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DATE
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WMW PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
VHEC: EXHIBIT DESIGNHanging Theme Text Panels
Religion and FaithThe Jewish faith centres around belief in, and
service to, a single all-knowing and forgiving God.
As a people, Jews have a sacred agreement with
God, called a covenant: in exchange for God’s
continued help and support, Jews promise to
follow God’s laws and to bring the spirit and
practice of those laws into all aspects of their lives.
Jews across pre-war Europe chose numerous and
varied ways to apply their beliefs to their lives. For some,
Jewish identity was tied less to religious observances
than to a sense of connection with thriving Jewish
artistic and literary cultures. For many others, religious
faith and ritual were part of most aspects of daily family
life and shaped the rhythm of their weeks and years;
observing the Jewish Sabbath on Fridays, marking the
Holy Days, and keeping the dietary (kosher) guidelines
established in the Jewish holy texts were part of a
covenant with God.
In eastern Europe in particular, it was common to find
communities in which religious Judaism was part of the
fabric of everyday life for the great majority of residents.
Life that Was
Jews have lived in Europe for more than 2,000
years. Prior to the Holocaust, Jewish life in Europe
was characterized by the abundance and diversity
of Jewish communities. Throughout Europe,
factors that helped to shape one’s experience as a
Jew—religious thought, language, state-instituted
freedoms and restrictions—varied over time.
By the 19th century, Jews in western European countries
began to integrate more fully into the main cultures.
Some married non-Jews, and many spoke the national
language as their mother tongue. A religiously liberal
form of Judaism developed and grew in popularity.
A similar process began to occur in eastern Europe in
the early 1900s. There, however, it remained common
for Jews outside the urban centres to live in smaller
towns composed almost entirely of Jews, called
shtetlekh, where Yiddish was primarily spoken.
Likewise, in southern Europe, Ladino, a Jewish language
with roots in Old Spanish, remained common into the
20th century.
Across these different regions, Jews, though always a
minority, were vital participants in social, cultural and
economic spheres of European life. In spite of
exclusionary, antisemitic attitudes and regulations,
Jewish life in Europe was vibrant due to the work of
Jews in wide-ranging professions and locations.
Antisemitism—the hatred of Jews—existed in
Europe long before the Nazis’ rise to power. Prior
to the 19th century, religious antisemitism was
fueled by the false beliefs that Jews were
responsible for the death of Christ and that Jews
required the blood of Christian children for ritual
use, among other superstitions. Such allegations
frequently led to outbreaks of violence against
Jews, called pogroms, and expulsion.
During the 19th century, pseudo-scientific theories
about race, biology and religion produced a new racial
antisemitism which emerged alongside the spread of
nationalism across Europe to reinforce the belief that
Jews were a foreign group.
When the National Socialist German Workers’
Party—the Nazis—came to power in the 1930s, its
leaders harnessed the language of racial and political
antisemitism to cast Jews as an “inferior” racial group
that was “alien” to the German nation. The Nazis sought
public support by blaming Germany’s loss of the First
World War, and subsequent economic crisis, upon the
betrayal of the German nation by its internal enemies—
the Jews. Galvanizing the antisemitism of centuries
prior, the Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany’s
hardships. Within a decade, the Nazis took this
antisemitism they had started to genocidal ends.
The Longest Hatred
The Longest Hatred
The Rise of NazismThe Nazi Party began in 1920 as a far-right fringe
party in Germany. The Nazis’ promise of a strong,
expansionist Germany became attractive to a
German population oppressed by the Treaty of
Versailles, the economic, social and political turmoil
in 1920s Germany, and the Great Depression.
By 1932, the Nazis were elected to more seats than any
other party in the German Reichstag and assumed
power legitimately with the appointment of Adolf Hitler
as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. The “Enabling
Act” of March 1933, gave Hitler complete control of the
Reichstag, ending democracy in pre-war Germany.
Within a year, Hitler outlawed all other political parties to
solidify his position as dictator.
For German Jews, this meant escalating persecution and
exclusion. Between 1933 and 1939, Jews were barred from
German civic life through a series of laws that stripped
Jews of their citizenship, excluded them from economic,
professional, and social life and segregated them in
neighbourhoods apart from other Germans. Even before
the violent, nation-wide Kristallnacht pogrom of 9-10
November 1938—and the first mass deportations of
German Jews to concentration camps—the Nazis had
created a German society in which the isolation and
persecution of Jews was firmly entrenched.
