second generation

A childhood spent on the run

Survivor Miriam Dattel, right, with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre’s Ellie Lawson at the Yom Hashoah commemoration April 23. (screenshot)

Miriam Dattel was born Branka Friedman, in September 1940, in the Croatian city of Zagreb, then part of Yugoslavia. She was about six months old when the Nazis invaded and her family began a life in hiding. Fleeing ahead of the Nazis and their collaborators, the family survived together through a series of close calls, lifesaving tips from compassionate officials, luck, determination and exhausting treks through the wilderness in search of refuge.

Dattel shared her family’s story at the annual Yom Hashoah commemoration at Temple Sholom on April 23.

Upon invading Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Nazis, aided by their Croatian fascist Ustaše collaborators, immediately instituted the Nuremberg Laws and set up the first concentration camps in Yugoslavia. Dattel’s father and uncle were thrown out of the university and all Jews were forced to don the yellow star – including on young Branka/Miriam’s baby carriage.

The family was set to flee to Budapest, where they believed they would find refuge with family. When the day came, the baby Branka was ill, so her grandmother, Irma Stern, was sent on ahead. It was the last time the family saw her.

In her haste, the grandmother left behind her prayer book, which was her ubiquitous companion. Branka’s mother viewed the holy book as a fortuitous omen that all would be well in the end. At the commemoration last month, Dattel held the prayer book, now more than a century old and suffering the inevitable evidence of time.

Eventually, the family fled – but not to Hungary. Branca/Miriam, her parents, Andor and Margita Friedman, and her aunt and uncle, Lili and Fritz, were transported with the help of a friend of her uncle’s southwest to the Croatian city of Split on the Adriatic coast. Sections of the city were controlled by the Italian fascists and others by the Croatian regime.

One day, her father was tipped off by a high-ranking Italian officer that the Croatians were preparing to deport Jews from the areas of Split they controlled. He returned home in the middle of the night and evacuated the family to the Italian side. Eventually, the family’s race against fate continued, with a journey under false identities by ship to northern Italy.

“In 1943, when eventually Mussolini was finished, the Germans took over,” Dattel said in a video at the ceremony. Again, her father was tipped off by an Italian official, who warned him to disappear.

“From then on, from what I saw in my father’s diary, we went through 18 different hiding places,” she said, noting assistance from underground operatives.

As a child forced to race from one place to another, few distinct memories remain. However, in various barns where they took refuge, people would roast chestnuts and that remains an evocative taste-memory for her.

Ovaltine is another. And it is a flavour from the very moment that may have saved the life of Miriam and her family.

The group – now six with the addition of her newborn cousin Gerardo – had made their way through northern Italy, around Lake Como and toward the Swiss border. After walking for hours, crossing under fences and trudging through difficult terrain, they came to the frontier of Switzerland.

“There were two Swiss border guards there,” said Dattel. “They said the border is closed. And my father said, impossible, you are not going to let two kids be killed. My recollection is this Swiss soldier [with] a German Shepherd coming towards me, lifting me up and carrying me to the station, to the border house.”

There, the guard gave her Ovaltine and, while she has tried to recreate the flavour, it has never tasted the same.

The family members were placed in refugee camps, Miriam separated from her parents. In Switzerland, the family lived out the war, returning to Zagreb afterward before Miriam and her parents made their way to Israel.

About 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered in the Holocaust. Miriam was one of an estimated six to 11% who survived. In addition to the video screened at the event, Dattel spoke on stage with Ellie Lawson, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre’s education manager.

Claire Sicherman, a granddaughter of survivors, was the third-generation descendent speaker. She spoke of being consumed by grief in early life and growing up in a family filled with silences. (Sicherman shared her story of trauma and recovery earlier this year. See jewishindependent.ca/healing-trauma-possible.)

Hannah Marazzi, acting executive director of the VHEC, noted that this year marks the 82nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a symbol of defiance in the face of annihilation. In addition to remembering the millions of lives lost and the resilience of survivors, she said, “We remember the young Jewish fighters who rose up against the Nazis and whose courage continues to inspire us to stand against oppression in all of its forms.”

Rabbi Carey Brown, associate rabbi of Temple Sholom, welcomed attendees to the synagogue and reflected on the past’s lessons for the present.

Dr. Abby Wener Herlin, associate director of programs and community relations for the VHEC and a member of the third generation, introduced survivors, who lit candles of remembrance.

Cantor Shani Cohen chanted El Moleh Rachamim, the memorial prayer for the martyrs.

Wendy Bross Stuart was responsible for musical direction and arrangement, and played piano. Eric Wilson played cello. Cantor Michael Zoosman, Erin Aberle-Palm, Matthew Mintsis and Lorenzo Tesler-Mabe sang.

As is traditional, the annual ceremony ended with the singing of “Zog Nit Keynmol,” “The Partisan Song.”

Balancing education and art

Alix West Lefler plays Frida in The Fast Runner, a 15-minute short from director David Bercovici-Artieda that was shot over the course of four days in the Greater Victoria area. (photo from thefastrunnerfilm.com)

The Fast Runner, a film about a young girl and a rabbi confronting the reality of the Holocaust, will be shown at the Comox Valley International Film Festival on April 5. The 15-minute short was shot over the course of four days in the Greater Victoria area and involved 260 people.

Director David Bercovici-Artieda, the son of a Holocaust survivor, described the project as both a profound responsibility and an intensely personal journey. His father’s experience, though not depicted in the story, inspired him to bring the film to fruition.

“It’s not just about telling a story. It’s about honouring the memory of those who lived through unimaginable horrors, including my own father. Every frame, every scene and every creative choice carries the weight of history – my family’s history,” he told the Independent.

“I came to understand the profound impact of survival – not just the physical endurance, but the emotional and psychological resilience that followed. His story, and those of so many others, shaped my perspective on the responsibility of storytelling and the importance of preserving these narratives for future generations.”

Bercovici-Artieda said creating a film like The Fast Runner is a balancing act between art and education. It must be compelling, engaging and cinematic, but also serve the greater purpose of preserving memory and fostering empathy. At its core, he explained, the film carries a message of compassion, hope and perseverance in the darkest moments of history.

“It is a reminder that, even in the face of cruelty, there were acts of kindness, moments of defiance and an unbreakable human spirit. These themes are as relevant today as they were then,” he said.

Bercovici-Artieda admitted that, during the process of putting the film together, he questioned whether he was doing justice to the story and honouring his father’s legacy in the right manner.

