became a source of comfort for the women in Ravensbruck, allowing them to imagine a future of well-being and plenty.

The late Alex Buckman, Teitelbaum’s nephew and himself a survivor of the Holocaust, inherited the recipe book, which he eventually donated to the VHEC. During speaking engagements to young audiences, Buckman would share his aunt’s recipe for gâteau à l’orange and some students would make the cake at home, while sharing with their families what they had learned at school.

With the new exhibit, students can explore the recipe book, expand the image to see the stitching that held the book together, and then read transcripts of the recipes. More than this, they can then dig deeper and learn about the family’s story, of Rebecca’s survival and her reunification with her husband, Herman, and daughter, Annie. They can hear Buckman’s story of how he survived but lost both his parents and was raised by the Teitelbaums.

Students also can see the correspondence Rebecca received while in hospital after the war, informing her that both Herman and Annie had miraculously survived.

These artifacts and records help put this almost inconceivable history into context, said Kirchner.

“They now are reading these intimate letters between husband and wife, where they are dreaming of being together again with her daughter,” she said. “I think it brings a whole different dimension to how we understand history, the importance of these primary objects.”

The fact that almost all the objects have a BC connection adds richness to the experience, she said.

As director of education, Kirchner has led a team in bringing Fragments in Focus to fruition. Though the exhibit was in development before the province announced the curriculum change, the shift helped guide the VHEC team to make the resource especially responsive to the needs of educators and students.

Fragments in Focus is based on an earlier physical exhibit developed by former VHEC director of education Ilona Shulman Spaar, former executive director Nina Krieger and others, including Kirchner, who has been involved with the VHEC for about 25 years in various capacities.

“We mounted In Focus – we didn’t call it Fragments in Focus – as the first exhibition in the new renovated space,” Kirchner told the Independent, referring to a major upgrade to the museum in the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Centre, which substantially increased the capacity to display items from the collections. “It was kind of a celebration of the fact that we had just digitized our entire collection – that was a very big project. With the new visual storage facilities, it gave us the ability to actually have multiple artifacts on display, over 100, so that was a pretty big deal for us.”

The ongoing digitization of the VHEC’s entire archives allows global audiences to access its collections. For BC students, starting within days, Fragments in Focus will open doors for self-guided learning.

“We give them just enough information so they can put it in context, but also pique their curiosity a little bit so that they start to see themselves as the ones that ask these questions and start to make sense of this history and to give it meaning. It’s taking ownership of that history,” said Kirchner. “We are just planting seeds and making sure they have enough information to ask the right questions and to see the complexity of that history.”

The online exhibit launched Aug. 20 at fragmentsinfocus.ca and is available to everyone.

The school year ahead

Back to school is a time of excitement and anxiety for parents and kids. It is a time of new beginnings. For Jewish people, it generally coincides, as it roughly does this year, with the new year and the High Holidays. This confluence creates a somewhat chaotic frenzy in many households.

Jewish tradition is deeply tied to cycles of time, weaving renewal and return into every layer of life. The turning of the calendar is reflected not only in Shabbat, the progression of holy days and the annual cycle of Torah reading, but also in agricultural rhythms, the monthly sanctification of the new moon and daily prayers mapping sunrise, midday and nightfall.

This year, as we move from the beginning of the school year through the procession of holidays, we approach the anniversary of Oct. 7, and the terrible realization that the surviving hostages in Gaza have been held for nearly two years – as well as the continued reality facing Israelis, Palestinians, Jews worldwide and everyone who cares about human life.

As the new school year begins, Jewish families have additional anxieties, knowing as we do that the public school system – not least some teachers’ unions in Canada, including the one in British Columbia – in many cases have not only failed to address the unique challenges faced by Jewish students but exacerbated existing problems while creating new ones. Almost everyone has heard anecdotally of insults and distress faced by Jewish students in public schools, and the situation on post-secondary campuses locally and internationally has been in the news for all the wrong reasons for most of the past two years.

Additionally, this school year marks the first in which British Columbia’s education system officially mandates the teaching of the Holocaust. Most students did learn about the Holocaust before, but it had been left up to the discretion of individual teachers. Now, the Social Studies 10 curriculum requires that the topic be included. (See jewishindependent.ca/teaching-about-shoah.) This is something that the Jewish community and others have long promoted.

It does, however, create new openings for challenges. Given the allegations of genocide in Gaza, and overheated rhetoric against Israel in the public discourse – often invoking the memory of the Holocaust, the mantra “never again” and the appropriation of Jewish historical experiences for political advantage – there is a real possibility that individual teachers in the comparative privacy of their classrooms will attempt to inculcate anti-Israel narratives in the guise of genocide education. We expect there will be reports of inappropriate comparisons made between the Jewish experience in the Shoah and current tragedies in the Middle East – and we know that most such incidents will never be reported.

It should never have come to this with regard to antisemitism, but powerful new generations of Jewish leaders have been forged on university campuses and, yes, in high schools and even elementary schools, rising to occasions they should never have had to meet, but doing so in ways that often have surprised even themselves. As tough as the past two years have been, all evidence so far points to young Jews continuing to rise to every challenge.

