museums

Vernon’s Jewish community

The exhibit Shedding Some Light on the Jewish Community in Vernon is at the Museum and Archives of Vernon until the beginning of April. (photo from Alexandra Fox)

If you are passing through the Okanagan between now and the beginning of April, check out the exhibit on Vernon’s Jewish community, which recently went up at the Museum and Archives of Vernon. Last month, I sat down with collections and exhibits intern Alexandra Fox to chat about it.

Between sips of hot chocolate at a local café, we bonded over the fact that we are two queer Jews from the Lower Mainland, who grew up spending winters up on SilverStar Mountain Resort with family, and both find ourselves currently in Vernon. We also share a love of local Jewish community history.

Carmel Tanaka: What inspired you to curate an exhibit about Vernon’s Jewish community?

Alexandra Fox: When I came here, I found that there weren’t a lot of openly Jewish people and most of the non-Jewish community was not aware of the Jewish community. I wanted to shed some light on a community that has often gone under the radar and that’s why I titled the exhibit Shedding Some Light on the Jewish Community in Vernon. It was partly a pun on certain traditions of lighting candles, too.

Basically, I wanted the exhibit topic to be something that meant a lot to me. I come from a multifaith family, with my dad being Jewish and my mom being Protestant. Growing up, Jewish identity had been a confusing thing for me as, technically, I am not Jewish, due to it being matrilineal but it was always the religion I connected with the most. Maybe this is in part due to always being told that I look Jewish. However, you cannot always tell if someone is Jewish, as there is so much diversity in the community. I wanted to curate this exhibit so that I could honour my identity a bit more.

CT: What have been some of the reactions to the exhibit?

AF: The reactions to the exhibit have all been positive so far and I believe it will stay that way. I’ve had a few questions about certain Jewish traditions that are represented by the items in the exhibit but they have all been very respectful. Some of my co-workers have also congratulated me on making an excellent exhibit.

CT: During the research and curation of the exhibit, did anything surprise you? Did you face any challenges?

AF: I was surprised by how small the Jewish community was when it started in the 1970s – it numbered only 20 people – and how small it really still is. The 2021 Census … in the case of Vernon, it shows that most Jewish people identify as Jewish but are not practising. This trend doesn’t surprise me because I think a lot of Jewish people in other communities are the same, but the numbers of Jews (both ethnically and religiously) are so small.

Some of the challenges that I faced while creating the exhibit were during the call-out phase and during the editing phase. Since our museum didn’t have any Jewish objects in the collection, I had to do a call-out to the community…. I felt limited to reaching out to practising Jews rather than those who identify as ethnically Jewish because I didn’t have a lens into the community and was only able to reach out to the Okanagan Jewish Community Centre and Chabad House. Only the Okanagan Jewish Community Centre agreed to loan some objects to the museum for the exhibit.

CT: What resources did you use in compiling the exhibit?

photo - Alexandra Fox, curator of the exhibit Shedding Some Light on the Jewish Community in Vernon — Alexandra Fox, curator of the exhibit Shedding Some Light on the Jewish Community in Vernon. *(photo from Alexandra Fox)*

AF: The resources I used to compile the exhibit were from Census data analyses, the Okanagan Jewish Community Centre website, the Chabad website, some existing pictures in Vernon’s museum archives, as well as Ronnie Tessler’s research from the Jewish Museum and Archives of B.C., which focused more on Kelowna than on Vernon.

CT: Community archival projects are limited to the availability of resources. If you were able to continue researching Vernon’s Jewish community, what stories would you like to dive further into?

AF: Only after finishing the exhibit did I find out that one of the people who developed SilverStar was Jewish, so if I were to continue researching Vernon’s Jewish community, I would totally dive further into finding out about that family. I would like to know if the SilverStar community even knew about Dr. [Michael] Lattey being Jewish.

Also, if I were able to continue researching Vernon’s Jewish community and developing the exhibit, I would extend the call-out to more community members so that I could expand the range of people represented by the exhibit, such as Vernon’s very own, the Saucy Soprano Melina Schein, who won Food Network’s Wall of Bakers and who I only found out about after the exhibit.

As an intern at the museum, I seemed to be quite limited in who I could extend the call-out to and I wish I had met with you, Carmel, before the coffee meetup because then I could reach more community members, especially those not affiliated with community organizations or synagogues.

I would also like to dive deeper into the 2021 potential sale of Nazi memorabilia by Dodd’s Auction, a local and much beloved auction house. The memory of the Holocaust is very present in Vernon’s Jewish community so when these items were included in the auction, the community – Jewish and non-Jewish – successfully demanded that it be halted, and the items were returned to the consigner. It’s important to me to ensure that these stories and this part of local history are heard.

CT: Your exhibit, the first of its kind in Vernon to my knowledge, is a wonderful “Jewifying” of museum space. Why is it important for the Jewish community to share our stories in rural towns like Vernon?

AF: “Jewifying” the museum space, as with creating space for any other groups that have been historically left out of museum space, is a very important thing. I think it is especially important in museums located in rural towns because these are the places that are most likely to have fewer interactions with any minority groups…. In many rural towns, the Jewish people (or any other minority group) feel like they have to hide that part of themselves and I think it is very important to show them, and the rest of the community, that you don’t have to hide your identity.

CT: Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

AF: I’d like to add that this is the first exhibit I have curated and, although limited by time and other factors, I poured my heart into this exhibit, which had a personal connection to me. When embarking on this exhibit, as mentioned earlier, I wanted to do something that was personal to me. It was either something about Jewishness or queerness and I decided to choose the former. My sister is in Israel right now, volunteering on a kibbutz, and I felt that curating this exhibit would be my way of honouring my identity.

***

For more information on the exhibit, visit vernonmuseum.ca/vernon-museum/vernons-jewish-community.

Carmel Tanaka is the founder and executive director of JQT Vancouver, and curator of the B.C. Jewish Queer and Trans Oral History Project (jqtvancouver.ca/jqt-oral-history-bc) and the Jewpanese Oral History Project (@JewpaneseProject on Instagram). She has family ties to Vernon, and it was a Japanese-Canadian friend who tipped her about Fox’s exhibit.

