genocide

Definition of genocide

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, coined the term “genocide” in 1944. (photo from Arthur Leipzig Estate, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, via ushmm.org)

Anna-Mae Wiesenthal was in the United Kingdom recently and passed a table in Dublin that was accusing Israel of perpetrating genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. She engaged the people at the table in conversation.

It was a small act of dialogue between a few individuals, but it reflects what Wiesenthal views as a vital act in mutual understanding.

Encouraging conversations like these is one of the reasons the Vancouver educator recently led a course at Temple Sholom on the definition of genocide.

Wiesenthal holds a master’s degree in Holocaust and genocide studies and is about to defend her PhD dissertation in the same discipline. Both degrees are from Gratz College, in Pennsylvania. She retired last year as a teacher at Vancouver’s King David High School.

The three-class course at Temple Sholom addressing the emotionally and academically challenging topic of genocide comes at a time when

Israel is being accused of perpetrating crimes against humanity in Gaza. The topic has immediate resonance. Wiesenthal’s intention, however, was to take a more nuanced approach to the subject.

“My goal when I retired is to continue to be an educator in different capacities,” she said. After discussions with Temple Sholom’s Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, she put together the course, which ran on three consecutive Wednesdays, ending March 19.

The focus, she said, was an examination of the concept, introducing students to when and why the term “genocide” was coined, in 1944, by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, and looking at its definition, examining the wording and identifying problematic components.

In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined “genocide” as: “Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting conditions intended to destroy the group in whole or in part; imposing measures to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

“The word ‘intent’ in the definition is problematic,” Wiesenthal said, as an example of the exploration the class undertook. “How do you prove intent?”

The goal of the course, she said, was “to come out possibly with more questions or appreciation for the complexity of the definition.”

The small group of students analyzed the 10 Stages of Genocide, a framework developed and introduced in 1996 by Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, the founder of Genocide Watch, to help identify the warning signs of genocide and prevent it before it escalates.

These steps include classification (dividing people into “us” versus “them” based on ethnicity, race, religion or nationality); symbolization (assigning symbols or names to distinguish groups, such as the yellow Star of David for Jews in Nazi Germany); discrimination (dominant groups deny rights to a specific group, often through laws or policies); dehumanization (the targeted group is compared to animals, vermin, insects or diseases to strip them of their humanity); organization (genocidal acts are planned and coordinated, often by governments, militias or extremist groups); polarization (propaganda and hate speech are used to drive society further apart, making violence seem justified); preparation (authorities or groups begin making lists, planning logistics and even building camps or weapons for mass killing); persecution (victims are identified, isolated and deprived of rights, for example, forced deportation, concentration camps, starvation); extermination (the mass killing of the targeted group begins, often justified as “cleansing” or necessary for national security); and denial (perpetrators cover up evidence, deny crimes, blame victims or rewrite history to avoid accountability).

“It’s not always linear,” Wiesenthal said of the 10 stages. “Some of the stages can overlap, some of the stages may not necessarily be present, but it’s a way to identify and help you predict. If we see conditions of the stages unfolding then perhaps we can predict more accurately that there is groundwork being laid for genocidal actions.”

While Wiesenthal wanted to encourage depth of understanding on the topic, its immediacy – with Israel being accused of genocide by groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – led some students, and the Independent, to pressure her to comment on current events.

“What do we say when somebody says Israel is committing genocide?” Wiesenthal asked. “I could ask a question like: What is your understanding of genocide? What does that mean to you?”

If Israel wanted to commit genocide, Wiesenthal noted, they have the military capacity to have done so on the first day of the war. This is perhaps the most immediate, if not entirely nuanced, response.

“You can make all kinds of arguments about how there was or wasn’t enough humanitarian aid and food trucks entering Gaza,” she said. “The fact is there were food trucks entering.”

There could be legitimate discussions about what Hamas did with that aid once it entered Gaza. But, she said, the larger issue is that governments that plan on committing genocide do not provide victims with humanitarian aid, nor do they provide vaccines for children, as Israel has done.

Military experts, such as John Spencer, who specializes in urban warfare, has said that the civilian casualty ratio in Gaza is “historically low for modern warfare” and cites Israeli Defence Forces estimates that 50-60% of Gazans killed have been civilians, well below the 80-90% of civilian casualties typical in modern conflicts.

Spencer has praised the Israeli military’s efforts to minimize non-combatant harm, citing mass warnings to Gazan civilians, providing evacuation and relocation directives to reduce casualties, and the use of “roof knocking” techniques before airstrikes.

While Israel has been condemned for using 2,000-pound bombs in urban areas, Spencer has claimed that these are standard for penetrating fortified underground structures, like Hamas’s extensive tunnel networks, and contends that their use is not intended to cause unnecessary destruction but to legitimately and effectively serve military objectives.

Wiesenthal turns the genocide narrative around, noting that Hamas has explicitly dedicated itself to committing genocide against Israelis and Jews, both in writing and in its repeated expressed statements.

“It is part of Hamas’s charter and something they verbally repeated, that their goal is to get rid of Jews, and their readiness to commit Oct. 7 over and over again,” she said.

This goes to the challenging issue of intent on the part of both Israelis and Hamas, she added.

“If given the opportunity, Hamas [has said it] would kill every Jew in Israel and destroy Israel,” said Wiesenthal. “Israel is not targeting the Palestinian people or the Palestinian population in Gaza. Their campaign is solely directed at the terrorist organization Hamas, which is existentially threatening Israel. Israel is responding to a genocidal attack.”

On Holocaust education

Next year, for the first time in British Columbia, the Holocaust will be a mandated topic for Grade 10 students. Until now, the task of teaching this most important subject has fallen upon impassioned teachers and dedicated organizations like the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC).