Manipulating the MassesThe systematic use of antisemitic and
ultra-nationalist propaganda by the Nazis was
essential to acquiring and maintaining power.
State-sponsored propaganda was used to promote
the myth of a “German national community” and to
identify groups for exclusion from that community,
such as Jews, Roma, homosexuals and the disabled.
Designed to incite hatred and justify measures against
these “outsiders”, Nazi propaganda was disseminated
throughout every aspect of German life in contexts as
various as school curricula, art exhibitions, films of
pro-Nazi rallies, and radio addresses from leading Nazis.
In all these contexts, propaganda preyed on people’s fears
of German social and economic decline and exploited
their desire for national pride by promoting a sharp divide
between “us”—people the Nazis considered part of a
“pure” northern European “Aryan” race—and “them”—
people they considered “non-Aryans” such as Jews. By
the time of the first mass killings of Jews in 1941,
propaganda had been employed for years to persuade the
German public that these “outsiders” were “inferior,” a
“danger to national culture,” and ultimately “undesirable”
and “unworthy of life.”
The Nazis spread their propaganda in each country they
invaded, where it was often aided by pre-existing
antisemitism and racism.
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E≠orts to LeaveBy the mid-1930s, Jews in Nazi Germany faced an
increasingly hostile political, social, and economic
situation. In response, some sought to leave the
country but found their options for emigration
limited.
Although Jewish emigration from Germany was
encouraged before the Second World War, taxes and
other regulations imposed by the Nazi government
made it difficult for Jews to leave. Many were reluctant
to leave older relatives behind and hoped, instead, that
the threat posed by Nazism would pass as antisemitic
movements had done in previous generations.
The restrictive, often racially or ethnically-based
immigration policies of immigrant-receiving countries,
including Canada, posed a critical barrier to Jews fleeing
Germany. As the head of the World Zionist Organization
at the time summarized: “The world seemed to be
divided into two parts—those places where Jews could
not live and those where they could not enter.” 1
International Jewish organizations assisted some
European Jews to reach Palestine, China, the United
Kingdom, and North and South America. Between 1938
and 1940, approximately 7,500 Jewish children fled to
Great Britain in the Kindertransport rescue operation.
Many German Jews fled to countries in western Europe,
only to fall again under Nazi rule within a few short years.
1 Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Manchester Guardian, 23 May 1936.
Without rescuers and helpers, few Jews could have
escaped Nazi-occupied Europe or survived in
hiding. After the outbreak of war, Jews fleeing
Europe required real or forged documentation to
facilitate their escape and entry into one of the few
countries that accepted refugees. Those who
sought to survive within Europe were desperate for
places to hide and for helpers willing to risk their
lives to sustain Jews in hiding.
Diplomats and religious institutions could often exploit
the independence granted to them by the Nazi
occupiers to shelter Jews in their embassies, safehouses,
convents and orphanages, or to issue visas permitting
passage out of Nazi-occupied countries. Assistance also
came from individual citizens acting independently or in
organized resistance groups to provide hiding places,
rescue networks, food, medicine and forged identities.
Helpers came from diverse religious, social, educational,
and economic backgrounds. They were motivated by
moral, religious or political beliefs to help both
neighbours and strangers in peril. Despite the personal
danger, helpers were active in every European country,
including Nazi-occupied eastern Europe where the
punishment for assisting Jews was death for helpers and
often their families. Rescuers, however, were relatively
few, representing only a small fraction of the total
population in Nazi-occupied countries.
Help and Rescue
Stripped of their citizenship and forbidden to exist
in their communities, Jews unable to escape the
Nazi regime through emigration could only avoid
deportation to ghettos and camps by going into
hiding.
Jews in hiding were at constant risk of discovery, arrest
and death. Many had to remain physically concealed in
silence and in cramped hiding places that ranged from
attics, to hay bales, to underground cellars. Others
assumed false identities in attempt to pass as Christians.
In rural regions, particularly the forests of eastern
Europe, some Jews fled to remote areas and survived
with other escapees as part of resistance groups.