MONOVA’s new space

Housed in the lobby of the Museum of North Vancouver, visitors can once more hop on Streetcar #153, which carried passengers along the Lonsdale Line from 1912 to 1946. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)

This story took me a long time to write. Everything I read about the Museum of North Vancouver (MONOVA) set me off on another path of exploration. I’ve watched (really) old home movies, looked at countless archival photos, perused online exhibits – all of this after I was treated in December to a tour of the museum’s beautiful new space at 115 West Esplanade. Such is the seemingly never-ending amount of wonder the museum offers.

Days after the official opening on Dec. 4, curator Barbara Hilden walked me through the exhibits. I arrived early and had time to buy a few things in the gift shop – there are some excellent books, clothing, toys and other merchandise for sale. I also walked through the restored electric Streetcar #153, which carried passengers up and down the Lonsdale Line from 1912 to 1946, and admired Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh) artist Wade Baker’s cedar carving of Sch’ich’iyuy (the Two Sisters).

“The red cedar Sch’ich’iyuy panel is based on the ancient Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Sister’s Mountain Transformer legend,” says Baker on MONOVA’s website. “The twins were raised from childhood to be leaders for their people. They asked their father, the siyam, the chief, to bring peace to the warring tribes along the coast. He could not refuse their request and fires were lit all along the coast to signal a great welcoming feast to bring peace. For their efforts, the twins were immortalized in the mountain peaks you see today that watch over us.”

photo - The museum’s lobby features a cedar carving of Sch’ich’iyuy (the Two Sisters) by Squamish carver Wade Baker — The museum’s lobby features a cedar carving of Sch’ich’iyuy (the Two Sisters) by Squamish carver Wade Baker. *(photo by Alison Boulier)*

Beyond the museum lobby is a sparse area and a space for activities, a moveable wall separating the two. Visitors then walk through a corridor with images of trees on the walls, their branches continuing onto the ceiling. The Indigenous Welcome Circle, which highlights Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaɬ) stories and items, is the anchor of the room. There is the notable presence and prominence of Indigenous involvement in the displays and, the day before the new museum’s opening, there was a memorandum-of-understanding signing ceremony that included members of the Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish nations.

“The MOUs affirm our commitment to working with Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish nations as equal partners,” Hilden told the Independent in an email interview after the tour. “MONOVA formed the Indigenous Advisory Committee several years ago to inform our programming, collecting, curatorial and operational activities. We rely on IVAC members to direct our strategic priorities in these areas and others, and to liaise with the nations. These needs do not diminish with opening our new location; on the contrary, their importance only increases. IVAC will continue to exist and we anticipate it growing larger and more robust as we look to incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing throughout the institution.”

Exhibits in the new permanent gallery include the Indigenous Welcome Circle, as well as themed displays – on sports, women in wartime, shipbuilding on the North Shore, and more. Interactive children’s displays help young visitors understand, for example, how to load a cargo ship and what various animals eat and what their poop looks like (this was a particularly fun exhibit, I must admit). An interactive map takes people through the history of the North Shore by water, trail, rail and road. Panels on one of the walls take us from the late 1700s to the present day with several photos and brief descriptions of notable events, good and bad, listed chronologically. There is a section – Truth and Reconciliation – dedicated to residential school survivors.

The museum’s first feature exhibition is called You Are Here @ The Shipyards. “It discusses the changing nature of North Vancouver’s lower Lonsdale area, from Indigenous settlement to working shipyards to contemporary tourist destination,” explained Hilden. “The exhibition features historic objects, archival photos and film … [and] will open in the spring of 2022 and run for one year. In the future, it’s anticipated that our calendar will be a mix of internally curated and traveling exhibitions.”

The North Vancouver Museum opened in 1972 in the old Pacific Great Eastern Historic Railway Station and moved to Presentation House in 1976, where it remained until last year. With the new location, came the new name, MONOVA.

“It’s taken more than 50 years, a multitude of meaningful discussions with community members and Indigenous leaders, countless volunteer hours, and painstaking research to amass a collection of more than 9,000 artifacts, but, after 20 years of planning, finally, the Museum of North Vancouver is ready to welcome the public,” reads the press release announcing the December opening.

photo - Squamish Nation partnered with architect Moshe Safdie in the 1990s and proposed building a twin span next to the original, congested Lion’s Gate Bridge, but rehabilitation work of the existing bridge was undertaken instead. This model is currently on display at MONOVA — Squamish Nation partnered with architect Moshe Safdie in the 1990s and proposed building a twin span next to the original, congested Lion’s Gate Bridge, but rehabilitation work of the existing bridge was undertaken instead. This model is currently on display at MONOVA. *(photo by Cynthia Ramsay)*

In addition to the exhibits and activities that take place at 115 West Esplanade, there are many online exhibits. Archivist Dr. Jessica Bushey noted that two – Walter Draycott’s Great War Chronicle, and Climbing to the Clouds: A People’s History of B.C. Mountaineering – were created by the North Vancouver Museum and Archives, all departments working together.

“These were very large endeavours, taking nearly a year to create and involving consultants and partners,” said Bushey. “More recently, the archives team has focused on creating online exhibitions drawing upon archival materials that provide virtual access to the collections and offer a companion to on-site exhibitions at the archives building in Lynn Valley. These are smaller in scale, but strong in their interactivity and showcasing of archival photographs, moving images and oral histories.”

Currently, there is no specific Jewish connection in any of the material on display, but the museum is actively seeking additions to its collection.

“At the moment,” said Hilden, “we have materials exhibited from North Vancouver’s Ismaili, Iranian and Japanese communities. All the exhibits in our long-term gallery are designed to be flexible and changed out regularly, so we do anticipate updating and rotating these stories as more communities become aware of MONOVA and our desire to represent all North Shore stories.”

She said, “We would be thrilled to hear of more Jewish connections. We currently have very few tangible objects in our collection that would help us tell these stories, and I’d love to hear from members of North Van’s Jewish community.”

“The archives of North Vancouver is very interested in acquiring donations of archival materials from the Jewish community working, residing and thriving in the city and district of North Vancouver,” agreed Bushey, also noting the archives’ current lack of these materials.