When all is said and done, we hope that the next generation of our community grows up stronger, smarter and more determined, individually and collectively. To students and parents: May you go from strength to strength this year and always.

What to do with all our stuff

Recently, I was in the car with one of my twins and we were discussing how easy it is to accumulate too much stuff. We’d just had a conversation with a neighbour who mentioned that his sibling had moved into their parents’ house as an adult. It was a large, old home, now sadly so full of stacks of papers and other belongings that one had to turn sideways to navigate some of it.

I commiserated with my neighbour, misunderstanding the level of hoarding. I imagined how hard it must be to move, as an adult with a household, into a home already full of one’s parents’ belongings. Alas, our neighbour said, it was a mental health issue. It’s sometimes referred to as a hoarding disorder or Diogenes syndrome. It was serious.

In the car with my kid, we found ourselves understanding how people get to this point. He said, quite astutely, that our society pushes “more, more, more.” We both agreed that it is hard to resist the siren song of acquisition that we’re constantly hearing. Choosing to stop, clean, tidy and cull things and acknowledge what we don’t need is even harder than resisting new acquisitions.

I was faced with my own “hoarding” scenario. My personal, free email account is more than 20 years old. Suddenly, I got a warning about a month ago that the storage on these accounts would be slashed dramatically. I could choose to pay a fee every month or delete a lot of messages. My husband got a similar warning, but his account was not as old or big as mine. Even so, we commiserated, because deleting some of these saved emails felt painful. Save the baby photo elsewhere and then delete the message? One by one, it didn’t seem to make a dent. Eventually, I figured out how to move older messages to a folder on my computer and I didn’t have to delete messages from people I’d loved who have now died; I didn’t have to cull every family photo.

Still, this exercise made us look around. My kids, about to start high school, decided that they didn’t need about 75 books on their shelves, acquired over the years from Scholastic book fairs, PJ Library and elsewhere. They are making plans to sell or donate the books.

Each kid, getting ready for a new school year, worked to empty out enormous middle school binders. They recycled tons of paper. They acknowledged that we no longer needed a Grade 5 workbook leftover from those pandemic days of learning at home. Both kids realized we needed to make space in their backpacks: for new intellectual growth and a new school year.

As my kids grow physically this summer, I’m knitting as fast as I can to make them new sweaters for winter but I’m knitting a sweater now out of “stash” yarns that I acquired when they were infants. Both kids are now bigger than me. The sweaters I make from now on will likely be too big for me when they outgrow them.

This is a balancing act, of course. It’s normal in our household to get some new things for a new school year, even if we reuse the old stuff, too. This celebration of something new even has a word for it in Modern Hebrew. We might say “Tithadash!” or “May it renew you!” when you see someone with new belongings.

At the same time, I’ve been studying the Babylonian tractate of Avodah Zarah. It explores how Jews are to interact with non-Jews or those who might worship idols. One of the concepts it covers is whether one can reuse anything that might have been used by someone who engaged in idol worship. This is a complicated topic. It involves both “decommissioned” idols and whatever was used to sacrifice to the idol. One also must consider whether any of these items might be ever “reused” in Jewish worship or sacrifice, in the days when the Temple still stood in Jerusalem. It goes even farther, examining what one does about an idol created by Jews in the first place, like the Golden Calf. The tractate is sometimes confusing because it’s in so much detail.

That said, I returned to something else the text seemed to be telling us. In some cases, these items can be reused. The underlying message explores what we waste or throw away, versus how we can give things “new lives” even if their first use wasn’t ideal.

Nobody is worshipping idols at our house, but we’re discussing reuse, as well as the acquisition of new things for the upcoming school year. I see 14-year-olds evaluating their lunch bags and considering making themselves new ones. There was a pile of shirts in the give-away pile after we cleaned up today. I even saw a completely tidy sock drawer. This may never happen again!

I’m not sure how to always resist or even push back against our consumerist culture. However, the talmudic debate over physical leftovers from idol worship and what might be used again and/or refurbished made me realize that this struggle isn’t new. Just as we hope our kids are off to learn more with each school year, we also hope they’ll hold onto the good, sweet things that they embodied at younger ages, too. New, shiny ideas and things are tempting, but there’s something powerful and potentially meaningful about reuse, too.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

FSWC gives workshop

Left to right: Emily Bonnell-Marcus (Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre), Zelda Dean (Emanu-El), Johanna Herman (FSWC), April Nowell (Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island), Frances Grunberg (JFVVI) and Jaime Stein (FSWC, Western Canada). (photo from FSWC)

On Aug. 12, more than 80 people from diverse faith backgrounds gathered at Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El for Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s flagship antisemitism education workshop – Antisemitism: Then and Now.

Geared for professionals, community members and volunteers who are interested in combating hatred, the workshop is presented by Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island in partnership with FSWC. It is designed to build historical understanding of antisemitism and the Holocaust, examine how antisemitism shows up today, offer practical strategies to recognize and respond to antisemitic rhetoric and behaviour, and strengthen an organization’s capacity for allyship and inclusivity.