Like many Jews, however, I’m left with many questions about this new curriculum. The first is, why only Grade 10? What can be taught in a term (or even a year) that will adequately distill the story – the full story – of the Holocaust and its impact on today’s societies?

My husband, who taught grades 2-12 in British Columbia, defends the introduction of Holocaust studies so late, arguing that students are more receptive at Grade 10 to critical thinking about complex topics, like the events, attitudes and political forces that led to the Holocaust.

True, perhaps, but addressing today’s rising antisemitism, a goal cited in the province’s announcement last fall, will take more than a single year’s high school course. Linking the lessons of the Holocaust to the dangers of today’s misinformation about Jews and Israel is vital, but changing societal mindsets takes years. A 2021 survey of North American teens by the Canadian nonprofit Liberation75 provides an idea of the challenge ahead: nearly a third of respondents 13-17 years of age (most of whom were Canadian) either didn’t know what to think about the Holocaust, thought the numbers of Jews murdered had been exaggerated, or thought the Holocaust never happened. Those findings are concerning, especially when paired with similar results from an Azrieli Foundation survey of Canadian millennials two years earlier.

As the VHEC has demonstrated in its programs, there are ways to introduce Holocaust education at a younger age – and to continue the discussions, adding more complexity and detail as children get older. British Columbia’s Grade 12 curriculum currently includes an elective on genocide studies, but even though the Holocaust is a suggested topic, there is no requirement that teachers include it. Some teachers might teach about the world’s largest genocide, some may not.

How the new curriculum addresses this topic will have other implications for how future generations interpret its lessons. As B’nai Brith Canada’s Richard Robertson points out in the article in this issue on the Rodal Report (page 32), the Holocaust was far from just a “European issue.” At home, for example, the Holocaust had profound implications for Canada’s immigration policies, both when it came to limiting entry of Jewish refugees and its quiet acceptance of Nazi war criminals. Today’s debates about Holocaust education are testament to the need for its expansion, not only on its history in Europe, but what occurred here after the war.

For all these reasons, we should be introducing Holocaust studies earlier in schools. Jewish traditions have much to contribute to the discussion of pedagogy. Jews are innovators when it comes to making sure that our youngest generations are exposed to history, including our ancestors’ many encounters with antisemitism. For thousands of years, our tradition has ensured a safeguard against collective amnesia: we teach the young. We use the tools that best apply to the age group and the subject, and recognize the value of instilling a collective memory about the discrimination our people have faced. We use anecdotes and stories to impart historical lessons. For example, our children are taught from the earliest ages, at Purim, about how Esther and Mordechai averted a national pogrom and saved their people from genocide. The story of Hanukkah reminds children not to take our faith for granted, but to stand up for our principles.

No doubt, the curriculum for Holocaust studies will go through many changes in the coming years. What is clear, though, is that we have an imperative to make sure this history is taught.

Jan Lee is an award-winning writer. Her blog can be found at multiculturaljew.polestarpassages.com.

Victoria’s Walk to Remember

On May 25, members of the Rwandan community in Victoria held a Walk to Remember, in memory of the victims and in solidarity with the survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. (photo from Victoria Rwandan community)

This spring, members of the Rwandan community in British Columbia have been commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. On May 25, a group in Victoria held the Walk to Remember in memory of the victims and in solidarity with the survivors of the 1994 genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi.

Afterwards, a ceremony was held at Camosun College’s Gibson Auditorium. Throughout the event, called Kwibuka30, speaker after speaker, most of whom told their stories in Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda, recalled members of their immediate families who were killed during that horrific period. (Kwibuka is the word for “remember” in Kinyarwanda.)

In the organizers’ words, the event was intended to offer “blessings for continued courage and resilience to remember and unite,” and express their desire to “renew our resolve to pursue the transformation of tragedy into triumph.”

Anselme Hategekimana, one of the leaders of the Rwandan community in Victoria, stressed the importance of remembering. “Remembering is an expression of an enduring love for those we’ve lost during the genocide against the Tutsi. Remembering makes us better citizens, as we do everything we can to combat hate speech, exclusion and any type of discrimination.”

Among those in attendance were the children – many of whom are now in their late teens and early 20s – of Rwandan genocide survivors. Hategekimana said he and other survivors were encouraged to see young people take leadership in the march and commemoration.

“Due to social media, young people are now more informed and can understand the consequences of bad governance and intolerance,” he said. “These young people are the leaders of tomorrow, and we are pleased to see more and more engaged young people for the cause of peace and understanding.”

From April 7 to July 19, 1994, Hutu militias in Rwanda killed members of the Tutsi minority. Hundreds of thousands of people were massacred – estimates vary from 500,000 to more than one million – in a 100-day period, which also included the killing of moderate Hutus and members of the Twa population.

The killings were preceded by decades of stigmatization, marginalization and dehumanization and fueled by hate speech. By the early 1990s, Rwanda’s population was 85% Hutu and 14% Tutsi. At the time, Hutu extremists within Rwanda’s governing elite blamed the Tutsis for the country’s social and economic problems.

In October 1990, civil war broke out when a Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, invaded the country from Uganda. Extremist Hutus held the Tutsis in Rwanda responsible for supporting rebel forces from another country.

The civil war, which ended with the signing of a peace agreement in August 1993, did not appease the anger of extremist Hutus, who took to the airwaves to dehumanize the Tutsis further, referring to them as “cockroaches.”

In April 1994, a plane carrying Rwanda’s president, Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down by a missile as it tried to land in Kigali, the country’s capital. Though it is unknown which group fired the missile, extremist Hutus used the downing of the plane as a reason to massacre Tutsis. Militias, equipped with machetes and trained by the Rwandan government, launched a killing spree – which to this day still shocks because of its rapidity and size – taking the lives of thousands of people each day.

Though some schools in British Columbia cover the Rwandan genocide, Hategekimana believes it would be beneficial to incorporate the subject in the high school curriculum to educate youth to be more tolerant and learn from the tragedy.