“We have one file on Samuel Davis Schultz, who was a judge and alderman in North Vancouver and founded the honour roll of North Vancouver High School in 1912, a photograph of S. Schultz and a 2014 copy of the special issue of the Western States Jewish History quarterly journal, which focuses on the Davies and Schultz families. Lastly, we have the photographs from a City of North Vancouver 2000 millennium project on Diversity on the North Shore, which included the Jewish community and led to the publication From Far and Wide: Cultural Diversity in North Vancouver,” said Bushey.

“If anyone has archival records (e.g., correspondence, photographs, albums, diaries, home movies, business records etc.) they would like to donate,” she added, “they can email the archives with the particulars and we will get in touch.”

“MONOVA considers donations that have a close connection to the community of North Vancouver,” said Hilden. “The artifacts don’t need to be extremely old or extremely valuable to be considered. Sometimes, the most thought-provoking pieces are those that tell quotidian stories of everyday life. (Of course, the old and valuable belongings are welcome also!) We care for everything in our collection and, when we make the decision to acquire a piece, we commit to preserving, conserving and making it available for generations to come.”

To connect with the museum or archives, visit monova.ca.

Honouring history amid virus

Leslie Vértes shares a family photograph. Vértes is one of the survivors featured in the Montreal Holocaust Museum exhibit Witnesses to History, Keepers of Memory. (photo from Montreal Holocaust Museum)

Collective memory has always played an important role in Jewish life and traditions. For thousands of years, Jews have celebrated holidays, mourned loss and memorialized history together as a people. And, most often, we have done so in person.

We say Kaddish as a community, celebrate a bris among a gathering of peers and family and come together every year to retell over dinner the story of the exodus of the Jewish people from ancient Egypt. The 20th-century philosopher and historian Isaiah Berlin noted, “All Jews who are at all conscious of their identity as Jews are steeped in history.” The late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks expressed it another way: “Memory for Jews is a religious obligation.”

This past year has presented huge challenges for those institutions that strive to educate the public about history in general and, specifically, the Holocaust. During the pandemic, many museums and educational centres have been forced to choose alternative venues to connect with their members and the larger community. On Yom Hashoah and Kristallnacht, organizations across the world turned to recordings and interactive discussions in their effort to remind people that the Shoah’s messages remain relevant, even if their institution’s doors were temporarily closed.

Finding ways to continue that education and connection on a daily basis has required some creative thinking, said Sarah Fogg, who serves as the head of marketing, communications and PR for the Montreal Holocaust Museum. The museum, which was founded by Holocaust survivors, had been planning to launch a special photographic exhibit this year, highlighting the lives and wartime experiences of 30 survivors from the Montreal area.

“[The exhibit] was something that we had dreamt of for a really long time,” said Fogg. The museum had planned to narrate each of the stories visually using a triptych of personal images and the sharing of an artifact that the survivors had preserved: a father’s cap that he was required to wear at Auschwitz, a woman’s prayer book, an irreplaceable but tattered passport to freedom. But how could such stories be presented in the midst of a pandemic?

“The pandemic completely forced us to change, to rethink, to overhaul the plan we had for the exhibit,” said Fogg, who admitted there was a sense of urgency to the exhibit’s launch. Some of the speakers are now in their 90s and have already retired as volunteers. Plus, 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps (and the 41st anniversary of the museum’s founding). This year, 2020, was the ideal time to launch the exhibit.

photo - Leslie Vértes — Leslie Vértes *(photo from Montreal Holocaust Museum)*

“[The online presentation] is the result of many brainstorming sessions where we discussed … how we could present this exhibit in a way that is different to other portrait exhibits that have happened around the world,” said Fogg. “And so, the ‘triptych’ as we have been calling it, the three photos, was really the result of wanting to showcase more than one portrait of the survivor and really wanting to showcase their uniqueness and their personalities.”

Fogg said it was in the middle of one of the photography sessions that the staff suddenly realized what was needed to translate this photographic essay to an online presentation. It was the survivors’ own accounts of why their personal artifacts held irreplaceable significance. It was also the story of how they had survived and how it had transformed them, once they began their new lives in Canada.

“So often when we talk about the stories of Holocaust survivors, the narrative tends to end when they leave Europe,” Fogg said. “But there is so much more to talk about.” Many of the survivors, who were children or young adults when they arrived in Montreal, went on to raise a family. All became volunteer speakers through the museum and other organizations in order to educate people about the Holocaust. Some became published authors and teachers. All, Fogg said, became inspiring leaders of their community.

photo - Margaret Newman Kaufman with her wedding photograph — Margaret Newman Kaufman with her wedding photograph. *(photo from Montreal Holocaust Museum)*

“If I had to summarize what the lesson or the inspiration would be for viewers, it’s resilience. I mean, not only are they incredible survivors who escaped the Holocaust, but they come to Canada, they build new lives, they start careers, they make families and they find happiness again. They are this embodiment of resilience.”

Taken on their own, the artifacts tell dozens of unique and often heart-rending stories about the Holocaust. But they are also testimony to the survivors’ remarkable ability to draw meaning, purpose and even beauty from the darkest of memories. Sarah Engelhard’s black-and-white snapshot tells the story of her first Passover in Canada. Ted Bolgar’s touching account gives renewed significance to friendship and the value of a precious tea set. Marguerite Elias Quddus’s last memory of her father, as he was arrested, is embodied in a bitter-sweet tale about his forgotten eyeglasses.

photo - Margaret Newman Kaufman displays her wedding rings — Margaret Newman Kaufman displays her wedding rings. *(photo from Montreal Holocaust Museum)*

Following the Second World War, Montreal became a second home for thousands of Holocaust survivors, some who saw it as a temporary port of refuge, and many who stayed to make it their home. The museum was opened in 1979 by members of the Association of Survivors of Nazi Oppression as a means to educating the public about the dangers of antisemitism and racism. More than four decades after its founding, the museum’s legacy still continues to be relevant, Fogg said. And, like the testimonies and artifacts that illumine these stories, the message it carries is an intensely human and important one.

“You know, we’re not talking about numbers or figures, we’re talking about Ted, Leslie, Liselotte and Daisy. These are real people that we love and care about and they are real people whose families and lives were torn apart by the Holocaust,” said Fogg. “And so, I think we can make a parallel to situations today, where real people are continuing to be impacted and devastated by genocide.