“Ultimately, telling these stories is a privilege,” he said. “It is a way to ensure that the Holocaust is never forgotten, to remind audiences that history is not just in textbooks – it lives in the voices and memories of those who came before us.”

Bercovici-Artieda stressed that the film is about choices as well: those forced upon people who suffered and those made by people who stood by, helped or betrayed. Viewers, he hopes, will recognize the weight of these decisions and that history is not just a collection of events: it is built on the actions and moral dilemmas of individuals.

“I also hope audiences see the film not just as a story about the past, but as a reflection of today’s world,” he said. “The forces of hate, intolerance and dehumanization did not disappear with the Holocaust. They persist in different forms. If we are not vigilant, history can repeat itself. And, right now, we are witnessing a dangerous rise in antisemitism, Holocaust denial and historical revisionism.”

photo - Director David Bercovici-Artieda behind the camera of The Fast Runner, which next screens at the Comox Valley International Film Festival — Director David Bercovici-Artieda behind the camera of *The Fast Runner*, which next screens at the Comox Valley International Film Festival. *(photo from thefastrunnerfilm.com)*

Most importantly, Bercovici-Artieda would like people to leave the theatre with a sense of empathy. Survivors like his father, he said, endured unspeakable horrors, but they carried on, rebuilt their lives and, in many cases, found a way to forgive.

“If they could move forward with hope, so can we,” he said.

Currently, Bercovici-Artieda is raising funds to support a partnership with Journeys in Film, an educational nonprofit, to help teachers bring The Fast Runner into classrooms worldwide. In addition, he would like to expand screenings, panel discussions and outreach programs to engage audiences in meaningful conversations about the Holocaust, resilience and the dangers of historical revisionism.

“My hope for educating people about the Holocaust through The Fast Runner is to provide a deeply human perspective on one of history’s darkest chapters – one that goes beyond statistics and textbooks,” he said. “I want audiences, especially younger generations, to connect emotionally with the story, to feel the weight of what was lost and to understand the consequences of hatred and intolerance.”

The Fast Runner screened at the Victoria Film Festival in February; the Shabbat Lounge, a Jewish cultural event running alongside the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January; and the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival last November. After Comox, it will make its Latin American debut, with three screenings in Ecuador, Bercovici-Artieda’s home country. One of the screenings will take place on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah), on April 23, in Quito.

The film stars Alix West Lefler as the young girl Frida and Alex Poch-Goldin as the rabbi. Only 13 years old, West Lefler has a considerable list of acting credits, including roles in films (Speak No Evil, The King Tide) and on television (The Good Doctor, Riverdale). Poch-Goldin is a veteran stage and television actor with appearances on Nero Wolfe, Murdoch Mysteries and Queer as Folk; he is also a playwright, director and librettist.

Michael Bruce Adams wrote the screenplay for The Fast Runner. Adams has been involved in more than 150 film productions. Besides short films, he has written features and documentaries.

Bercovici-Artieda has been the cinematographer on dozens of film projects and a director of several recent television series’ episodes and movies, including the holiday film Making Spirits Bright.

For more about The Fast Runner, visit thefastrunnerfilm.com.

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

Healing trauma possible

Claire Sicherman read from her book Imprint, about intergenerational trauma, at UBC Hillel on Jan. 21. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Understanding of intergenerational trauma has expanded in recent decades. Two granddaughters of Holocaust survivors discussed the larger phenomenon and their personal experiences recently at the University of British Columbia’s Hillel House, part of Hillel’s Holocaust Awareness Week.

Claire Sicherman, author, workshop facilitator and trauma-informed somatic writing coach, shared her experiences and read from her book, Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation, which was published in 2017. She was in conversation with Dr. Abby Wener Herlin, associate director of programs and community relations at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, which co-sponsored the Jan. 21 event with Hillel BC.

Sicherman attributed to psychologist Dr. Arielle Schwartz the definition of intergenerational trauma as the ways in which the unresolved experiences of traumas, losses and griefs of one generation can become a legacy that is passed down to the next generation.

“In other words,” said Sicherman, “the experiences of my grandparents are passed down through my parents to me.”

In addition to the “nurture” component of family legacies, there is the “nature” component of epigenetics, which Sicherman described as “the study of how genes turn on and off in response to environmental change.”

“I’ve heard it talked about like it’s sort of like light switches switching on and off in the body,” she explained. “Whatever switches switched on for my grandparents would then be switched on, passed down to my parent, passed down to me.”

Experts in the field say it’s not a biological prison, Sicherman said. “They are actually malleable, so what you’re born with, you are not necessarily stuck with. We do have the ability to change certain things. There is hope in that.”

Growing up, Sicherman knew little or nothing about inherited trauma.

“When I started reading about it, I began to understand that what was going on with me wasn’t really my fault or that it wasn’t really something wrong with me,” she said. “It was just that I was carrying this huge thing.”

Reading excerpts from her book, Sicherman recounted being “disconnected from my body.” The inherited trauma manifested as a nervous system on overdrive and a tendency to hypervigilance. She was always ready to bolt out the door, looking for exit signs, aware of potential dangers, unable to fully rest, and prone to stress and anxiety.

She said that untold stories often pass more powerfully from generation to generation than stories that are recounted.

“When you think about that,” said Sicherman, “it’s what we don’t talk about that has more weight. It’s the silence. It’s the secrets.… That’s why it’s also important to me to speak out about these things, because it’s healing that goes across generations.”

Her survivor grandparents thought they were protecting their children through silence, Sicherman said. In response, the second generation learned not to ask questions.

There were other silences. In addition to the limited discussion around the Holocaust, Sicherman did not learn until well into her own adulthood that, when she was 4 years old, her grandfather had taken his own life, and not died of a heart attack, as she had been led to believe.

As someone who writes about and works with others on issues of healing intergenerational trauma, she urges people to embrace the totality of what they have inherited.

“Aside from trauma, what are the legacies that your ancestors bring to you?” she asked. “What are the gifts? What are the strengths? That’s also an important question to ask yourself, and a way of connecting with Jewish heritage. What are the strengths of your lineage? Is it survival? Is it tenacity? Is it humour? Is it creativity? Those are questions that you can ask yourself.”

Her son, Ben Sicherman, a UBC student, was present and also spoke of his family’s legacy of trauma. He described struggling with anxiety when he was younger and learning mechanisms for addressing issues through his parents’ modeling. He also spoke of carrying the legacy of his ancestors in ways like choosing 18 as his hockey number, not only because it represents chai, life, but because the numbers on his great-grandmother’s Auschwitz tattoo added up to the number 18.