“Having a memorial monument dedicated to the victims of the genocide against the Tutsi will also help educate more Canadians,” he said.

Thirty years later, Rwanda, geographically one of the smallest countries in Africa, stands out as a model of prosperity, with one of the fastest-growing economies on the continent. A post-genocide government pursued a policy of “unity and reconciliation” and maintained a focus on economic growth.

As Hategekimana sees it, Rwanda had hit its lowest conceivable point and the only choice was to rebuild and rise. He credits Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda since 2000, for being a visionary leader who came at a crucial time.

“Paul Kagame has been God-given. You may like him or not, but what he has done for Rwanda is indisputable: the empowerment of women, free health care, anti-corruption measures, peace and economic prosperity. Rwandans see themselves as capable citizens able to take their future in their own hands,” Hategekimana said.

Today, tourism in the country is booming, including luxury hotels, and the #visitrwanda hashtag even appears on the jersey of English soccer powerhouse Arsenal. Kigali boasts a new convention centre and a new stadium to host professional basketball games.

Tech startups have also abounded, as has collaboration with Israeli companies. Netafim, a Tel Aviv-based precision irrigation firm, has teamed with the Rwandan government to develop farming in land that was previously unsuitable for agriculture. In 2014, Israel’s Energiya Global invested in a solar power plant project in Rwanda.

Regarding the horrors of 1994, Nina Krieger, the executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC), offered these words to the Independent, “As we mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, we reflect on the significance of bearing witness to atrocities and the enduring power of survivor testimony.

“At the VHEC, we understand the critical role these narratives play in educating future generations and preventing such horrors from reoccurring. The resilience and courage shown by the survivors of the Rwandan genocide inspire us to continue our mission of Holocaust education, underscoring the universal necessity of compassion, remembrance and the commitment to justice.”

In the 2022 commemoration of Kristallnacht presented by the VHEC at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, keynote speaker Liliane Pari Umuhoza, a child survivor of the Rwandan genocide, told the crowd it was important to remember what happened, to preserve the memories of victims and survivors for future generations.

Umuhoza added it was crucial to learn from history and create awareness. Yet, she continued, it was not enough.

“What matters the most is how we use that history to create a better world,” she said. “It’s our duty, not only to remember but also to remember with purpose.”

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

ICJ ruling ‘nonevent’: lawyer

Screenshot of the Jan. 30 HonestReporting Canada discussion on the International Court of Justice ruling on whether Israel is perpetrating genocide. Jonas Prince, chair of HonestReporting Canada, emceed and speakers were Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi, former chief of general staff of the Israel Defence Forces, and Natasha Hausdorff, a British specialist in international law and a former clerk for the president of the Supreme Court of Israel.

The International Court of Justice ruling on whether Israel is perpetrating genocide means little, according to a legal academic speaking to Canadian audiences last week.

“This was a complete nonevent,” said Natasha Hausdorff, a British specialist in international law and a former clerk for the president of the Supreme Court of Israel. “There was nothing substantive found and nothing substantive required or ordered as part of the provisional measures because there is no evidence that Israel is engaged in genocide; quite the contrary.”

Hausdorff was speaking in a webinar Jan. 30 alongside Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi, former chief of general staff of the Israel Defence Forces. The event was presented by HonestReporting Canada, which describes itself as “an independent grassroots organization promoting fairness and accuracy in Canadian media coverage of Israel and the Middle East.”

Jonas Prince, cofounder and chairman of HonestReporting Canada, emceed the event.

“The words war crimes, genocide, proportionality, siege, humanitarian crisis have been weaponized by the media, as well as Israel’s enemies,” said Prince. “The Iron Dome defence against these verbal missiles is knowledge.”

Where Hausdorff brought legal acumen to the discussion, Kohavi offered the perspective of a top military official who has been on the ground, making life-and-death decisions in some of the most ethically dicey situations.

World reaction to the international court’s judgment, which was released Jan. 26, has been mixed, if not confused. The court notably did not call on Israel to end the war and neither did it rule, ultimately, on whether genocide is happening or seems imminent.

The court handed down “provisional measures” that it said Israel was obligated to undertake, including that Israel should do everything possible to avoid killing Palestinians or causing serious bodily or mental harm, creating intolerable conditions, or deliberately preventing Palestinian births. The court also called on Israel to “prevent and punish” public incitement to genocide, citing comments from Israeli officials as examples.

Hausdorff dismissed the last item, contending it was clear that the statements made by Israeli government officials that the court cited were referring to Hamas terrorists and not to Palestinian civilians. With respect to the other aspects of the ruling, she and Kohavi both essentially argued that Israel is already doing what the court demanded.

The wide-ranging discussion focused on Israel’s rights under international law and attempted to correct what the speakers said were misunderstandings of legal terminology. The expression “proportionality” is an example, Hausdorff said, with many people believing that the greater Palestinian death toll is proof of “disproportionality.”

“That is grotesque,” she said, “not least because the corollary of that analysis is often that not enough Jews have died to justify Israel’s response.” It also encourages Hamas’s tactics of using civilians as human shields, she said, “driving up the civilian casualty count as a means of putting pressure on Israel to desist with its lawful military activities.”

Proportionality, she explained, involves military commanders making assessments on whether the military advantage sought by a strike is proportionate to the anticipated collateral damage.

Kohavi emphasized that disparities in death tolls are due to a significant extent to Israel’s defensive technologies – Iron Dome – as well as the secure rooms and bomb shelters constructed for decades in Israeli buildings.

“We have taken steps and measures in order to protect our citizens and that’s why the numbers on our side are relatively low,” he said. “Now, I do not expect Hamas to build their [own] Iron Dome, but they could build shelters. Instead, they have been building their tunnels for their perpetrators, not for civilians.”