“I think what’s beautiful about the exhibit and working with survivors is that they are real people. What better way to understand history and especially difficult, complex and painful history than to hear it from such wonderful and caring and generous individuals,” she said. “They are the best educators and we are so lucky to learn from them, and we’re so lucky that they wanted to be a part of this exhibit.”

The museum’s effort to reach virtual audiences during the pandemic does appear to be working. Fogg said that, since its launch in September, the exhibit has not only been seen by viewers around the world, but has won three international awards for its visual presentation and design. The pandemic may have temporarily limited the world’s physical ability to connect, but it hasn’t stopped innovation or the heartfelt effort to care about others.

To see the Montreal Holocaust Museum’s exhibit, Witness to History, Keepers of Memory, visit witnessestohistory.museeholocauste.ca.

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Montreal Jewish history in brief

The first Jews in the Montreal area were Sephardim serving in a British regiment. One was Aaron Hart, whose son would later be elected to the legislature to represent the Trois-Rivières area.

By the early 19th century, Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe had begun to trickle in and, by the early 20th century, more than 7,000 Jews had made their way to Montreal, most fleeing antisemitism in the Russian Empire and Europe. Many would arrive to find that prejudice and discriminatory policies weren’t exclusive to distant geography. The election of Ezekiel Hart to the legislature would later inspire a resolution to ban Jews from serving in office. It take another 60 years before a law would be enacted that would give Jews in Lower Canada the right to self-representation.

By the 1930s, Montreal’s Jewish population had increased to 60,000, making it the largest Jewish hub in the country. Many worked in the growing garment industry or owned stores and restaurants in the city. A smaller number moved to the country to become farmers and use skills they brought with them from the old country.

Distrust toward Jews and the growing number of Jewish refugees looking desperately for a new home before and after the Holocaust made immigration to Canada virtually impossible in the early 1940s. It took the efforts of organizations like the Canadian Jewish Congress to push for changes to immigration laws and open doors to refugee families. By the early 1950s, another 9,000 Jewish refugees eventually made their way to Montreal’s port. By the 1970s, those numbers had swelled again, reaching close to 120,000.

Today Montreal’s Jewish community is much smaller, for many reasons, including out-migration from the 1970s to 1990s. But the early Jewish pioneers, those who arrived in Montreal in the 18th and 19th centuries, are not only credited with building new businesses and opportunities for a growing city, but for planting the seeds for Canada’s diverse Jewish community.

Jan Lee’s articles and blog posts have been published in B’nai B’rith Magazine, Voices of Conservative and Masorti Judaism, Times of Israel, as well as a number of business, environmental and travel publications. Her blog can be found at multiculturaljew.polestarpassages.com.

Many milestones for Wosk in 2019

Dr. Yosef Wosk, right, with Max Wyman, 2017. (photo by Fred Cawsey)

The Yosef Wosk Poetry Initiative at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, which began in 2009, marked its 10th year with a celebratory gathering of artists and poets and with the publication of a commemorative book earlier this year. In addition, the Yosef Wosk Poets’ Corner, along with the adjacent Poet Laureates Garden, was inaugurated on the newly renovated top floor of the downtown central Vancouver Public Library – it was named in recognition of Dr. Yosef Wosk’s decades-long support of the VPL.

Wosk was an early major donor to the redevelopment of the eighth and ninth floors and the roof of the central branch of VPL and was asked to serve as honourary chair of the VPL campaign in 2018/19. The architect for the renovations, as for the library itself, was Moshe Safdie, while Cornelia Hahn Oberlander designed an extensive garden to complement her roof garden that crowns the award-winning structure.

In the library world, Wosk – who has established more than 400 libraries on all seven continents over the past 20 years – was able to fund more than 50 new initiatives in 2018/19, including 20 libraries in remote Himalayan villages and 37 in Jewish communities throughout the world.

As a writer and publisher, Wosk’s work has appeared in a number of publications. Most recently, these include having curated and written the preface for Memories of Jewish Poland: The 1932 Photographs of Nachum Tim Gidal, featuring photographs by Gidal from Wosk’s and the Israel Museum’s collections (Gefen Publishing, Jerusalem and New York, 2019). He also initiated and funded a biography, written by Christopher Best, of Faye Leung, the effervescent pioneer in the Chinese and real estate communities, affectionately known as the Hat Lady (Warfleet Press, 2020).

Wosk’s essay “On the Wings of Forever” was published in the online Ormsby Review this year in collaboration with the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars. The editor’s preface notes that: “With prose as profound and learned as it is clear and accessible, here Wosk examines and appreciates the role of museums and museum workers in the digitizing modern world. It’s not gloom ’n’ doom. Instead, he outlines what he calls ‘a stirring vision, one of innovative technology on a human scale, heart-centred and soul-sized.’”

In collaboration with the Canadian Museums Association, Wosk helped transform the President’s Award into the President’s Medal; he also commissioned the medal and wrote the introduction in the booklet that accompanies the honorific, which was first awarded in 2019.

The province-wide Max Wyman Award for Critical Writing in the Arts, which was inaugurated by Wosk in 2017, formed an alliance this year with the VIVA Awards (the Shadbolt Foundation), which will begin in 2020.

In academia, Wosk was reappointed this year as an adjunct professor in humanities at Simon Fraser University and completed four years as a Shadbolt Fellow at SFU, where he was recently named a Simons Fellow.

During the year, Wosk served on 11 boards in the Jewish and general communities in areas such as education, medical research, museums, libraries, literature, business and the arts. These boards have included the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Schara Tzedeck Cemetery Board, CHILD Foundation, Museums Foundation of Canada and Pacific Torah Institute. He was also an ambassador for the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale and is completing a second term with the B.C. Arts Council.

Dominican Republic a haven

The Museum of Jewish History in Sosua is located right next to the city’s synagogue. (photo by Dave Gordon)

Famous for its rum, cigars, resorts, beaches and rich history, the all-season holiday destination of the Dominican Republic attracts 800,000 Canadians each year. Moreover, the country has a relatively unknown past – few people realize, or know, that the country opened its doors wide to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.

This era is chronicled at the Museum of Jewish History, in Sosua, which is in the northern section of the country. Located right next to the city’s synagogue, the museum preserves the memory of those Jewish refugees who sought a safe haven on Dominican soil, and left their mark on the region. It houses photographs of early-to-mid-20th-century Jewish immigrants, along with diary entries, ritual items and copies of letters from Jewish agencies during the war.