Intergenerational trauma is a major component of her life’s work, said Sicherman.

“I do feel a sense of obligation, as a third generation,” she said. “But I also feel like this is part of my calling, too. It’s very meaningful. It’s an obligation that is not homework. It’s part of what I was set out to do.”

A multidimensional memoir

With her latest book, Olga Campbell sets out to leave a legacy, one that encompasses the trauma of the past but also the richness of the present and hope for the future.

Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson is Campbell’s third book. Her first, Graffiti Alphabet, comprised photographs of graffiti she found around the Greater Vancouver area. Her second, A Whisper Across Time, was her family’s Holocaust story.

The first essay in Dear Arlo is about Campbell’s parents, Tania and Klimek. They lived in Warsaw. “They were surrounded by family and friends and had much to look forward to,” writes Campbell. “Then, in 1939, everything changed. The Nazis invaded Poland from the west, the Soviets from the east. Life as they had known it stopped.”

Klimek would be arrested by the Soviets first, a pregnant Tania two weeks later. They were sent to different Russian prison camps. They survived, but the baby didn’t, nor did any of Tania’s family, most notably, her twin sister and parents, Campbell’s maternal grandparents.

“Several months after their release from the prison camps, my parents found themselves in Baghdad, Iraq,” writes Campbell. “By that time, my mother was pregnant with me and could go no further. I was born in Baghdad on February 14, 1943.”

Eventually, after living in both Palestine and the United Kingdom, the family came to Canada. It wasn’t an easy life, learning a new language and new culture, or a long one for Campbell’s mother, who died at 52 of cancer.

image - A page from Olga Campbell’s memoir Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson, which features letters, art, poems, essays and recipes — A page from Olga Campbell’s memoir Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson, which features letters, art, poems, essays and recipes.

Campbell shares her stories and wisdom with readers as a grandmother speaking to her only grandson, Arlo, with whom she obviously has a special relationship.

“I am writing this book as a legacy for you,” she writes in the first letter to Arlo. “A multidimensional memoir. A compilation of my writing, my art and a few family recipes. These writings and art are my responses to events in my life. The losses, trauma, grief … and the joy, happiness and love. It’s about the angst and awe of life, which is ever-changing, full of challenges but also magical.”

Brief letters to Arlo are spread throughout the memoir, which is gloriously full of Campbell’s artwork – painting, mixed media, sculpture and more, all of it in colour. A graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, she has had many exhibitions since deciding to become an artist in her 40s, having started her professional life as a social worker. She has participated in the Eastside Culture Crawl since its inception almost 30 years ago, and has been a consistent part of the West of Main Art Walk (Artists in Our Midst) as well.

In addition to the art and letters in Dear Arlo, Campbell includes some of her poetry and essays. She shares how she came to write her second book, her experiences dealing with intergenerational trauma, her path to spirituality, how she found courage, and more.

She writes about losing her husband, in 1994. “Along with him, my plans and dreams for the future also died,” she writes. He died of a stroke at 49 years old – the pair had been together for 32 years, married for 26 of those years.

She shares the story of how she came to have her current dog, Nisha. “I was very sick in September 2019 with what my doctor now believes was COVID, before anyone had heard of COVID,” writes Campbell. Struggling many months with breathing difficulties, she turned, in desperation, to Ganesha, a Hindu god. “My wish to him was to remove all obstacles to my physical, emotional and mental well-being.”

A couple of days later, there came a knock at her door. Two work acquaintances were there, asking if she could adopt a rescue dog. Campbell did, and Nisha “was extremely timid, jumping, trembling and shaking at every sound, every movement. I held her all day every day for the first week to calm her down and get her used to me. She is still a little timid but every day she becomes more brave. She is playful, full of fun and great company,” writes Campbell. “She did remove all obstacles to my physical, emotional and mental health.”

Another uplifting essay is the one on how Campbell has “never come of age.” When she paints and creates with friends, she feels like she is 5 years old, she says. When with her teenage grandson, she also feels like a teen, and sees “the wonder of the world.”

image - A page from Olga Campbell’s memoir Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson — A page from Olga Campbell’s memoir Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson.

Campbell has role models, older friends and neighbours who still have bucket lists and exercise regimes. Having traveled much herself – Myanmar, Morocco, Vietnam, India, Cambodia, Laos, Turkey and other places – she now wants “to do inward travel. To get to know myself and others around me. To find the mystery inside. To nourish relationships with the people I know and with new people that I meet.” She wants to have different adventures: “Creative adventures, people adventures, spiritual adventures.”

There are more than a dozen recipes in Dear Arlo – from an apple torte that a 5-year-old Arlo bet Campbell she wouldn’t make (which she did but he never ate); to cabbage pie and Russian salad, recalling when Arlo was teaching himself Russian; to broccoli and cheese soup, vegetarian meatloaf and ginger apple tea, in response to Arlo’s request for some recipes.

Campbell is grateful for many things.

“I have had a good marriage and a wonderful family – my lovely daughter, her loving partner and my wonderful grandson Arlo,” she writes.

“I have dealt with losses and tragedies in my life, including the premature death of my husband, but I survived, and now I am happy. Those intense feelings of sadness that I grew up with no longer plague me. I can be triggered, but on the whole, I am fine.”

The memoir ends as it begins, with a letter to Arlo, who, says Campbell, has been “the best grandson I could ever have imagined.”

She writes, “The past provides us with valuable lessons that we can use to inform our present and future. A sense of connection and continuity with the people who came before us. This adds a depth and richness to our lives. I look forward to having many more adventures with you.”

We get to see Arlo grow up, in photos throughout the book. And the photo placed squarely in the centre of this last letter is perfect: Arlo in the driver’s seat of his new red convertible, toque on, giving a thumbs up, smiling, with Campbell beside him, also bundled up for a cold drive, but also with a big smile.

To purchase Dear Arlo or Campbell’s previous books, visit olgacampbell.com.

Campbell’s artwork is on display at the Zack Gallery Jan. 8-27, with an artist reception Jan. 9, 6-8 p.m. Campbell speaks as part of the JCC Jewish Book Festival on Jan. 23, 7 p.m., in the gallery.