For 15 years, Kohavi said, Hamas has embedded its military operations seamlessly throughout the Gaza Strip’s dense urban populations. Israel’s precision targeting technologies allow the military to destroy terrorist targets while harming as few civilians as possible, he said.

Despite a global outcry over the estimated 27,000-plus Palestinians killed, Hausdorff and Kohavi took exception to these figures on several fronts. It is in the interest of Hamas, which compiles the statistics, to maximize them, said Hausdorff. She cited the notorious example of an alleged Israeli bombing of a Palestinian hospital killing 500. Later evidence said it was a Palestinian missile that caused the explosion and that the death toll estimates were exaggerated, possibly by a magnitude of 10. The cumulative casualty tally kept by the Gaza Ministry of Health was never altered downward after initial reports in that case were debunked, Hausdorff said.

The figures also make no differentiation between combatants and civilians, both panelists said. While lamenting all civilian deaths, they said that even in the confined theatre of the highly urban Gaza Strip, civilian deaths tolls are probably significantly lower than in parallel military engagements.

Other data suggest 1.8 civilian deaths to every killed combatant in the current conflict, Hausdorff said, compared with the macabre accounting of the United Nations, which calculates that, in the context of urban warfare, civilian casualties average nine to every combatant death. American figures in wars Iraq and Afghanistan saw civilian death tolls of 3-to-1 and 5-to-1 respectively, she said.

In the circumstance, Hausdorff said, it is “utterly unparalleled” that Israel has kept civilian deaths to the numbers it has “despite every effort that Hamas has made to increase civilian casualties and inflate that toll.”

The court case, which was brought by the government of South Africa, is “extremely problematic,” Hausdorff said, “not just for Israel but for all law-abiding states, for those who uphold and prize the rule of law, that the International Court of Justice would be entertaining this.”

She accused the International Court of Justice of “essentially doing the bidding of a terrorist organization.”

South Africa likes to paint itself as a champion of Palestinian rights, Hausdorff said.

“South Africa is a champion of Hamas, an internationally proscribed terrorist organization,” she said. “No individual who cared about Palestinian rights would be seeking to prop up Hamas given that the Palestinian people have borne the brunt of their brutality and their corruption and their slaughter and torture over the blast 16, 17 years.”

Readers can watch the HonestReporting Canada event at youtube.com/watch?v=FwksgmYqXBs.

Hope amid the conflict

We are still reeling from what happened in Israel on Oct. 7 and the war that has ensued.

Hamas carried out a brutal terror attack on Israel that targeted civilians, murdering 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 200 Israeli hostages. Jews worldwide are grief-stricken, angry and scared. It is hard to see the hope, as images of dead Israelis mix with images of dead Palestinians.

There is no doubt in our minds that Hamas needs to be incapacitated – its covenant explicitly states their intention to eliminate Israel and kill Jews. On Oct. 7, they reasserted their intention with a vengeance that cannot be ignored. Their unambiguous goal is genocide.

Posters we see around Vancouver that simultaneously accuse Israel of genocide for defending itself and call for the genocide of Israelis – “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” – are abhorrent. People who support Hamas’s genocidal actions, implying, or outright stating, that Israelis deserve such cruelty do not care about humanity, do not believe in peace.

The people who are putting up the posters that ask, “Do you support indigenous rights? Then you support Palestine” are implying that Jews are colonizers and, therefore, deserve to be expelled, no matter how. But the Jewish connection to the land goes back thousands of years; we were dispossessed of it but never ceded it.

There are some two million Palestinians in Gaza, and they cannot be similarly dispossessed. More than half the population has been asked to leave their homes. Reports are that more than 4,500 have been killed from Israel’s bombing campaign.

Our hearts break at the type of war that fighting Hamas entails. The terror group uses civilians and civilian infrastructure as shields, ensuring that hundreds or thousands of innocent Palestinians die every time Israel defends itself militarily, even when it adheres to international law in its actions, including allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza.

One way or another, the people who live between the river and sea must find a way to coexist. That is quite literally the only way forward. As simplistic as this sounds, it is nevertheless true. That is impossible with Hamas as the controlling force in Gaza. But, when they are removed, what then? Replacing the figures at the top – whether in Gaza or in the Israeli government, the latter of which is something that will certainly be discussed in the aftermath of this horror – will not automatically negate deep mutual distrust among populations.

There are so many complexities and no end of theories as to how we have arrived at this point. What will happen next is less discussed, though there is the all-too-real possibility that the conflict will become regional – already the 22,000 residents of Kiryat Shmona, the largest community in the Vancouver Jewish community’s partnership region of the Upper Galilee, are being evacuated because of terrorist attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which are expected to increase once Israel begins its ground offensive in the south. Some fear that the Hamas attack is less the main event than a distraction, a trap to lure Israel into an even more existential fight on multiple fronts.

Closer to home, there are security threats to Jews in the diaspora. Thankfully, Hamas’s call for a day of rage on Oct. 13 did not result in serious incidents. But the fear is real, and that is the purpose of terrorism. Jewish organizations and law enforcement agencies are working together to keep us safe. We must continue to live our lives as Jews, and not hide.

Some of our local community members have gone to Israel to fight. Other community members are rallying, marching and postering to make sure that the Israeli hostages being held captive in Gaza are returned home. More than $15 million was raised for Israel in just two weeks by the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s emergency campaign.

And, there are Israelis (Jewish, Muslim, Christian and others) and Palestinians who, despite the terrorist attacks and the war, continue against so many odds to work for peace. Groups such as Standing Together, Women Wage Peace, the Parents Circle, and others are working to shore up hope for peace, equality and coexistence. These groups deserve our support, moral and financial.

At the same time as we support our family and friends in Israel and one another here, as we call for the immediate return of the hostages and as we raise funds for aid, we must also support those activists and dreamers on the ground who advocate for a better postwar world.