Before the Second World War, in 1938, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt summoned the Allies to Evian, France, for a conference about how to handle the massive exodus of Jews who desperately sought to flee Nazi persecution. Though most of the participants at the conference expressed their sympathy, no resolution was formulated. Paraphrasing Chaim Weizmann (who would later become the first president of Israel), Central and Eastern European Jews perceived the world as consisting of just two camps: one that hounded and hunted them, and another that closed its gates.

There was, however, one notable exception.

Of the 32 countries that sent delegations to the conference, only the Dominican Republic, led by President Rafael Trujillo, agreed to receive 100,000 refugees, offering land resettlement under generous conditions. A group of experts on refugee affairs, under the leadership of James Rosenberg, was mobilized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to capitalize on the offer. This was the birth of the Dominican Republican Settlement Association (DORSA).

photo - Inside Sosua’s synagogue — Inside Sosua’s synagogue. *(photo by Dave Gordon)*

Between 1940 and 1945, the Dominican Republic government issued 5,000 visas for displaced Jewish refugees. Tragically, however, the actual number of immigrant arrivals never reached anywhere near this figure, due to the escalation of the war, and also to what some believe to be mishandling by the Jewish Agency, which resulted in delays. Of the nearly 1,000 Jews who settled in the Dominican Republic, most were from Austria and Germany, although some came from as far away as China, and some from as close as the Caribbean islands.

Little by little, the jungle-like territory was divided into residential lots and communal barracks for arriving refugees. Each refugee was furnished with, as a repayable loan, 80 acres of land, 10 cows, one mule, one horse, and a living wage for a month. They were assisted with training in agriculture and farming techniques, of which most had little previous knowledge.

Jews took to food manufacturing, becoming successful in the production and sale of sausage, milk, cheese, tomato sauce, mashed carrots, stuffed peppers and mashed spinach. Many of these industries continue to this day. The refugees’ earnings enabled them to pay their debts and establish other small industries.

By the 1990s, however, just 36 Jewish families remained in Sosua, as most of the population either died, intermarried or moved to larger Jewish communities.

Interestingly enough, well before the arrival of these refugees, in 1916, the Dominican Republic briefly had a Jewish head of state, President Francisco Henríquez y Carvajal.

Visiting the country

Virtually every major supermarket has plenty of items with kosher certification, including imported canned goods, breads, fish and spreads. A Puerto Plata resort named Lifestyle has an on-site kosher restaurant, though only for guests staying there. Alternately, in Punta Cana, the local Chabad offers à la carte food orders upon request.

If this trip is a do-it-yourself getaway, as opposed to an all-inclusive, here are two suggestions for luxury stays that will offer the feel of home:

Villas Agua Dulce is a jaw-droppingly elegant and spacious facility. Each villa has a fully furnished living room, dining room and a washer/dryer. Three-bedroom villas are available to accommodate a family of seven. Toss in for good measure an outdoor patio, outdoor private pool, a spa centre, tennis and basketball courts, and Bauhaus interior design.

With the beach just a few hundred feet away, Cabarete Palm Beach Condos is centrally located in the Cabarete area. Each condo has a fully equipped kitchen, living room (with big TV), dining area and outdoor patio.

As for suggested adventures in the Puerto Plata area, I have several.

photo - Horsebacking riding is one of the many outdoor adventures one can take in the Puerto Plata area — Horsebacking riding is one of the many outdoor adventures one can take in the Puerto Plata area.

Monkey Jungle: After enjoying the 4,500-foot, seven-station zip lines overlooking the trees, visit the adjacent capuchin monkey reserve. Scores of these adorable creatures bounce around from tree to tree, hopping on your shoulders and nibbling straight from the fruit plate in your hand.

Ocean World: This is where you can swim with sharks and dolphins and kiss the sea lions.

Tip Top Catamaran: Take a ride on the 75-feet-long and 33-feet-wide catamaran. Tourists are offered the chance to experience the vibrant underwater world through snorkeling Sosua Bay (equipment is provided). Immerse yourself in schools of fish, peer at the coral, get face-time with a puffer fish and play with the sea urchins.

Twenty-seven waterfalls of Rio Damajagua are tucked away in the hills of the Northern Corridor mountain range, behind tall stalks of sugar cane. In addition to the mélange of outdoor activities – such as cliff jumping into natural waters and climbing through caves – you are surrounded by forest. And, depending on the season, fruit will be growing from coconut, avocado, coffee bean and mango trees.

Kiteboarding: Think of yourself hovering over the ocean on a surfboard, propelled by a giant inflatable kite, and you have kiteboarding. Dare2Fly provides kiteboarding packages, lessons and rentals.

Rancho Luisa y Tommy: Try a morning horseback ride. Run by 30-year-old Tommy Bernard, a Quebec expat, he’s an affable fellow who’ll treat you to engaging conversation on topics including animals, his adopted country, and most anything in life.

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world.

Community milestones … VHEC, JMABC, JI and the Bayit

Michael Schwartz of the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia accepts the Award of Merit: Excellence in Community Engagement on behalf of all the partner organizations in the Cross Cultural Strathcona Walking Tour. (photo from JMABC)

The 2019 B.C. Museums Association Awards for Outstanding Achievement were handed out on Oct. 2 at the BCMA conference gala at Courtyard by Marriott in Prince George. The awards recognize institutions and individuals who have exemplified excellence in exhibitions, community engagement and innovation within the province’s museums, galleries and cultural heritage community. This year, three Jewish community groups were honoured for their work.

The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre received the Award of Merit: Excellence in Collections for its collections management system, which provides access to Western Canada’s largest collection of Holocaust-related artifacts, survivor testimonies, archival materials and publications (collections.vhec.org). The award recognizes recent excellence in collections best practices, which may include innovative approaches to collecting, collections management, preservation, repatriation, collections-based research, dissemination and accessibility.

The Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia (JMABC), along with 16 partner organizations, including the Jewish Independent, received the Award of Merit: Excellence in Community Engagement for the Cross Cultural Strathcona Walking Tour. The award recognizes a recent outstanding success in community engagement, as demonstrated by ongoing participation of new audiences, new partnerships with community organizations, and supporting needs of the community through innovative programming.