The opposite of death is love

Hadar Galron in Whistle, which is at the Firehall Arts Centre Nov. 14-15, as part of the Chutzpah! Festival. (photo by Nathan Yakobovitch)

“As a child I was never hugged or kissed; I think my parents did not even see me. I wrote this story to stop being an invisible child,” Israeli author Ya’akov Buchan has said about Whistle: My Mother was Mengele’s Secretary.

The play Whistle is part of this year’s Chutzpah! Festival, with performances Nov. 14 and 15 at the Firehall Arts Centre. Writer, director and actor Hadar Galron, who adapted Buchan’s story for the stage, stars in the monodrama.

“Buchan was born to two Auschwitz survivors, and began writing after he was injured in the Yom Kippur War. He’s written 18 books – four concerning the Holocaust – but he felt that people don’t read so much anymore, and that he wanted to write a play about second generation Holocaust survivors,” explained Galron in an interview with the Independent. “Dramatic writing and prose are very different techniques, and Ya’akov sent me about 30 pages of interesting and well-written content, but not dramatic enough for stage.

“The first meeting with him was out of respect – I thought I’d give him a few tips and let him take it from there,” she continued. “I remember the turning point: I said, ‘You mention twice in these pages the name Mengele. You can’t just throw in a name like that, it needs to have some dramatic payoff, or not to be mentioned at all.’ Ya’akov said nothing, just nodded. And, suddenly, I thought that maybe Mengele had tortured one of his parents. ‘Were any of your parents somehow … (how to say this?!) … connected to Mengele?’ Ya’akov looked me squarely in the eye and said, quietly, ‘My mother was Mengele’s secretary.’ That was when I knew I would take the task, and help him tell his story and the story of the second generation.”

In recent years, Galron has been working on several plays that deal with the lasting impacts of trauma. “We tend not to consider [the] second generation as traumatic,” she said, “but something as horrendous as the Holocaust leaves some people so scarred that they cannot really love anymore, even their children. Or, they love but in a different, obsessive way. The children who grow up without feeling love are traumatized, too, but their wounds are invisible.

“It’s important to understand that, whilst the trauma lasts a minute or a year or five years, post-trauma lasts a lifetime and, when considering [the] second generation, then even more than a lifetime. Long-term traumas such as [the] Holocaust are not a swing of the sword, they are more like the bite of a snake – the venom penetrates the body and mixes with the blood of the victim.”

Though she generally directs her own works, Galron said, “When I’m the actress, I need someone on the outside. At first, I thought maybe I’d direct and not act. It was Ya’akov who begged me, after seeing my stand-up cabaret Passion Killer, to act the part.”

Jaffa, Israel-born director and playwright Hana Vazana Grunwald was the first person who came to Galron’s mind to direct.

“We studied theatre together at Tel Aviv University, but that was decades ago! I had no idea where to find her,” said Galron. “We’d met a couple of times in festivals, etc., along the years. I was thinking of her on my morning walk-jog in the park by my home. In the distance, I saw a woman that reminded me of Hana and then we got closer and I saw it actually was Hana! She lives five minutes away from me, but that was the first day she decided to go out and take a power-walk before work. I don’t believe in coincidence – it’s only God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

Grunwald started out in community theatre more than 25 years ago. She is the director of the Frechot Ensemble, a collective of women creators, which she founded some 10 years ago.

“I see myself as a feminist Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jew) writer, who brings to the forefront my personal story,” she told the Independent. “But my personal story is never just my own, it’s an inherent part of my political story, my family’s story and the collective which I belong to. I feel that my world isn’t really represented in Israeli theatre. I don’t see the household I grew up in, I don’t encounter complexities and dilemmas that interest me. I realized I have the responsibility to represent myself – I have to write these texts, I have to tell these stories. My job is to search through history and prose and to bring back the voice of all those whose voice was taken away from them.”

When Galron sent her the script for Whistle, Grunwald said, “I was immediately hooked. But, after we met again, I felt that the opportunity to work together and find connections would also be reflected in the play’s dramaturgy.

“The challenge that the play Shirika [Whistle, in Hebrew] brings to our door is how to retell the story of the Holocaust and the story of the members of the second generation, who feel transparent. Two images guided me in my search for the keys to directing the play,” said Grunwald.

“The first: whistle. Tammy, the protagonist, lost her ability to whistle, she lost her ability to love and feel loved and, as she says in the play, ‘The opposite of death is not life, the opposite of death is love.’ The way this whistle is expressed on stage is through the prop of a kettle full of boiling water. The boiling and bubbling kettle and the whistler on stage metaphorically tell the story of the Holocaust, a story that never ends.

“The second image we chose is the painting. Tammy is a painter and, when we wondered what was painted on the stage, we realized that the body is the canvas, the body treasures and carries the wounds of the past, the memories – the actress jumps from limb to limb and with the help of simple means such as brushes and paints Tammy marks national history…. This is the way in which the trauma is present again on the stage.

“It seems that precisely now the spectacle of a whistle is given a relevant meaning,” Grunwald added. “We find ourselves facing a terrorist attack in which again Israeli Jews are brutally murdered and mass murdered because of their Jewishness. We again witness horror stories in this war against Hamas. We find ourselves again, 75 years after the establishment of the state of Israel, in a shocking event that reminds us of the fear of being destroyed. The harsh scenes from both sides shake the soul, sow terror and fear, and remind us that the feeling of security is a temporary illusion and we must not forget it. I work at the Hebrew-Arab theatre in Jaffa, a theatre that gives a stage to the binational discourse, it gives a stage to both narratives, and I feel that, these days, it is the first to be hurt.”

Galron also works with artists of different backgrounds and shared one of her experiences.

“Between 2016 and 2018, I was artistic director of the Shalom Festival, a small festival that was an official part of the Edinburgh Fringe fest,” she said. “We created this festival after an Israeli production, in 2014, was shouted down by the BDS [boycott, divest and sanction movement] and, in 2015, there were no Israeli productions.”

She was inspired by Sir Rudolf Bing, founding director of the Edinburgh International Festival, from which the Edinburgh Fringe Festival has its roots. Galron explained that Bing, a Jewish-Austrian opera singer, who fled Nazi Germany, “created the festival as a cultural bridge, inviting, firstly, German artists to take part! With that in mind, I told the sponsors of the Shalom Festival that we cannot make a one-sided Shalom (Peace) Festival and that, as the artistic director, I would like to bring artists from all of Israel, including Israeli Arabs – both Muslim and Christian – and also some Palestinian artists. At first, there was big objection but, eventually, I convinced them that these are Palestinians who believe in peace, in dialogue. Until today, even in these times, I am in contact with my Palestinian friends.