Holocaust by bullets

The harrowing history of Ukraine’s past was recounted recently in the annual lecture honouring Rudolf Vrba, the late Vancouver scientist whose 1944 escape from Auschwitz brought the most concrete proof of the Nazi “Final Solution” to the world.

Dr. Nataliia Ivchyk delivered the 2023 Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture, titled The Holocaust in Ukraine: Violence, Gender and Memory. Ivchyk is at the University of British Columbia on a visiting fellowship that was created by Dr. Richard Menkis and Dr. Heidi Tworek to bring to Vancouver a Ukrainian scholar at risk. Ivchyk is associate professor in the department of political sciences at Rivne State University for the Humanities in her hometown of Rivne, Ukraine, and her work is focused on public history and memory politics.

Ivchyk’s presentation was based on survivor testimonies held at the USC Shoah Foundation, and narrowed in on the experiences of Jews in the western Ukrainian region of Volhynia and Podilia. Of the approximately 27,000 Jews who lived in Rivne (then known as Rovno) in 1937, it is estimated that just around 1,200 survived to the 1944 liberation by the Red Army. In a single day, on Nov. 6, 1941, about 21,000 Jews were murdered by Einsatzgruppe C and Ukrainian collaborators. The surviving Jews were imprisoned in the Rovno Ghetto, which was created the following month. In July 1942, remaining Jews, about 5,000, were transported to a stone quarry and murdered.

About 1.5 million Jews died in Ukrainian territory during the war years, most of them shot in what has been called the “Holocaust by bullets.”

“The Holocaust has long remained on the margins of collective memory in Ukraine,” said Ivchyk. Babyn Yar, a ravine outside Kyiv where more than 33,000 Jews were murdered over two days in 1941, has become a national symbol of Holocaust remembrance, she said. “However, the local level of remembrance remained low.”

There are many other sites of atrocities that were committed in Ukraine. “Some are marked by monuments, others are still forgotten and lost,” she said.

Of the several thousand Jews who survived the initial mass executions, anyone over the age of 13 was forced into slave labour.

“Nobody wanted to work for the Germans,” Ivchyk quoted one survivor, “but we had to. We hoped it would somehow balance our relationship with the Germans and would help us survive.”

Violence against women was mainly carried out by Ukrainian collaborators, she said, though Nazis also took part.

“I remember many times Germans came at night, knocked on the windows, took away beautiful girls,” Ivchyk quoted a survivor. “Sometimes, they raped and killed them right away. Sometimes, they said we will come again.”

Rabbis became a particular target of violence against men, given their social and symbolic status, and their role as spiritual leaders.

In the Soviet era, historical memorialization was subordinated to the priorities of the regime.

“The Holodomor [the deliberate Soviet famine that killed millions of Ukrainians], the deportation of Crimean Tatars, the Holocaust and the genocide of the Roma – all of these events were suppressed in collective memory by the Soviet regime,” she said.

Today, support in Ukraine for Holocaust memorialization is ambivalent.

“The activities of the state today do not prohibit academic, educational or public activities in the field of Holocaust remembrance, but neither does it act as a financial or ideological initiator,” she said.

The Vrba event was funded by the Holocaust education committee of UBC’s department of history, which is responsible for the annual lecture, as well as a number of other organizations, including the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and the Diamond Chair in Jewish Law and Ethics.

Menkis, associate professor of modern Jewish history at UBC and chair of the Holocaust education committee, noted that the event recognizes Vrba’s contributions to two primary areas to which Vrba’s life was devoted: Holocaust education and science, particularly pharmacology. The annual lectures alternate between these topics.

Menkis told the audience how Vrba and his friend Alfréd Wetzler made the momentous decision to escape from Auschwitz after overhearing conversations around the planned deportation of Hungarian Jewry. After a difficult and dangerous trek, the pair reached northern Slovakia, where they compiled a report documenting the layout of Auschwitz and the extermination process there.

“Although the report is credited with saving many lives,” said Menkis, “Vrba and Wetzler were keenly aware that more decisive action could have saved more. After the war, Dr. Vrba continued to speak about Auschwitz and his experiences. His book, I Cannot Forgive, written with Alan Bestic, was first published in 1963 and has been issued in a number of translations and re-editions since. He is also well known for his unforgettable testimony in Claude Lanzmann’s [documentary film] Shoah and perhaps less well-known but also important was his effective testimony in the Canadian trials against Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel.”

Vrba’s widow, Robin, attended the event virtually. Vrba died in 2006.

A better understanding

King David High School’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12 class with Liliane Pari Umuhoza. (photo from KDHS)

On Nov. 24, King David High School Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12 teacher Anna-Mae Wiesenthal invited a guest speaker. The class had the opportunity to hear from Liliane Pari Umuhoza, a child survivor of the Rwandan genocide, who is currently doing a master’s degree at the University of British Columbia.

Hearing Umuhoza’s personal story of healing from trauma, as well as her work with other survivors of the genocide, gave our class a better understanding about how genocide affects individuals and how to help them with their personal growth. Especially interesting was hearing about her involvement with the Survivors Fund, and her process of helping women share their stories from the Rwandan genocide. Having Umuhoza speak to our class was an experience we will never forget, and that we will continue to learn from.

Emma Silber is a Grade 12 student at King David High School.

Remembering is not enough

Holocaust survivors participate in the candlelighting ceremony at the community’s Kristallnacht commemoration Nov. 9. (photo by Al Szajman)

Commemorating the Holocaust and the sad succession of genocides that have been perpetrated since is a sacred responsibility – but it is not enough, says Liliane Pari Umuhoza. That memory must be the motivation that drives people to make a better world, she said.