Some families managed to hide together. Others were
forced to split up, entrusting their children to non-Jews
willing to risk the dangers of concealing a Jewish child in
their homes, either in exchange for payment or out of
moral conviction. Communication between Jews in
hiding was dangerous, and hidden Jews often moved
locations to avoid detection. Thus, it was difficult for
family members to remain in touch with their children
and each other while in hiding. Fear, boredom, abuse,
hunger and the emotional distress of separation from
family were just some of the challenges faced by hidden
Jews.
Life in Hiding
Identity and BelongingJews who managed to flee the Nazi regime were
forced to leave behind their possessions,
communities, and families to face the difficult task
of building new lives in foreign countries. For the
children sent alone to safety in England and
elsewhere, retaining a sense of their pre-war
identities was particularly challenging.
In Nazi-occupied Europe, many Jewish children who
survived the Holocaust did so by hiding in Christian
homes, convents and schools and by assuming Christian
identities as cover. These identities were often
reinforced through baptism. Although false identities
were essential to protect hidden children from the
Nazis, they created complex questions of identity for
children who had been assigned multiple names,
families, and religions in their young lives.
For many hidden children, the end of the Second World
War did not bring an end to their trauma. Reunions with
parents were often joyous, but also difficult. Many child
survivors were too young to remember their families
and struggled to recover a sense of comfort with their
pre-war Jewish identities. For children whose families
did not survive, there was little to help them regain their
connection with Jewish culture and faith. Long after the
war, many survivors still grappled with questions of
identity and belonging.
Imprisoned in GhettosWhen the Nazis invaded Poland in the fall of 1939,
they reinstated a practice dating back to the Middle
Ages of creating confined areas, called ghettos,
where Jews were forced to live. The establishment
of ghettos became a key step in the isolation and
persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust.
Removed from their homes, Jews were forced into
cramped accommodation in ghettos, often created in
the poorest area of a city. Most ghettos were then
sealed off from the rest of the city by walls and barbed
wire. Access to food, sanitation and medical supplies
was severely limited within the ghettos and contact with
outside assistance was cut off. Death from starvation
and illness was common and Jewish councils, appointed
by the Nazis to administer the ghettos, could do little to
reduce the suffering except ration scarce resources.
In response, physical resistance by Jews developed in
ghettos throughout Europe, the most famous being the
armed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Despite the
desperate conditions, Jews also strove to ensure that
educational, religious, and cultural life continued in the
ghettos by establishing underground schools, hospitals
and orphanages and by documenting Jewish life in
records preserved in secret ghetto archives.
Imprisoned in Ghettos
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Imprisoned in Ghettos
The Holocaustby Bullets In 1941, the Nazis invaded areas of eastern Europe
that had been occupied by Soviet forces earlier in
the Second World War. As the German military
moved into the newly-conquered territory, so did
specialized SS “mobile killing squads,” called the
Einsatzgruppen, and German paramilitary police
forces, called the Order Police.
Starting in the summer of 1941, the Einsatzgruppen, the
Order Police, and local collaborators perpetrated what
has become known as the “Holocaust by Bullets.” In
contrast to the killing centres that were later
established by the Nazis, Jews in the easternmost
stretches of Nazi-occupied Europe were killed in mass
shootings. Entire Jewish populations of towns across
the Eastern Front were gathered together in town
squares or main buildings, marched to areas close by
and shot over the course of hours or days into pits
which served as mass graves.
Approximately 1.5 million eastern European Jews were
killed in this way, and the vibrant Jewish communities
that had been so prevalent in the region for centuries
were almost entirely wiped out.
In the years that followed, the Nazis turned to gassing as
the primary method of mass killing because shooting
victims at close-range was too traumatizing for the men
tasked with the executions.
Nazi Camps
The Nazis established concentration camps in
Germany as early as 1933. In a network of camps
that grew over the years that followed, the Nazis
detained political opponents such as communists
and socialists, Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, and others they deemed to be threats.
Insufficient food, overcrowding, and lack of
sanitation in the concentration camps led to
disease and death.
By 1934, the Nazis began to use camp prisoners for
forced labour. Labourers were tasked with backbreaking
work often designed to injure and humiliate them.