“I believe art is a bridge,” she said. “I believe art and culture and theatre have the power to heal – to give us insight and create empathy. From my very first performance as a stand-up artist – my show was on the status of women in the Jewish law – I made a decision to make my art meaningful, to merge life and stage.”

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel, Galron has been posting related videos and other items on Facebook, including “Creativity in place of survival” writing challenges. She got the idea from a course she took during COVID with Dr. Joe Dispenza. “In one of the online digital courses, he speaks of how our brain can be either in ‘survival’ or in ‘creativity’ mode,” said Galron. “The moment I heard this, I understood many things about myself and how creativity has always been for me a way of surviving. Now I know that, when we begin to be creative, we actually begin to pull ourselves out of ‘survival’ [mode] even if we are being creative whilst we try to survive. A bit like Baron Munchausen explains that he pulls himself by his hair out of the pit.”

About how she is doing since the attacks, Galron said, “I didn’t have a real answer to that question until yesterday, because everything is so chaotic. But I was speaking to a university student of mine who answered, ‘I’m committed to the good.’ I was so moved by this. She told me she adopted it from her yoga teacher. I adopted it from her. I’m committed to the good.”

For tickets to Whistle and other Chutzpah! shows, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Engaging in guided autobiography

For more than 20 years, the Second Generation (2G) Group in Vancouver has organized and participated in workshops, local and international conferences, meetings and special projects, with a goal of developing a deeper understanding of ourselves and our history, as well as leaving a legacy for future generations. This article is about how 12 members of Vancouver’s 2G community used guided autobiography (GAB) to write their stories of growing up as children of Holocaust survivors.

Deborah Ross-Grayman: For some years, I have co-facilitated the 2G Group in Vancouver. Over time, I became aware that a growing number of us wanted to write both our own stories of growing up as children of Holocaust survivors and document the survival experiences of our parents. We wanted to explore how growing up in our families, and living with a Holocaust legacy, may have shaped our responses to life’s circumstances and influenced decisions we’ve made and actions we’ve taken. I began to look for a class we could take as a group.

Wendy Bancroft: In the fall of 2020, I was leading a GAB workshop series for the Simon Fraser University Liberal Arts and 55+ Program when I received an email from the program office saying they had been approached by a member of Vancouver’s Second Generation community, looking for a writing instructor to help them document their experience of living with this legacy. There are other writing courses offered through the 55+ program but students tended to give GAB high marks for being “safe” and having a “therapeutic effect,” hence my name was suggested.

GAB is a gently structured method designed to help individuals recall, reflect on, write about and share aloud meaningful memories. Feedback focuses on the experience being shared, and theme-based writing provides a ready focus. Stories must be kept under 1,000 words and all stories are shared aloud in a small group.

It’s a method designed by renowned gerontologist and founding dean of the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, Dr. James Birren, and it was originally intended as a tool to enhance life review for older adults. In addition to choosing foundational and universal themes, Birren developed a set of associated memory-stimulating questions. It was a powerful tool that has, for several years now, been shared in general populations by instructors certified through the Birren Institute of Autobiographical Studies. I am one of some 600-plus individuals, globally located, trained to lead workshops using guided autobiography.

Truth is, I was thrilled to be asked to lead workshops for the Second Generation Holocaust survivors community. Although not raised as a Jew, I learned as a young adult that my birth father was Jewish and, ever since, I’ve wanted to know more about my genetic inheritance.

Ross-Grayman: For our part, none of us was familiar with GAB, nor knew about Birren. We were attracted by the fact that it gave us a structured way into telling our stories, and six of us enthusiastically signed up.

Bancroft: Shortly thereafter, I had my first meeting with Deborah and Henry Ross-Grayman, co-facilitators of the 2G Group.

Planning the workshops

Bancroft: Deborah and Henry told me about the group and what they hoped to get out of the writing; I helped them understand what GAB was about. Then came the important task of choosing from the many writing themes offered in GAB. Deborah and Henry chose themes addressing experiences they felt would be especially relevant for their 2G community: family, spirituality and identity, facing fear and finding courage, love and intimacy, and finding resilience.

It was then my job to adapt the introductions and associated questions to be relevant and sensitive to the 2G life experience. Up to that point, my knowledge of Judaism had been limited to novels and what I had learned in the past from attending a three-night series of information sessions offered as a Taste of Judaism through Temple Sholom. I worried I might use insensitive language and references so I read books and articles dealing with Holocaust effects and watched interviews available on the internet.

Our first official GAB for 2G workshop series took place on March 14, 2020.

That this was a special group was immediately evident. Many already knew each other so they had a head start on bonding, but they were also unusually open and deeply sharing, warm and … vociferous. The term “herding cats” often came to mind. Some were already outstanding writers. One was an actress and did marvelous imitations of her parents and grandmother.

Most stories were linked to Holocaust effects and led to insights about family or other events in the past. I think here of one that had to do with driving anxieties triggered by bridges. The author remembered being 3 years old and hiding with her family under a bridge to escape bombing. While the stories could be painful, pain was often offset by laughter.

Ross-Grayman: Wendy guided us on our journey with sensitivity and care. In the first session, each of us committed to confidentiality, which created a safe container for our exploration. And, as a result, a deep intimacy developed as we shared things that some had never shared. Through the process of writing, reading and listening to our authentic and honest pieces, we increased our compassion and understanding of ourselves and each other.

In reflecting on the impact of these powerful sessions I wrote: “Like Partisans in the woods, with words our weapons, we fought for truth and liberation. Arm in arm we supported each other, witnessed ourselves mirrored in the other and found the strength to continue excavating. Our expert guide pointed the way with care. We arrived at the end of our journey full of purpose and understanding, more connected and less entangled with the past.”

What began as a six-week course for six of us, grew to a two-year writing project for 12 members: Fran Alexander, Olga Campbell, Esther Chase, Barbara Gard, Jane Heyman, Gabriella Klein, Agi Rejto, Marianne Rev, Deborah and Henry Ross-Grayman, Sidi Schaeffer and Marg Van Wielingen. A majority are in the helping professions and the arts. We were born in Australia, Hungary, Iraq, Germany, North America, Poland and Romania.

We continue to meet bi-monthly as an informal 2G writing group.

Bancroft: It has been a deep and meaningful experience for me. Over the time I’ve spent with these dynamic, compassionate and highly intelligent individuals, I’ve come to feel an even stronger attraction to Judaism. The 50% of me that is Ashkenazi Jew keeps pushing for more and more recognition.