Umuhoza was 2 years old when her father and a million others were murdered during the Genocide Against the Tutsis of Rwanda, in 1994. After experiencing trauma in her adolescence due to that familial and communal history, Umuhoza has devoted her life to commemorating and educating about the genocide and encouraging people to dedicate themselves to healing their societies.

“When we remember, we help ensure that the memories and legacies of the victims and survivors continue to resonate for future generations,” she said at Vancouver’s community Kristallnacht commemoration Nov. 9. “When we remember, we learn about the history and create awareness. But that’s not enough. What matters the most is how we use that history to create a better world.”

The annual event took place at Beth Israel synagogue on the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” on Nov. 9-10, 1938, which is the moment when anti-Jewish regulations and systemic discrimination turned into overt violence and murder. It is seen by many historians as the effective beginning of the Holocaust.

The event was presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC), in partnership with Congregation Beth Israel and with support from the Robert and Marilyn Krell Endowment Fund of the VHEC and from the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign.

Umuhoza arrived in Vancouver several months ago to attend the University of British Columbia, where she is pursuing a master’s degree in public policy and global affairs. She is founder of the Women Genocide Survivors Retreat and is project officer for Foundation Rwanda, which provides funding for education to those who were born from rape during the genocide.

She began by outlining her own family’s history.

“I was 2 years old in the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda,” she said. “During this tragedy, my father was killed. Some of my uncles, aunties, cousins and many other members of my extended family are among the million Tutsi who were killed by the Hutu extremists in 100 days.

“One million people were killed in 100 days,” she stressed. “I was lucky to survive with my mother, who managed to escape to a neighbouring country, Congo, holding me, a 2-year-old baby, where we lived as refugees until it was safe enough for us to go back to Rwanda.”

She considers herself fortunate in comparison with many of her peers.

“I now have a stepfather and stepsiblings and I cannot tell you how blessed I feel because most of my friends from home grew up without a father or a mother figure in their lives,” she said.

Umuhoza was too young to understand what was happening at the time, she said. “But I grew up facing the consequences of that tragedy in every corner of my life. As many of you may know, psychologically, young children between the age of 0 and 5 are the most vulnerable to the effects of trauma since their brains are in the early development stage. For most people who have been exposed to genocide or war as children, the trauma can become severe at the adolescent stage and adulthood, if it is not properly treated.”

At the age of 12, Umuhoza began to exhibit symptoms of trauma, including depression, post-traumatic stress, nightmares, frustration, anger and confusion. She used the strength of others as an example to recover, including a friend who had to take on the parent role from childhood after she and her younger siblings were orphaned. Umuhoza is now deeply immersed in often deeply difficult aspects of education, such as translating the narratives of other survivors through Foundation Rwanda.

“My role with this organization was to listen to the stories of these women in their Rwandan mother language and translate the stories in English so we could use those stories to create awareness and educate the world about the genocide and its ongoing consequences,” she said. “I found myself in a series of stories I’d never heard before … stories of mass murder, stories of pain, stories of rape.”

One of the lessons she learned from the genocide is to never tolerate injustice, no matter how big or small, Umuhoza said.

“Speak up and raise your voice when you see or hear people denying that the Holocaust happened,” she said. “Speak up when you hear people saying that the genocide did not happen. Speak up when you see minorities being unfairly treated. Speak up when you see women in Tehran being oppressed. Let’s dare to step out of our common comfort zone and cultivate empathy to people around us.”

She concluded: “Individually, we can change our communities. But together we can change the world.”

photo - Liliane Pari Umuhoza speaks with Prof. Chris Friedrichs at the Kristallnacht commemoration, which took place at Beth Israel — Liliane Pari Umuhoza speaks with Prof. Chris Friedrichs at the Kristallnacht commemoration, which took place at Beth Israel. (photo by Al Szajman)

Earlier in the evening, Prof. Chris Friedrichs contextualized the history of the Holocaust, emphasizing the importance of synagogues as a place of refuge for Jewish communities. The Kristallnacht commemoration has been taking place in the sanctuary of Beth Israel for more than 40 years, he said.

There were more than 1,000 synagogues in Germany at the time of Kristallnacht, he noted, some many centuries old, while others were newer, having been dedicated in the presence of senior German officials, clergy and others, a testament to the apparent solidity of the Jewish community’s place in the country.

“But then, beginning in 1933, everything started to change,” said Friedrichs, professor emeritus of history at UBC. “Once the Nazis came to power, Germans were taught to shun their Jewish neighbours. Jews were banned from public places. They could no longer go to the theatre or walk in the park or send their children to public schools. But one place was still open to them – their own synagogues, where they could gather to worship or study or simply spend time with their fellow Jews. And so it was until Nov. 9, 1938, when, in one carefully orchestrated nationwide night of terror, hundreds of synagogues all over Germany were set aflame, thousands of Jews were arrested, over 100 were killed. The next morning, Jews found their synagogues turned into empty shells and the windows of their shops shattered into broken shards of glass and the contents plundered. No Jew in Germany ever forgot that night of broken glass, Kristallnacht.”

Irwin Cotler, Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism, spoke via video link to the audience.

Of the Holocaust, he said, “It was a continuation and manifestation of history’s oldest, longest, most enduring and most toxic of hatreds, antisemitism, a hatred that mutates and metastasizes over time, which is grounded in one generic, historical, foundational, conspiratorial trope of the Jews – the Jewish people, the Jewish state – as the enemy of all that is good and the embodiment of all that is evil, which led, therefore, to the demonization and dehumanization of the Jew as prologue and justification for Kristallnacht and the Holocaust.”

A parallel between the Holocaust and the genocide against the Tutsis, he said, is that they were preventable.

“Nobody could say we did not know,” said Cotler. “We knew, but we did not act.”

Corinne Zimmerman, president of the VHEC, opened the event. Nina Kreiger, executive director, introduced the speakers and acknowledged dignitaries in attendance.