In December 1941, the Nazis opened Chelmno death
camp in Poland, the first of their killing centres to which
Jews were deported and killed using poison gas.
High-ranking Nazi officials defined the details of their
plan to murder Europe’s entire Jewish population in
January 1942. In the subsequent months, five more
death camps became operational in Poland, including
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, and
Treblinka. Jews were deported to the killing centres in
train cars designed to transport animals. Without
ventilation, toilet facilities, food or water, many people
died during the multi-day transports to the camps.
Some survivors recall that the nature of the camps was
not clear to them when they first arrived on the railway
platforms; though it was apparent they had not arrived
at the farms many had been promised. In fact, more
than three million people who disembarked the trains at
the extermination centres were killed immediately in the
gas chambers, or died of disease, exhaustion, and
starvation within the camp network.
In Defiance
Of the millions of Jews and non-Jews persecuted
during the Holocaust, thousands participated in
acts of resistance against their oppressors in
Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. Individual
and collective acts of defiance assumed many
forms, ranging from symbolic gestures, to
life-saving rescue operations, to violent sabotage
and assassination attempts.
Jews participated in armed and unarmed resistance
activities in ghettos, slave labour camps, and
extermination camps. Resistance in the camps
succeeded in destroying a crematorium, killing guards,
setting fires and facilitating escapes. Outside the
camps, Jewish partisan units sabotaged the
operations of the Nazis and their collaborators by
blowing up railways, bridges and infrastructure, and
attacking local auxiliary police.
Jewish defiance was also expressed through efforts to
perpetuate Jewish culture and maintain humanity in
the face of attempted annihilation. Spiritual resistance
in ghettos and camps included clandestine prayers and
the creation of artistic works and books. In some
ghettos, underground schools were formed, and secret
archives were established to document the Holocaust.
Lack of resources and severe punishment made
resistance to the Nazis dangerous and difficult. The
Nazi tactic of “collective responsibility” held entire
families and communities accountable for individual
acts of resistance, making the extent of defiance during
the Holocaust truly remarkable.
Liberation and LossWhen the Soviet Red Army entered Majdanek
camp in July 1944, the surviving prisoners became
the first to be liberated from a Nazi death camp. In
the following months, Allied Forces, including
Canadian troops, moved across Europe and
liberated prisoners from the network of Nazi
concentration camps. Jews who had survived in
hiding were now able to emerge.
Liberation was experienced by survivors with a mixture
of joy, relief and sorrow. Some reunited with surviving
family members. Most searched in vain for their families
and were confronted with the immensity of the Nazis’
program of murder and destruction. Survivors were
often so weakened by starvation and disease that they
did not live long after liberation.
Those who did survive had few places to go, their homes
having been destroyed or confiscated in the Second
World War. The Allies hastily erected Displaced Persons
(DP) camps, frequently on the sites of former
concentration camps, to house over 250,000 Jewish
DPs between 1945 and 1952. There, survivors started
their lives anew—by marrying and having children,
working with Zionist organizations, applying to emigrate
from Europe, continuing their education and job
training, and celebrating religious holidays—while also
searching for lost family members and friends.
War Orphans
Over a million Jewish children were killed in the
Holocaust. Those who lived were often the only
survivors of their family and thousands of
orphaned children remained in DP camps for years
after the Second World War. In 1947, the Canadian
Jewish Congress persuaded the Canadian
government to open its doors to Jewish orphans in
an initiative called the “War Orphans Project.”
Canadian representatives travelled to Europe seeking
children eligible for immigration only to discover
unanticipated levels of devastation. So few young
children had survived the Holocaust that the age of
eligibility for the War Orphans Project was increased
from age 15 to 18. Screening to assess the orphans’
health and ability to adjust to life in Canada took months.
Eventually 1123 orphans were chosen to travel by ship
and train to foster families and group homes in 38
communities across Canada.
Most war orphans were teenagers accustomed to
fending for themselves and found the restrictions
imposed on them by foster parents and life in
small-town Canada difficult. Foster parents struggled to
comprehend the atrocities these children had
experienced, so the close bonds which developed
among the orphans were critical during their early years
in Canada. In time, many of these new Canadians
became pillars of their communities.