While in British Columbia, FSWC advocacy team members also attended the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference. During the event, they strengthened their partnership with the Canadian Police Knowledge Network to advance the development of a national antisemitism training module, which will be made available to police services across the country. They also established new connections to support their law enforcement training initiatives, and promoted the upcoming Building a Case Against Hate Conference in Vancouver, scheduled for February.

For more information, visit fswc.ca.

– Courtesy Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre

Power of propaganda

Understanding the past, including the darkest eras, can help people recognize the symptoms of a society going off the rails.

A forthcoming book for young readers, titled Can Posters Kill? Antisemitic Propaganda and World War II, by Torontonians Jerry Faivish and Kathryn Cole, explores how propaganda and racist imagery desensitized a society to atrocities.

Faivish, a retired lawyer, has collected Jewish posters since young adulthood, building one of the world’s largest private collections. The son of Holocaust survivors, he created this book with Cole, an illustrator, art director, editor, designer and publisher, to educate young people about the dangers of hatred and the powers of persuasion used for evil ends.

The richly illustrated publication spotlights how vivid imagery and repetition intended to evoke fear, distrust, loyalty or revulsion served to influence populations to accept (even collaborate in) barbarism.

“By understanding the visual language of propaganda from the past, we can learn to recognize and resist messages of hate – an essential skill in a digital world where information is spread in seconds,” according to the publisher, Second Story Press.

Aimed at readers 13 and up, this book about the past has its purpose firmly planted in the present and future.

“Like social media today,” write the authors, “visual communication in the ’30s and ’40s – from movies to newspapers to paper posters – was clever and interesting, engaging and effective. But, under Nazi manipulation, it became deadly.”

The focus of the book is visual, befitting a volume of this topic, with just enough copy to contextualize the imagery and point out salient aspects that the reader might not have noticed. It is also perhaps a perfect mix of text and graphics for the generation it aims to reach.

The authors provide a brief overview of the post-First World War economic conditions in Germany, the impacts of the Treaty of Versailles, and Hitler’s rise to power. This history tilled the soil for the hate-messaging showcased.

“A false message, when repeated often enough, can become the truth in the minds of people who are frightened, oppressed and searching for someone to blame for their misfortune during hard times,” the book warns.

Can Posters Kill? also delves into how graphic design played into the success of the brainwashing – “clever use of different typefaces grabs the attention of passersby,” among other innovations.

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ minister of propaganda, who more than any other individual is associated with this sort of material, did not overestimate his audience.

“The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine,” he is quoted in the book. “Propaganda must, therefore, always be essentially simple and repetitious. In the long run, only he will achieve basic results in influencing public opinion who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in the simplified form, despite the objections of intellectuals.”

The messages his department imparted were subtle as sledgehammers.

In one poster, a doctor or scientist is looking through a microscope at a vicious “Jewish” disease devouring healthy tissue. Jews are characterized as sexual deviants and blamed for spreading tuberculosis, syphilis and cancer.

“It’s a chilling message because it can quickly turn into ‘kill or be killed,’” the book says.

In another poster, a Jew hovers menacingly over the globe, spinning a web from his index finger.

“This reinforces the Nazi-supported notion that Jews are power-hungry and backed by secret cabals or conspirators,” the authors write.

Jews are depicted as the mortal enemy of Christianity and the Star of David is equated alongside the communist red star, implying a dual-pronged threat to German society.

Faivish shares his family’s story: his mother’s experiences in various ghettos, work and concentration camps, and at extermination sites such as Auschwitz, and his father’s defiant escape from a cattle car headed for the gas chambers. Faivish’s father lost his parents and his eight siblings in the Holocaust. His mother had just one surviving brother and one remaining sister out of a family of 10.

Faivish goes into some detail about the experiences of his mother in the constellation of Nazi ghettos and camps, and his father’s unlikely survival in hiding, thanks to a gentile Polish family. He places significant emphasis on the heroism of non-Jews.

“After the war, my parents met in Bergen-Belsen, the DP camp where they married and started a family,” he writes. “My older sister was born there in 1949.… In 1952, my parents immigrated to Canada. In 1953, I was born in Montreal. For my parents, the question of how to deal with recurring hate, and what could be done about it, was more than philosophical. It became a guideline for how to live their lives and what to pass on to their children. The lessons they taught us are still applicable and valuable today.”

He includes nine values his parents instilled in him and that he hopes the book will pass on to others, including: be proud of who you are and embrace your faith and culture [because the] aim of the “Final Solution” was to annihilate Jews and to destroy Judaism; respect your fellow human beings and treat them well; and recognize and eliminate hate and evil as much as possible.

A timeline of historical events and an excellent glossary of relevant terms are included at the end of the book.

As British Columbia and other provinces institute mandatory Holocaust education in school curricula, books like Can Posters Kill? Antisemitic Propaganda and World War II provide powerful resources for educators to convey the lessons of history in ways that are impactful but age-appropriate, with undeniable and clear lessons around critical media consumption for contemporary generations.

While not formally related, the book is also a valuable complement to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre’s current exhibition, Age of Influence: Youth & Nazi Propaganda, which is being reconfigured into a traveling exhibit.