Ross-Grayman: It is important for these stories to be recorded for posterity so future generations can have a greater understanding of the impact of the Holocaust and intergenerational transmission of trauma and resilience. This is not just for the future Jewish community, but for all communities and peoples affected by war, genocide and trauma.

We are now organizing a Second Generation anthology, which we hope to publish soon.

Wendy Bancroft has been helping people tell their stories for 40 years, eight of those as a guided autobiography instructor. In 2022, she was awarded the Betty and James Birren Award for Excellence in Practice from the International Centre for Life Story Innovation and Practice (ICLIP). More information about Bancroft and GAB can be found at storycatchers.ca. Deborah Ross-Grayman brings her background co-founding and running a woman-owned business and her work as a child and family therapist to her role, over 20 years, as co-facilitator of the Vancouver Second Generation Group. She is also a visual artist and writer, currently working on her memoir. She can be reached at [email protected].

A story of two families

Marsha Lederman’s Kiss the Red Stairs begins in 1919, when her father was born, on erev Yom Kippur. (photo by Ben Nelms)

In the last couple of decades, researchers have identified traits that affect many children of Holocaust survivors. There remains much left to uncover, including how much is epigenetic – that is, whether and how the genes of people like survivors, who have undergone extreme trauma, work differently than other people’s – and how much might be a result of the parenting styles of people who, in many instances, were ripped from their own parents in the most brutal circumstances. The old issue of nature versus nurture, in other words.

While psychologists and scientists try to unravel those mysteries, a genre of second generation memoirs is exploring the deeply personal experiences of being raised by survivors of the Shoah. A page-turning, sometimes shocking and nakedly vulnerable volume has recently added much to the growing library.

Vancouver journalist Marsha Lederman, Western arts correspondent for the Globe and Mail, has written Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed. The book begins in 1919, when Jacob Meier Lederman was born on erev Yom Kippur. The auspicious timing of the birth of this baby, who would grow to become Marsha Lederman’s father, portended great things.

“[T]his was an occasion, an omen – a very good one, the hugest of deals,” she writes. “This person was special, he was going to be something, do something very important with his life.”

Indeed, he did. He survived the Holocaust – the only person in his immediate family to do so and one of only 10% of the Polish Jews alive in 1939 who survived to 1945.

Marsha Lederman’s mother was also a survivor, and one who participated in Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation testimony project, video-recording her Holocaust experiences. This recording would become a touchstone because, despite the journalist daughter’s career asking questions of strangers, there were many unanswered questions in the family. This was due in part to the harrowing, abrupt response to a childish inquiry about the absence of grandparents, an early lesson that unexpected answers can have catastrophic emotional impacts.

Well into adulthood, Lederman decided to visit her mother during a snowbird retreat in Florida. But instead of sitting across the kitchen table learning about her mother’s darkest moments, she was instead living one of her own – delivering her mother’s eulogy. She had waited a day too long to fly south.

Lederman’s book is the story of a family – two families, really. A family that in some ways never came together quite right, the author’s birth family with its silences about the past, and another that fell apart, that of her marriage. Kiss the Red Stairs, in fact, is a sort of applied case study in second generation (shorthanded “2G”) neuroses, as they distort the author’s reactions and coping mechanisms in a time of personal crisis.

As her marriage collapses, Lederman recognizes, on the one hand, that her responses may not be commensurate with actual events but are exacerbated by a lifetime of fears around loss and abandonment. On another hand, the undeniable anguish of her marital breakdown evokes an added burden of guilt, her own trauma juxtaposed with her parents’ experiences. Given what their mothers and fathers endured, do children of survivors have a right to feel the pain that other people seem to validly experience?

Lederman acknowledges that she was always ready for everything to fall to pieces. She inherited – or developed – an existential pessimism and a catastrophizing worldview: “The glass wasn’t just half-empty; it was half-full of poison,” she writes. “Or Zyklon B.”

The history that has formed Lederman’s identity was not imprinted on her at home only. It was in the zeitgeist of her coming-of-age as a young Canadian Jew in the 1970s and ’80s.

“The slogan ‘Never Again’ was drilled into us, implying – to me, anyway – that there was always the potential for an again, for another catastrophe. What would we do when the Nazis came back and came for us, like they came for our parents?

“This happened to us. This could happen to us again. I was one of the us. On some level I believed, from a very young age, that this could happen to me. I understood the need to be on guard, that we weren’t really safe. We needed to be on alert. Have a plan.”

For whatever were their good intentions, the organizers of a youth trip to Israel reinforced Lederman’s anxieties. Intending to instil in the participants the need for one solitary Jewish state in the world, they reminded their young charges that, in the absence of Israel, Jews would have nowhere to go should the need arise, “if the world once again turned on – or turned its back on – the Jews.”

She doesn’t disagree with the premise. “But the exercise scared the hell out of me. Don’t be so comfortable in that Canada you think of as home; you never know what could happen.”

That awareness of the unimaginable human capability for inhumanity had imprinted on her to the extent that everyday life became a gauntlet of inevitable disaster, misery the preordained endpoint of any happiness. When her marriage broke down, her reaction was extreme, “As if divorce, for instance, were some kind of death camp.”

Having consciously tried to eradicate (second-hand) Holocaust memory from its constant intrusion into her mind, Lederman finally faces the core question of her life, and of the book: “Could I possibly be a victim of the Holocaust, once removed?”

Now a mother, her obsessive worry has a new object, not only in terms of the world into which that child was born, but the potential for epigenetic inheritance. Will the baggage of the past be passed along to another descendant of survivors?

At the same time, Lederman is careful not to ascribe her challenges to the overburdened couple who raised her.

“I am not comfortable blaming what happened to my parents – and, in effect, blaming them – for my little problems. It feels self-indulgent, unfair and actually untrue,” she writes. What they accomplished after the war was almost as miraculous as their survival during it. “The fact that after such tragedy my parents were able to build new lives – purchase and set up a home, go to night school to learn English, buy a business, raise children – seems astonishing to me, as I contemplate it all as an adult. How on earth did they manage to do it, manage to be so normal?”

She quotes Elie Wiesel who, in 1984, told children of Holocaust survivors: “That your parents were not seized by an irrepressible anger … remains a source of astonishment to me. Had they set fire to the entire planet, it would not have surprised anyone.”