Beth Israel’s Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, a child of Holocaust survivors, thanked Umuhoza and reflected on her words and those of other speakers. He understands the idea of trauma being passed down through generations, he said. Reflecting on Friedrichs’ discussion of the centrality of the synagogue in Jewish life, Infeld said his spiritual leadership of the congregation during the construction of the new synagogue building was a form of response to the history of his family and the Jewish people.

Elected officials also spoke at the ceremony. Taleeb Noormohamad, member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville, spoke of his first trip to Berlin, where he walked around the streets of the old Jewish district.

“As somebody who had never really seen firsthand until that trip the horrors of what had happened to the Jewish community and to so many others,” said Noormohamad, “in that moment you come to realize the absolute inexplicable horror that was cast upon people and what it does to people, to communities, to families and to the histories of people.”

He committed to standing with the Jewish community against discrimination and noted the diversity of the audience, which included himself, a Muslim Canadian; Michael Lee, a Chinese-Canadian member of the legislature; and Ken Sim, a Chinese-Canadian mayor.

Parm Bains, member of Parliament for Steveston-Richmond East, was also present, as was Marc Eichhorn, consul general of Germany in Vancouver.

“Antisemitism is not a problem, a fight, that is for the Jewish community alone,” Noormohamad said. “When you look in this room today, we are all in this together. This is our community. You are our family and the remembrance of what happened is our responsibility as much as it is yours.”

photo - Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre president Corinne Zimmerman, left, and VHEC executive director Nina Kreiger with MP Taleeb Noormohamad — Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre president Corinne Zimmerman, left, and VHEC executive director Nina Kreiger with MP Taleeb Noormohamad. *(photo by Al Szajman)*

The Kristallnacht commemoration was the first official community event for Sim, who was sworn in as mayor of Vancouver three days before. He, too, spoke of visiting Germany, along with his wife and their four sons, where they witnessed the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and pondered the Stolpersteine, the “stumbling stones” that have been installed to mark the places where victims of Nazi extermination or persecution lived. The family, he said, has also visited Auschwitz, in Poland, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C.

During the recent election campaign, Sim promised that, as mayor, he would promote the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism, which the previous council failed to do. He repeated his commitment at the ceremony, and council passed the motion on Nov. 16. (Click here and here for stories.)

Sim was joined at the event by Vancouver Councilor Sarah Kirby-Yung, who Sim credited as a stalwart ally of the Jewish community. Together, they read the official proclamation from the City of Vancouver.

“Out of the shards of destruction, in this case the glass on the night of Kristallnacht, often are born the glimmers of hope,” said Kirby-Yung, “and I think that is what keeps all of us going. It is the resilience and faith and the hope of the Jewish community that I think embodies the spirit of what we aspire to deliver here in the city of Vancouver.”

Working for human rights

A gift of Elie Wiesel’s Night was among the forces that influenced Madeleine Schwarz’s career path.

Madeleine Schwarz is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. Not the kind you would expect to build much of her career prosecuting or aiding in the prosecution of war criminals around the world, including the Nazi war criminal known as the “Beast of Bolzano,” who was living on Commercial Drive in Vancouver.

Now based in Toronto, working with the Refugee Board of Canada, Schwarz spoke with the Jewish Independent about a few of her accomplishments.

Raised Catholic, Schwarz was one of seven kids on the block who frequented our house in Vancouver back in the 1960s and early ’70s. Little did we know that she would soon be making history.

She told the Independent that her passion for international criminal law began when she was a teenager and learned about the genocide of the Jewish people.

My parents, Joyce and Bernie Freeman, helped her along her journey by giving her Night by Elie Wiesel, an account of his terrifying time in Auschwitz.

“Your house was very much an introduction to Judaism,” she said. “Yours was a very open, friendly Jewish family. I recall coming to your house for Shabbat dinner in my convent school uniform.”

While studying international relations at the University of British Columbia, Schwarz had a number of Chilean friends who had family members in camps under the dictator Augusto Pinochet. That was her “introduction” to contemporary war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In 1994, Schwarz graduated with her bachelor of laws at Dalhousie University. In 2003, she obtained her master of laws at the University of Ottawa, specializing in international criminal law.

Her first job involving war crimes was at the Canadian Department of Justice. From 1999 to 2005, she worked closely with RCMP officers on investigations into crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in Ukraine, Belarus, Italy and Rwanda.

When Italy found Michael Siefert, a former S.S. guard at a transit camp in Bolzano, guilty in absentia of 11 murders during the Holocaust, Schwarz put together the case to revoke his Canadian citizenship. She interviewed many people in Italy, including former resistance fighters who had witnessed his crimes.

“Seifert was quite a young man during the war. He was an old man during the proceedings. But he had committed horrendous crimes,” she said.

One of the documents Schwarz saw during the investigation made the Holocaust all so terribly real.

“I remember that we had an invoice confirming the transfer of a number of people to Auschwitz. That was one of the most horrific pieces of evidence I’ve ever seen.”

In 2003, as a result of her work and that of the legal teams who came afterwards, the B.C. Supreme Court ordered Siefert’s extradition and, in 2007, the Federal Court upheld a decision to strip him of his Canadian citizenship. In 2008, Siefert, aged 83, was sent back to Italy. His residence in Vancouver as a free man for more than 50 years was over.

During her time with the Department of Justice, Schwarz interviewed many victims and witnesses of war crimes. She said that, even when, after 15 minutes, she knew that she couldn’t use their story, she would sit there and listen for the whole two hours.

“When I’ve asked someone to tell me their story,” she said, “it’s incumbent on me to listen.… I might be the only person they will be able to tell their story to [in their lifetime].”

From 2006 to 2010, Schwarz lived in Tanzania, where she was one of the trial attorneys on the largest multi-accused trial for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Part of her work there was interviewing perpetrators of the genocide in the Butare prefecture.