Co-led by Carmel Tanaka and Michael Schwartz (director of community engagement at the JMABC), the walking tour celebrates the history of Vancouver Downtown Eastside neighbourhoods Hogan’s Alley, Jewish Strathcona, Japantown (Powell Street) and Chinatown. The guided walking tour builds awareness of the contributions of early immigrant communities then and now. Originally conceived in celebration of Vancouver Asian Heritage Month and Canada’s Jewish Heritage Month, the first series of tours debuted in May 2019.

With the theme of education, the route began at the oldest elementary school in Vancouver, Lord Strathcona Elementary School, referred to as the “League of Nations” for its multicultural makeup. When the triangle rang at the end of the day, school continued for many children in the form of nearby programs where students learned language and cultural traditions. Tour participants learned how these diverse communities interacted with one another in their common struggles, and how they were impacted by the urban renewal of the area.

The Cross Cultural Strathcona Walking Tour Working Group comprises Association of United Ukrainian Canadians; Benny Foods Italian Market; Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden; Musqueam Elder Larry Grant (honourary advisor to PCHC-MoM and VAHMS); Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens Association; Heritage Vancouver Society; Hogan’s Alley Society; Jewish Independent; JMABC; Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre; Pacific Canada Heritage Centre Museum of Migration; Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society’s explorASIAN; Vancouver Heritage Foundation; Vancouver Japanese Language School and Japanese Hall; Vancouver School Board; Vancouver School Board Archives and Heritage Committee; Wongs’ Benevolent Association; and Youth Collaborative for Chinatown.

Work is underway to reprise the program in spring 2020. For more information, visit youtube.com/watch?v=nJB3cdkh5yc.

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After leading the Bayit in Richmond for the last five years, Michael Sachs has stepped down as board president, to spend more time with his young family.

photo - Michael Sachs — Michael Sachs *(photo by Lianne Cohen)*

Michael’s efforts and dedication have given members of the Bayit much for which to be grateful. During his tenure, Michael had a vision for how he saw the community and, as a man of action, he followed through. With a philosophy of engaging with everyone, he worked together with all of the Jewish organizations in Richmond and beyond, without ever losing focus that he was building a Bayit community.

Michael’s stepping down from the position of president doesn’t mean he won’t continue to be involved in the Bayit. As past president, he will remain on the board of directors and continue to be a part of the Bayit’s future.

Current Bayit board member Keith Liedtke will take over as the Bayit’s interim president. He shares Michael’s vision and sees the need for a strategic plan that will allow the Bayit to continue growing and filling the community’s needs.

The Bayit thanks Michael for his contributions as president and for his decision to stay on as a member of the board.

Museum of Babylonian Jewry

Between 1948 and 1951, more than 121,000 Jews were smuggled out of Iraq in operations Ezra and Nehemia. Many of those who came to Israel settled in the town of Or Yehuda, some 10 kilometres southeast of Tel Aviv. In 1988, Or Yehuda’s mayor, Mordechai Ben-Porat, who was himself born in Iraq, was instrumental in creating in the town the Museum of Babylonian Jewry. Together with six other founding members, the museum was built to tell the story of the Jews in Iraq, up until the aliyah following the establishment of the state of Israel. The museum has become the largest centre in the world for documenting, researching, collecting and preserving the spiritual treasures of Babylonian Jewry. (photo by Ashernet)

Holy colour of blue

A tallit’s tzitzit with threads dyed in tekhelet blue produced from Murex trunculus snails. (photo from Ptil Tekhelet/Eugene Weisberg)

There’s only one thing missing from the comprehensive temporary exhibit Out of the Blue, which opened June 1 at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem (BLMJ) – the reek of the workshops along the Mediterranean coast of Phoenicia and Israel that produced the prized dyes known in antiquity as tekhelet and argaman.

Researchers at the Jerusalem-based foundation Ptil Tekhelet (Blue Thread) maintain that some 8,000 Murex trunculus mollusks were needed to produce a single gram of the luxury pigment. A demonstration of the malodorous dyeing process was carried out – in the garden of the museum – with one of the marine gastropods. A person can only imagine the stink of many thousands of the rotting sea creatures.

The Out of the Blue exhibit documents the significance of tekhelet, together with the Tyrian purple called argaman in the Torah, from antiquity to the present. Not coincidently, the exhibit opened in honour of Israel’s 70th anniversary. It traces the heavenly blue from the time it was a colour revered by the ancient Israelites and other early peoples of the Near East to its use for Israel’s national flag.

“This special exhibition looks at the magnificence as well as the significance of the colour blue in the ancient world, and ties the blue dyed threads mentioned in the Bible and extra-biblical texts to the very design of the flag of the state of Israel today. BLMJ is proud to be the one museum in the world that highlights the relevance and continuity of the roots of civilization in this region and their impact on our world today in a universal and non-sectarian way,” said museum director Amanda Weiss.

Out of the Blue spotlights ancient Near East cultures’ fascination with the colour as a symbol of divinity. In the Egypt of the pharaohs, Mesopotamia and Canaan, lapis lazuli imported at great cost from Afghanistan was used for cultic purposes.

The BLMJ exhibit continues with the lucrative imperial purple dye industry of the ancient Phoenicians, whose name means the “Purple People.”

But, for this reviewer, the core of the exhibit deals with the dyeing of sky blue tzitziyot (ritual fringes affixed to Jews’ tallitot, prayer shawls). In the eighth century, following the Arab takeover of the Levant, that technology was lost. As a result, Jews were compelled to wear white rather than blue ritual fringes on their prayer garments. Research to rediscover the lost dyeing process of the biblical commandment became synonymous with Zionism, the Jewish people’s return to their biblical homeland.

For more than 25 years, Ptil Tekhelet has dyed hundreds of thousands of sky blue tzitziyot coloured with murex snails’ distinctive tint. The azure tzitziyot remind worshippers of the sea, the sky and God’s sapphire-hewn throne, according to Tannaite sage Rabbi Meir, who was a disciple of Rabbi Akiba.

The exhibit includes a collection of the snail (hilazon) shells excavated at Tel Shikmona near Haifa, and dating back to the 10th through seventh centuries BCE, according to Yehuda Kaplan, one of exhibit’s three curators.