Elsewhere in Lederman’s book, Wiesel appears again, seemingly underscoring the legitimacy of second generation complexes by noting that it was they, not their parents, who were the ultimate target of Hitler’s plan.

“You were the enemy’s obsessions,” Wiesel told the children of survivors. “In murdering living Jews, he wished to prevent you from being born.”

Lederman confronts the reader with things she has learned from research, rather than from firsthand experience or from stories her parents shared (because they didn’t). The Holocaust experiences of her parents may be the impetus for her lifelong sense of danger, she seems to suggest, but the larger history of that era should be a warning shot for all humans – because it was humans who perpetrated everything that happened to her parents and to the millions of others of the Nazis’ victims.

In one of several graphic segments, she demands that the reader ponder how ordinary people could throw babies in the air and practise a merciless form of skeet shooting.

There are other psychological conundrums in the book. Reading her father’s journal of a trip back to Europe, Lederman confronts what reads like a cognitive rupture: her father’s love for and comparatively happy memories of Germany.

Rather than remain in Nazi-occupied Poland, young Jacob audaciously crossed into the belly of the beast, into Germany, posing as a Polish peasant boy, and got work as a farmhand, surviving until the end of the war. As a result, he took a perversely positive view. In a travel diary entry, he wrote, “I had a wonderful exciting day and my motto stands again forever: I will never forget you Germany and the peace and security I found here among these fields, meadows and trees in those murderous inhuman times of the year 1942.”

Of all the happenstances in the book – some life-altering and, in several instances, life-saving – there is a particularly poignant one that happened on her father’s trip back to his hometown. On that trip, her father found out that his parents had left a letter for him before they had been evacuated from the ghetto and shortly thereafter murdered.

“A Polish woman who lived there at the time, or moved in after the liquidation – I’m not sure which – had come into possession of that letter. There were photos in this packet and some other family keepsakes,” she writes. “The woman said she had held onto these items for a long time, but after so many years without word, she lost all hope that my father had survived; she figured nobody from the family had. She threw the packet away.

“What was that like for him – to learn that his parents had left him something: a declaration of their love, a wish for his future, some unknown secret, an explanation of what was happening to them? And to learn that those things once touched and left for him by his parents – a written document, photographs, who knows what else – proof that his parents had existed, evidence of their love – had survived, only to be discarded?”

On her own ventures to the blood-soaked continent, Lederman is reminded that the past has not passed. She sees antisemitic graffiti on abandoned synagogues, Polish youths giving obscene gestures to participants during the March of the Living. Lederman and four family members are paying tribute at a Holocaust memorial while a group of boys nearby chant something in Polish, something menacing that included one term she recognized: “Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

“It didn’t sound like they were expressing their condolences,” she writes.

After a lifetime of mostly solitary rumination and fears, Lederman has several epiphanies during the World Federation of Child Survivors of the Holocaust annual conference, held in 2019 in Vancouver. Here, she finds others who share her view that “the other shoe is always about to drop and the world is not safe”; “being plagued with obsessive doubt”; “a heightened ability – one might call it a curse – to observe and engage others”; “A constant expectation that someone is going to get you.”

There, she finds she is not alone.

“I had found my people,” she writes.

Life with inherited trauma

Dr. Gita Arian Baack, author of The Inheritors: Moving Forward from Generational Trauma. (photo from Gita Arian Baack)

Dr. Gita Arian Baack, author of The Inheritors: Moving Forward from Generational Trauma, was in town earlier this month to speak at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival and hold a three-day experiential workshop with the Second Generation Group in Vancouver.

The Ottawa-based counselor began her festival presentation with a quote from the late Israeli novelist Amos Oz, who wrote, “Our past belongs to us, but we do not belong to it.” For Baack, the quote underscores her message to inheritors of the Shoah – that “we were given life and an obligation to bear witness and honour the martyrs and heroes of the Holocaust. And that we also have the right to live full and joyful lives.”

“Generational trauma stems from devastating events which transpired before we were born,” Baack told the Independent. “In the case of the Holocaust, we have experienced it from birth; it is as if we were there. We carry an unrelenting sadness, sense of absence and betrayal.”

The ultimate question her book explores is: “How can we live a full life despite the difficult trauma we inherited?”

Prior to writing The Inheritors, Baack conducted doctoral research into the subject of intergenerational trauma and resilience, yet what she uncovered did not fit or go deeply enough into either. Often, resilience is described as bouncing back with support from others. But, she said, “You don’t bounce back from the Holocaust!”

She was resolved to unravel answers to these and other questions, such as why are so many of us resilient and compassionate despite our inherited trauma? Do we carry memory from one generation to another? How do we move forward, when the usual therapies for trauma have proven not to work for us?

“We are also faced with the difficulty of piecing together our family stories,” said Baack. “Much of our family stories are full of holes, unknowns and even secrets, our roots destroyed. Understandably, we have strong emotions but don’t know how to deal with them; for example, excessive sadness, fear of authority, worry, lack of trust, lack of safety, etc.”

Further, inherited trauma is often frozen, embedded in the brain stem, also known as the primitive brain – accessing it is difficult, but it can be done, she said.

Baack noted that ancient wisdom, the Bible and new epigenetic scientific research explain that trauma is passed onto generations in the DNA, and even the cells, for as many as seven generations. She strongly believes that this is the case if it is acknowledged and processed; if it is not, then it can take longer than seven generations.

Though Baack’s own experience is being a child of Holocaust survivors, The Inheritors encompasses others who have been victimized: Canada’s indigenous population, survivors of the Rwandan genocide and of several other horrible episodes of recent history. The book also looks at trauma on a personal level, from those who have suffered as a result of natural disaster, an accident, economic hardship, the justice or education system, illness or loss of a loved one.

The intent of The Inheritors is to serve as a tool for moving forward, said Baack. The book is filled with dialogues, poetry and stories from people of different backgrounds. Readers are invited to explore their story, and there are questions at the end of each chapter to help them process that story and, in so doing, transform their pain. At the least, in the end, they will have a written story as a legacy to their descendants.

The Inheritors has had other, unexpected, impacts. For example, the conductor of the North Carolina State University orchestra commissioned composer and flutist Allison Loggins-Hull to write a piece for an upcoming performance and she has chosen to write a work inspired by the book – Inheritors Overture will première on April 5 in Raleigh, N.C.

