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April 29, 2005
Tears, memories flow at VHEC
Holocaust centre marks 10 years of education with commemorative
events.
PAT JOHNSON
As he entered Dachau concentration camp, Oscar Jason surreptitiously
buried outside the gates of the camp the only photo he had of his
toddler son, Monia Jashuneris.
"When he's liberated," said Frieda Miller, "miraculously,
the photo is still there, but his son isn't." Miller is the
education co-ordinator of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre
(VHEC), where hundreds of family photos stand testimony to the individual
loss experienced by people who now live in the Vancouver area. The
stories are so wrenching, the devastation so near-total, that even
the photos seem to have life stories of their own.
Some, like the pictures of the lost family of Myer Grinshpan, do
not have names attached. After the Holocaust, Grinshpan's parents,
like so many other survivors, were loathe to talk about their past.
So the names associated with the pictures that Grinshpan was able
to assemble from distant relations in Israel and the United States
stand nameless, yet remembered nonetheless.
Memory was the order of the day on April 13, as it is every day
at the Holocaust centre, on the lower level of the Jewish Community
Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCC). That day there was a Kaddish
service, giving a time and a place to grieve for families who never
sat shivah for people who never had a funeral and whose last days,
in many cases, remain a complete mystery.
Tears flowed, but so did stories. Those old enough to remember the
people behind the faces in the pictures gave names to the faces,
shared recollections of happy times and unspeakable endings.
Those too young to have known the people in the pictures wondered
aloud about the individuals behind the often-stern Old World photographs
and speculated on the potential loss, of the children, grandchildren
and great-grandchildren never conceived.
Jason's story is a particularly poignant one. The elderly Vancouver
survivor passed away days before the VHEC event, taking with him
the last living memory of the round-faced child in the picture.
But the picture is there, added to the family photos of Ruth Sigal,
who, along with her mother, was the only member of her family to
survive. Since Jason's passing, there remains no one alive who remembers
Monia, but Sigal and her family are committed to sustaining the
memory of the boy.
The sanctity of memory is central to education and the commemoration
of the Holocaust. Exhibits like this one, titled Faces of Loss,
capture a tiny fragment of the more than six million stories. The
universality of the cataclysm is evident in the diversity of the
photographs.
"Everybody got caught in the same net," said Lucien Lieberman,
showing photos of his father's and mother's families, "whether
they were professional city people or rural people.
"This is a family that lived very close to the land,"
Lieberman said of his mother's clan. 'They were one step above peasants."
His father's family was more cosmopolitan, but their fate was the
same.
"It's not about famous people," said Miller, who leads
thousands of school children each year through the centre's exhibits.
The purpose, among others, for an exhibit of this sort is to suggest
the enormity and arbitrariness of the Holocaust. Every story is
different – the place of origin, the background of the family,
the struggle to survive, to hide, the near escapes, the fateful
coincidences and terrible conclusions. The exhibit helps to humanize
a number that is inconceivable and to demonstrate the impact the
tragedy has had on people in the community and on the community
as a whole.
Sigal talked about the children in the photos and wondered how different
the world would be with them, their children and grandchildren.
"Can you imagine the potential that was lost with these children?"
she asked.
Some of the people in the pictures that hang on the walls of the
VHEC are complete strangers to the people who mounted the photos.
But their presence in the exhibit hall is a testimony to the mandate
to never forget. The photos are of aunts and uncles, unmet cousins,
beloved grandparents, barely recollected friends from more than
a half-century ago. A kindergarten photo with about 100 children
and a dozen or so teachers is a testament to the magnitude of the
Holocaust. Only three of the people in the picture are known to
have survived the war.
The exhibit exemplifies the mandate of the Vancouver Holocaust Education
Centre and several facilities like it worldwide. To remember, to
mourn and to educate. Though the VHEC has been around for several
decades, the centre itself – the physical space in the JCC
– is 10 years old this year. The anniversary is being marked
by a series of significant exhibits and events, including Faces
of Loss, which continues until May 27.
A gala dinner, at which federal Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler
will be a guest, will take place May 29, honoring the VHEC's founding
presidents, Robert Krell and Robbie Waisman.
On May 5, at 7:30 p.m., the annual community-wide Yom Hashoah commemoration
moves for the first time to the Chan Centre, on the University of
British Columbia campus. Though Yom Hashoah – Holocaust
Remembrance Day – has been marked in this community for many
years, this year's commemoration is especially significant, partly
because of the centre's 10th anniversary, but also because it marks
the 60th year since the camps were liberated.
The evening is being orchestrated by Wendy Bross Stuart and Ron
Stuart and features performances by musicians and artists, some
of whom are familiar to local audiences and others who are here
for rare appearances. The Vancouver Jewish Men's Choir will perform,
as will Claire Klein Osipov, a noted singer of Yiddish, and Natasha
Boyko, a cellist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Several
original works are to be premièred, including a three-generational
effort by David Ehrlich, a Holocaust survivor who will introduce
his son, Perry, who wrote a song called "Remember," which
will be performed by David Ehrlich's granddaughter, Lisa.
The annual cemetery service marking Yom Hashoah takes place May
8, at 11 a.m., at the Schara Tzedeck cemetery. For more information
on any of these events or to purchase tickets to the gala dinner
or the Chan Centre Yom Hashoah commemorative event, call the VHEC
at 604-264-0499 or go online to www.vhec.org.
Pat Johnson is a B.C. journalist and commentator.
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