“You can see that, for some of them, there is a breach in the shell,” he said during a press tour of the exhibit. It was from those holes that a gland from the snail was extracted, with each yielding only a “minuscule” amount of the rare and highly coveted dye’s raw material.

“These snails, the Murex trunculus, probably about 4,000 years ago it was discovered that they could produce magnificent dyes with the most beautiful colours, dyes that were fast on wool, never faded. And that was something in the ancient world that was simply unheard of, it was priceless,” said Dr. Baruch Sterman of Ptil Tekhelet, co-author of the book The Rarest Blue: The Remarkable Story of an Ancient Colour Lost to History and Rediscovered.

photo - Baruch Sterman of the Ptil Tekhelet foundation, and co-author of the book The Rarest Blue — Baruch Sterman of the Ptil Tekhelet foundation, and co-author of the book The Rarest Blue. *(photo by Gil Zohar)*

At some point, added Sterman, those dyed fabrics were “worth up to 20 times their weight in gold.”

Other artifacts on display include garment fragments discovered at Masada during archeological excavations in the early 1960s. More than 30 years later, tests using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) proved the cloth had been dyed with a murex solution.

Out of the Blue concludes with the flag flown outside the United Nations in New York in May 1949, when Israel was accepted as a member state of the international body. A second Israeli flag on display was carried into orbit aboard the American Apollo spacecraft, which docked with the Soviet Soyuz rocket on July 17, 1975, in the first international manned space flight.

Sterman’s nonprofit amuta (foundation) is based on the research, in the 1980s, of Otto Elsner, a chemist at Ramat Gan’s Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, who discovered that, if a solution of the purple dye made from the hypobranchial gland of the Murex trunculus was exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, it would turn a deep shade of blue.

Popularizing that knowledge has been a slow process. According to the Talmud, tekhelet is a specific azure dye produced from a sea creature known as a hilazon. Rabbinic sages ruled that vegetable indigo dyes were unacceptable.

Over the past 150 years, several marine creatures were proposed for reviving the biblical process of dyeing the tassels, among them one favoured by Israel’s first chief rabbi, Isaac Herzog, father of Israel’s sixth president, Chaim Herzog. Rabbi Herzog, who completed his PhD at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1914, believed that the violet pelagic snail, Janthina janthina, was the source of the ritual tekhelet.

Another theory was proposed half a century earlier by Rabbi Gershon Hanokh Leiner, known as the Radzyner Rebbe, who produced blue dye from the black ink of the Sepia officinalis (the common cuttlefish). But chemical analysis identified his dye as Prussian blue, an inorganic synthetic colour derived from iron filings and not from the squid itself.

That dispute continues to reverberate: most of the blue-coloured tzitziyot worn in Israel today are dyed from the inexpensive cuttlefish, acknowledged Ptil Tekhelet. (The tekhelet factory in Radzyn near Lublin in Poland was destroyed during the Holocaust, and the technology was lost but was revived in Israel after 1948 thanks to the prewar research of Chaim Herzog.)

The rediscovery of tekhelet has almost messianic implications – one rabbinic source notes, “The revelation of the hilazon is a sign that the redemption is shining near.”

According to the museum, “The tekhelet blue, which reminded every Jew of their connection to God, remained in the memory of the [Jewish] people and became an integral part of the national symbol of the state of Israel.”

Gil Zohar is a journalist based in Jerusalem.

Revisiting the Venice ghetto

A page of the digital interactive installation of the domestic space of the Jewish ghetto, which was created by camerAnebbia. Part of the exhibit Venetian Ghetto: A Virtual Reconstruction: 1516-2017, which is at the Italian Cultural Centre’s Il Museo until Oct. 30. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)

The Venetian ghetto – a segregated enclave for Jews and the one from which the very name “ghetto” emerged – was created 500 years ago. An exhibit at Vancouver’s Italian Cultural Centre tells the history of the ghetto and is one of a number of local cultural events this year marking the half-millennium since the notorious decree.

The Venetian Ghetto: A Virtual Reconstruction: 1516-2017 opened at the centre’s Il Museo this summer. It is an abridged version of a larger exhibit showing concurrently at the Doge’s Palace in Venice, said the museum’s curator, Angela Clarke.

Clarke and Il Museo had wanted to do something around the topic of the ghetto in part because of a connection with a member of Vancouver’s Jewish community. When the late renowned University of British Columbia architecture professor Dr. Abraham Rogatnick passed away in 2009, he left his collection of Venetian books and other materials to the museum.

“A lot of the prints we have in the hallways are from his collection,” said Clarke. “Venice was his specialty.”

Rogatnick took his architecture classes to Venice and was also noted for turning his lectures into theatrical performances, accompanied by moody lighting and complementary background music. (After his retirement, he became immersed in Vancouver’s alternative theatrical scene, depicting, as he put it, “usually dying old men.”)

“We have, for a long time, wanted to do something in honour of Abraham Rogatnick,” said Clarke. When she discovered that the Doge’s Palace was planning an exhibit to mark the 500th anniversary, she contacted the institution. They agreed to reproduce a version of the exhibit tailored to Il Museo’s space.

It was the palace’s 16th-century resident, Lorenzo Loredan, the doge of the Republic of Venice from 1501 until his death in 1521, who determined that Jews should be segregated from the general Venetian population.

Although the origin of the term “ghetto” is disputed, many accept the view that it comes from the Venetian dialect’s word ghèto, foundry, which was the neighbourhood in which Jews were confined. Jews were allowed access to the city during the day, but were restricted to the ghetto at night. Space limitations in the ghetto led to upward expansion, including multi-storey homes and buildings, a unique architectural approach to that date.

“They built upwards to accommodate their family life and their businesses, so you got these very, very high staircases in buildings and they just built upwards,” Clarke said. “For the Jewish community, it’s all about going up stairs. I think a lot about the aging people in these families. What happened to them? What would an 80-year-old do? How would they negotiate that and go about their family life and business? And the stairs are incredibly steep. That was just their everyday life.”

The exhibit has four parts, including an interactive exploration of the ghetto’s synagogues through a virtual reconstruction. The architecture of the ghetto, the cemeteries and “the ghetto after the ghetto” – the fate of the area after Napoleon conquered Venice and emancipated the city’s Jews in 1797 – round out the exhibit.

The ghetto was remarkably multicultural, Clarke emphasized.