She confided that this part of her job was very hard on her. “I remember interviewing three suspects alleged to have committed genocide in a row. I told my colleague – I need a break before I can talk to the fourth man.”

When it came to the trial, Schwarz and her team secured convictions of all six accused, including the first woman charged with ordering rape as a war crime.

“I think, as a lawyer and particularly a prosecutor, you are assessing the evidence and being critical. You have to be pretty surgical about it,” said Schwarz.

A few years later, at a UN conference, a co-presenter from Butare approached her and told her that his entire family had been wiped out by the genocide there. “And he said thank you very much for your work. And I practically burst into tears because I felt humbled that somebody would say that … it was not something I felt I should be thanked for, nor any of us should be thanked for because it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

As a commissioner looking into the killings in Les Cayes prison in Haiti during 2010, Schwarz led an international team and supervised the final report with recommendations on future prosecutions, penal reform, justice reform and police training.

Schwarz was in Kenya in 2013, working as the human rights and justice advisor to the UN Special Envoy in the Great Lakes region of Africa, a region encompassing 13 countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. With a team of experts, she collaborated with myriad different organizations to create strong networks of people who would work together to promote better communication, peace and understanding in the region.

“There are so many layers that need to be addressed if you are ever going to deal with root causes of conflict, that range from ensuring people have access to clean water, food, lodging and education, to building trust and confidence among the leaders and civil society, to advocating for accountability for past crimes…. It takes a lot of time,” she said.

From 2016 to 2019, Schwarz worked as a trial lawyer and deputy team leader at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It was there that she prepared arrest warrants for individuals alleged to have committed crimes in Libya since 2011.

Despite seeing the very worst of humanity, Schwarz still has hope for the human race. “I’ve seen some pretty horrible things,” she acknowledged. “I’ve also seen people who do tremendous things to try and make change or try and help people.”

And she had this to say about the International Criminal Court.

“I think that investigations and prosecutions of individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are incredibly important,” said Schwarz. “I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re always getting the complete truth and I do not think we always get it right. However, I do think we get some truth and some accountability that is important for victims, as well as for countries moving out of conflict. I think that is important. And it’s a different way of telling the story than a novelist or historian.”

Cassandra Freeman is a freelance writer living in Vancouver. During the early 1980s, she was part of the Jewish student movement that called for the extradition of Nazi war criminals living in Canada.

Heroic work continues

An important – and surprising – court decision in Poland last month is a small victory in a longer battle over the history of Polish behaviour during the Second World War.

On appeal, two Holocaust scholars had an earlier decision reversed. University of Ottawa professor Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, a Polish historian of the Holocaust, had earlier been ordered to apologize to a Polish woman who brought a suit against the two, arguing that her family’s name had been tarnished by the historians’ depictions of her uncle’s actions during the war. The case was watched closely, and its appeal is significant, as it could portend how Poland’s judiciary approaches a comparatively new law that proscribes negative depictions of Polish complicity during the war.

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party is a right-wing nationalist movement that seeks to glorify Polish heroism during that era and erase – indeed, outlaw – records that demonstrate the complicity in atrocities by individual Poles and segments of that society during the Holocaust.

Grabowski and Engelking are on the frontlines of that conflict. They head a team of researchers that produced Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland, a compendious 1,700-page documentation of Polish atrocities during the war. The researchers, at risk to themselves, delved into often-untouched archival records in small and remote communities across Poland. In a presentation in Vancouver three years ago, Grabowski explained that, after the war, a surprising number of Poles felt no obligation to hide or embroider their activities during that period, content that their neighbours, if not history, would judge them kindly. The researchers plumbed files that had not been opened since 1945 and discovered harrowing tales of neighbour turning on neighbour, of Jews in hiding listening as their former friends pointed out their whereabouts to the Nazis and their collaborators.

The work is monumental and is being translated into English. It also indicates the breadth and depth of Holocaust history that has yet to be even remotely explored. The big picture, certainly, is well known – to the extent that plenty of people complain that it is time to move on from the topic. But the work of Grabowski et al reminds us that, in terms of millions of stories of individuals, heroic and wicked, we have hardly scratched the surface.

This is why the Polish law, and the intent behind it, is so dangerous. The problem is not merely the suppression of what we already know to be true, it is the very tangible possibility that current scholarship will be curtailed and that potential future scholars will choose less arduous fields of study. In either case, the crucial primary research still underway could be squelched.

This urgency was underscored by the publication Tuesday of a new book, Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph and Love by Rebecca Frankel, former executive editor of Foreign Policy magazine. Writing in the New York Times Sunday, Frankel shared the story of one family who survived the war in Poland by hiding in the forests. The “Jews of the forest,” as she calls them, are an example of a massively underexplored facet of Holocaust history. The narratives of these Jews – some of whom survived the war, many or most of whom apparently did not – are absent from most chronologies because, by definition, those who survived (or did not) by disappearing into the forests were not included in the record-keeping of the Nazis and their collaborators.

We know from opinion surveys that there is an enormous amount of ignorance, particularly among the young in North America and Europe, about the Holocaust. In a notable irony, a major survey of European societies discovered that the countries where the largest number of people believes that there is too much emphasis on the Holocaust are the same countries where ignorance of the facts is greatest. In other words, it seems that those who know the least about that history are the ones most determined to close their ears to it.

Prof. Grabowski, who was born in Poland, was evasive in his visit to Vancouver in 2018, deflecting assertions that his work is heroic. Instead, he credited the courage of the on-the-ground researchers in Poland. There should be enough admiration to go around for the researchers, historians, writers and teachers who continue the necessary work of studying and sharing knowledge of that time.

As we have seen from the past seven decades, knowledge of the past does not preclude repetitions of genocide. But ignorance will almost certainly hasten its frequency and severity.