The group dialogues that Baack conducts offer a means of validation through other people with similar experiences and various experiential tools that can help further a deeper exploration of their trauma stories, the “undiscussables” and the unknowns. Group participants, she said, are often surprised by the creativity, laughter and camaraderie that arise.

The Inheritors is dedicated to (and inspired by) Baack’s two half-siblings. “From my earliest beginnings, I remember carrying a great sadness for my siblings, Henush and Halina Arian, who were only 4 and 3 years old, respectively, when they were killed,” she writes. There was no information about the circumstances of their death or burials, “But their existence was real and has mattered to me in an extraordinary way. And so I don’t fight the sadness; I embrace it. It has a special place. I am the carrier of their memory. This burden is the most cherished of all my burdens.”

At the age of 4 or 5, Baack had what she describes as a “knowing” or “inherited memory.” A “felt sense” told her, even at that young age, that her siblings, two of 1.5 million children killed by the Nazis, had both been shot in the back. When she asked her father how her half-siblings died, he said he didn’t know. Nonetheless, the memory (and feeling) she had inherited persisted, and could be placed on a spot in the middle of her back, with a knowing that her half siblings had been shot in that place.

Her research revealed that the timing of their deaths was before gas chambers had been built, and children under 5 were regularly shot. In 2019, a tour guide in Krakow pointed to the very street where the children and their mother were shot. To Baack, it was a stunning confirmation of her lifelong memory.

Baack has been consulting and coaching individuals and organizations for more than 30 years. She recently founded the Centre for Transformational Dialogue to help individuals and communities that have inherited devastating legacies. She also has written a book of verse, Poems of Angst and Awe, published in 2017.

For more information, visit gitabaack.com. Baack continues to research inherited memory and wishes to hear from others on the subject. She can be reached at [email protected].

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

Danger in remaining silent

Marsha Lederman (photo by John Lehmann/Globe and Mail)

A few years ago, Marsha Lederman went with her mother, two sisters and a cousin on the adult portion of the March of the Living, which included a walk between the two main camps of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.

“The march from Auschwitz to Birkenau was somber and sorrowful, but it was also so empowering,” she recalled at the annual High Holidays Cemetery Service at Schara Tzedeck Cemetery in New Westminster Oct. 6. “We were marching with a statement to the world and a comforting message to the souls whose lives had ended so brutally on those grounds: ‘We are here, we are still living, we are multiplying, we remember you.’”

The family group proceeded to Radom, the town outside Warsaw where Lederman’s mother had grown up. The man who lived in the apartment where she had lived allowed them in and Lederman’s mother recounted her family’s years there.

“It was joyous,” Lederman said. “We were still on a high when we visited the memorial for the Radom Jews killed in the Holocaust. As I recall, it was in a fairly large square and seemed a little neglected. We were looking at this lonely memorial, the five of us women, when a group of, I would say, teenage boys began chanting something nearby. I don’t speak Polish, so I couldn’t understand what they were saying. But I did understand one thing: ‘Auschwitz-Birkenau.’ I don’t think they were offering their condolences.”

She reflected on the way she responded in that moment.

“We hurried away and said nothing. It was a safe thing to do, for sure. But, if that happened to me today, I would not walk away. I am done with walking away. Would I have put us in danger if I had turned around and confronted those boys? Maybe. But I know now that the real danger is in remaining silent.”

Lederman is the Vancouver-based Western arts correspondent for the Globe and Mail. Her father was born in Lodz, Poland, on erev Yom Kippur 1919. Her mother was born in Radom, Poland, in 1925. All four of their parents were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz and Treblinka, as was Lederman’s father’s sister and little brother, and her mother’s little brother.

Lederman’s parents met in Germany after liberation and had one daughter there before moving to Canada, where they had two more daughters.

Lederman reflected on recent antisemitic incidents in North America and Europe, as well as her own encounters with antisemitism and racism, including a harrowing verbal attack on an Asian woman on the Skytrain at rush-hour, an incident in which Lederman was the only person to intervene.

“We have a duty to speak up,” she said. “We have a responsibility. This is our inheritance. I never had a bubbe or zadie to hug me or spoil me on my birthday or cook chicken soup for me. There’s nothing in my home that was theirs. I did not receive a single heirloom. But I did receive an inheritance – a duty to protect others from hate…. That is my inheritance and that is their legacy. Enough. Never again.”

She recalled being stunned during an interview with famed Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog, who died last month. Chatting after the main interview, Lederman asked the German-Canadian if he had experienced anti-German sentiment when he arrived here after the war. He launched into a discourse on the “so-called Holocaust” and said Jews died in the camps mostly because of lice and because Allied bombings prevented food from getting to them. Lederman agonized over whether to expose the admired photographer, eventually writing the story, for which she has been subjected to a range of criticism.

“Well, I have had enough,” she said. “And I’m going to fight to tell those stories and expose antisemitism and Holocaust denial and racism. I am not going to be quiet anymore. I think of all that was lost in the gas chambers; all the lives, of course, but also all the potential. With those millions of lives extinguished, what was lost with them? Poems were never written, beautiful artworks that were never painted, the cure for cancer, for Parkinson’s, the answer to the climate crisis?

“It was not just the people who were murdered that the world lost. It was all of their descendants and all of their descendants and all of that potential.… I talk about this because of what this leaves on our shoulders. I interviewed a Nisga’a poet, Jordan Abel, and he used a term to describe himself that I have adopted. He calls himself an intergenerational survivor of residential schools, which makes me an intergenerational survivor of Auschwitz. I do not take this lightly. With my parents’ survival came a hefty responsibility on me and on all of us who are descendants.”

At the service, Jack Micner, who led the ceremony and is also a member of the second generation, outlined a litany of antisemitic incidents and comments in Europe and North America in recent weeks.

“I suspect that those of our parents resting here in this cemetery would be furious to see what’s going on across the world,” he said. “We have to continue doing the type of work that VHEC [Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre] is doing in as many ways as we can think … it falls on us, because nobody’s going to do it for us.”

Rabbi Shlomo Estrin reflected on the loss of Chassidic communities during the Holocaust. Cantor Yaacov Orzech chanted El Maleh Rachamim.

Names were read of community members who have passed since the last High Holidays and a moment of silence was observed for the six million.

The Mourner’s Kaddish was recited by Jeremy Berger, a grandson of a Holocaust survivor. After the service ended, the Mourner’s Kaddish was also recited at the Holocaust Memorial in the cemetery.

The annual event is presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre with Congregation Schara Tzedeck and the Jewish War Veterans, and with support from the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Vancouver.