There were four main cultural groups that came to Venice, she said. “There were the Italian Jews, there were the German Jews, there were the Spanish Jews and then there were the [Levantine] Sephardic Jews, and they all came to Venice, so there were a number of synagogues and each synagogue was like a different cultural centre, based on your group, because each synagogue, of course, had schools. You have Hebrew but then your own cultural language. So the synagogues really did deal with a diverse group of people who came.”

photo - Image of a boat leading to the Jewish cemetery circa 1700s. Part of the Venetian Ghetto: A Virtual Reconstruction: 1516-2017 exhibit at Il Museo — Images of boats leading to the Jewish cemetery circa 1700s. Part of the Venetian Ghetto: A Virtual Reconstruction: 1516-2017 exhibit at Il Museo. *(photo by Meghan Kinnarny)*

Jews began gravitating to Venice as early as the 900s, with a surge in the 1300s and then again after the expulsion from Iberia.

The segregation of Jews was premised on economic concerns, said Clarke, with restrictions on professional activities that pushed the Jewish residents into dubious roles like moneylender. As in so many instances across European history, Jews were forced to wear differentiating articles of clothing; in Venice’s case, a red hat. The exhibit demonstrates the constancy of the compulsory topper while also depicting changing styles across centuries.

“The fashions change but the red hat stays the same,” Clarke says guiding visitors from one painting to another. “The woman over there, she’s very Renaissance. Over here, it’s the 1700s and he’s still wearing the red hat but the fashion has changed dramatically.”

Napoleon liberated the Jews, but he had somewhat bigoted notions of the city of Venice.

“He called it the drawing room of Europe, depicting Venice as this beautiful little elegant community,” Clarke said. “However, I’ve been reading Florence Nightingale and she [observes that] referring to something as a drawing room is a pejorative term. For a man to be in a drawing room is basically to say that he’s effeminate.

“When you look at it in that historical context – especially when you’re dealing with a megalomaniac who’s got basically size issues – it’s a veiled term,” she said, laughing.

The exhibit at Il Museo coincided with the Stones of Venice exhibit at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (profiled in the Independent Aug. 18) and performances of Merchant of Venice and Shylock as part of this year’s Bard on the Beach (reviewed July 21).

“It all just seemed to come together, which is very bizarre,” said Clarke. “It doesn’t often happen that way.”

The Venetian Ghetto: A Virtual Reconstruction: 1516-2017 continues until Oct. 30 at Il Museo in the Italian Cultural Centre of Vancouver, 3075 Slocan St. More information at italianculturalcentre.ca.

ROM’s Evidence Room

Interior perspective of The Evidence Room, with models of an Auschwitz gas column and gas-tight hatch, plaster casts and a model of a gas-tight door. (photo by Fred Hunsberger, University of Waterloo School of Architecture)

Visitors to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) will see an obscene display among the collections of dinosaur fossils, Egyptian mummies and suits of armour – a scale model of a gas chamber of the kind used at Auschwitz, where more than one million Jews were murdered between 1942 and 1945.

The Evidence Room exhibit, as it is named, consists of white plaster replicas of elements of the Nazi death camp murder machine, including the steel mesh columns through which pellets of Zyklon B insecticide were lowered to asphyxiate the prisoners locked inside the gas chambers. Similarly, it depicts the heavy door, which was bolted from the outside.

The exhibit features a reproduction of the original architectural drawings prepared by German architect, engineer and SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Bischoff, who served at Auschwitz as chief of the Central Construction Office of the Waffen-SS.

Visitors to ROM will note the meticulously planned airtight seal around the gas chamber’s door to prevent toxic leaks, and the grill-covered peephole that allowed dignitaries to watch the prisoners die.

“To understand this room … we first have to acknowledge that it’s related to the most murderous place,” said the exhibit’s creator, Robert Jan van Pelt, at a ROM Speaks lecture on June 27.

Van Pelt’s grisly display is the first in a ROM series intended to engender discussion of contemporary issues. And the issue here is forensic architecture, a relatively new field that uses planning and design tools to understand human rights abuses, in this case genocide.

For van Pelt, a Dutch-born architect who teaches at the University of Waterloo, The Evidence Room represents the culmination of two decades of work.

Van Pelt served as an expert witness during a trial, in London in 2000, in which Holocaust-denier David Irving unsuccessfully sued Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt for libel after Lipstadt, in a book, called out the pseudo-historian’s falsehoods. Irving famously quipped “No holes, no Holocaust.”

Van Pelt testified that indeed there were apertures in the gas chambers’ ceilings through which poison pellets were dropped. His testimony led to his 2002 book The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial.

The 592-page volume greatly impressed Alejandro Aravena, curator of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. The Chilean, who was awarded architecture’s Pritzker Prize for his work transforming slums and making architecture a tool of justice and social change, commissioned van Pelt to create an exhibit explaining the workings of an Auschwitz gas chamber. A model was on display at last year’s Venice Biennale.

In preparing for the current exhibit at ROM, van Pelt – together with colleagues Donald McKay, Anne Bordeleau and Sascha Hastings – wrote a supplementary book, The Evidence Room, published by the New Jewish Press in association with the University of Toronto’s Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies.

“It is difficult to imagine the details of a gas chamber, where humans were locked in to die,” says one Holocaust survivor quoted in van Pelt’s new book. “One has to feel the double grates that protected the bucket filled with poison pellets from the desperate hands of the condemned, peer into the bucket, imagine the pellets melting away, the poison oozing out of them.

“I knew a good deal about the Auschwitz-Birkenau murder factory,” says the survivor, “but the gas column really shocked me. Because of what I had read about people thinking they were going into a shower room, I had always imagined the gas being dispersed by sprinklers. Touching that construction had a profound effect on me – a new visceral recognition all these years later.”

And what of the pristine white plaster van Pelt and his architecture students used to build the reproduction?

For me, it jarringly evoked a sense of peace and innocence. But, as well, it called to mind that those murdered in the gas chambers defecated and urinated as they died and that Sonderkommandos (a special unit of slave labourers who removed gassed corpses and hauled them to the crematoria) had to whitewash the gas chambers after each usage.

The Evidence Room is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum until Jan. 28, 2018.

Gil Zohar is a journalist based in Jerusalem.