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Journey to CanadaAt the end of the Second World War, there were an
estimated 250,000 Jewish survivors who had no
homes or communities to return to. They remained
in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany,
France, Italy, and Belgium for up to seven years.
Despite growing and widespread awareness of the
atrocities of the Holocaust, few countries opened their
doors to Jewish DPs in the postwar years. Canada, which
had admitted only 5,000 Jewish refugees between 1933
and 1939 as a result of its racially-selective immigration
laws, did not relax its restrictions until two years after
the war.
Beginning in 1947, Jewish survivors with close family
members in Canada were able to gain entry to the
country, as were those with experience in select
industries which required workers in the post-war
economic boom.
The experiences of the survivor immigrants in
establishing new lives in Canada varied as they came
from diverse educational, national, social, and religious
backgrounds. For most, the primary concerns were
finding housing and employment and learning English or
French. Those who arrived in Canada as war orphans
faced the additional challenges of adjusting to life with
foster families and making up for the years of education
denied to them during the Holocaust.
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“Enemy Aliens”
Following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, over 80,000 German
and Austrian Jews found refuge in Great Britain. However, once
Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, many British citizens
feared that German and Austrian immigrants living among them
could serve as spies for the Third Reich. Consequently, the
British government interned 30,000 civilian “aliens” most of
whom were Jews who had fled Nazi persecution.
See continuation in drawer to your right…
“ENEMY ALIENS” CONT.See introduction in drawer to your left…
In 1940, over two thousand of these refugees were forced to
make the dangerous trans-Atlantic crossing to internment
camps in eastern Canada. There they experienced indefinite
confinement, tedious regimentation, and mistreatment.
Antisemitic attitudes were common among Canadian camp
guards, and Jewish refugees were detained alongside Nazi
prisoners-of-war. Britain soon acknowledged that the
internment of Jewish refugees was without cause, but the
Canadian government refused to alter its restrictive
immigration policies to permit the release of the refugees into
Canada. Many of the refugees were to remain interned for the
next three years.
The Jewish internees included professors, scientists, artists,
musicians, activists, religious leaders and students. In response
to their confinement, they established educational programs,
camp newspapers, musical performances, artistic works and
religious services. Throughout their internment, the primary
focus for most internees remained securing their freedom
from the camps.
Bearing Witness
“Whoever listens to a witness, becomes a witness,” 1
—Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner
Holocaust remembrance shows respect to the 6 million
Jewish and 5 million non-Jewish victims of Nazi German’s
genocidal policies. Remembrance often includes efforts to
combat present day social injustice, racism, and antisemitism.
Since 1951, Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, has
been observed by the State of Israel and Jewish communities
worldwide on the 27th of Nisan (April/May). More recently, in
2005, the United Nations designated 27 January as
“International Holocaust Remembrance Day.”
Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, is
Israel's official memorial dedicated to preserving the memory
of the victims of the Holocaust. The institution also honours
non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust, known as the
“Righteous Among the Nations.”
In the decades following the Holocaust, survivors’ willingness to
share their experiences and the public’s interest in hearing their
testimonies, led to extensive eye-witness documentation. The
recognition of the Holocaust as an unprecedented event in
human history, that ultimately challenged the foundations of
civilization, has also inspired many Holocaust education
initiatives.
The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, founded by local
survivors of the Shoah, is one of many institutions worldwide
that are devoted to Holocaust based anti-racism education.
1 Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), in his speech at the Legacy of Holocaust Survivors Conference at Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Communities, April 2002.
Messages toLoved Ones
People who had been forewarned of their deportation often
sought to contact family and friends who already had been
deported or from whom they had otherwise become
separated. They held onto the hope of being able to find each
other once again.
See continuation in drawer to your right…
“MESSAGES TO LOVED ONES” CONT.See introduction in drawer to your left…
Once deported to the camps, the chances of communicating
again with the outside world were extremely small and any
correspondence was heavily censored. In camps like the
Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, Jewish prisoners were not
permitted to correspond with their families. In some camps,
letters that were purportedly written by Jewish camp prisoners
were, in reality, sent out by Nazi officials who either faked the
correspondence or forced prisoners upon arrival to write that
they were well and experiencing good living conditions. By the
time the recipients received these notes, their writers had been
murdered in the gas chambers.
DATE
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