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July 29, 2011
There is more to learn
Yad Vashem hosts 11 Canadian journalists.
DAVE GORDON
The events this week in Oslo have been a sad reminder that the fight around the world against hatred is ongoing and ever more relevant. While in Canada the situation is certainly less dire, there is room for improvement; a recently published Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism study has shown an uptick in hate crimes against Jews here, for example.
The Holocaust – the greatest hate crime of the 20th century – serves as a grim lesson of the consequences of intolerance. For several years, scholars, policy makers and educators have been examining modern examples of hatred through the lens of the Holocaust in an effort to broaden the understanding of, and defences against, racism and intolerance. Since 1953, Yad Vashem-The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Israel has been committed to what it calls its “four pillars of remembrance: commemoration, documentation, research and education,” a mission its website says “safeguards the memory of the past and imparts its meaning for future generations.” Yad Vashem hosts various programs and academic conferences throughout the year, and also hosts delegations of journalists and educators from around the world to educate them better about the place of the Holocaust in human experience.
Last month, Yad Vashem hosted 11 Canadian journalists of various faiths for a week of seminars at the International School for Holocaust Studies. Sponsored by the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem (CSYV) and the Adelson Family Charitable Foundation, the week was an opportunity for journalists to hear from scholars about some of the lesser-known details of the Shoah, and to hear about ongoing programs and projects at the Jerusalem campus. The delegation was led by Yaron Ashkenazi, executive director of CSYV, and businessman and philanthropist Joe Gottdenker, vice-chair of CSYV, a child Holocaust survivor.
Growing up in a Jewish environment, I already had been exposed to many of the details of the Holocaust. I had participated in the March of the Living in 1992, seeing with my own eyes many of the concentration and death camps in Poland. This conference, however, left the journalist in me with new information and clarified that there is still much to be learned about the Shoah – since its inception, for example, Yad Vashem has amassed 138 million pages of documents, which is a mountain of information and an uphill task to examine even for the most keen student.
During the weeklong visit, seminars were held on various topics. We toured the Yad Vashem campus, including its museum and archives, and attended discussions on the history of Jews in Europe prior to the Second World War.
There weren’t just six million victims, but six million human stories of life, according to Shulamit Imber, pedagogical director of the International School for Holocaust Studies. “We need to start teaching [about] life prior to the Shoah,” she said. In fact, Jews of Europe lived lives much like urban Canadian Jews today, she explained; roughly 70 percent of Jews in Europe just prior to the Holocuast lived in large cities and not shtetls, contrary to popular impression.
Meanwhile, the world outside seemed unconcerned with the Nazi perversion of morality, said Dr. David Silberklang, editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed Yad Vashem Studies. As well, media and international reaction to events in Europe were slow, or suppressed, in many cases. As an example, Silberklang cited the case of 1943’s Bermuda Conference, an international gathering held on April 19, 1943, that was convened to address the issue of Jewish refugees. The conference made no mention of the Final Solution, Silberklang said, adding that Jewish representatives were refused entry to the meeting.
Ephraim Kaye, director of international seminars at Yad Vashem, discussed the issue of Holocaust denial. He offered various examples, including that Nazis forced Jews in the Lodz Ghetto to make SS uniforms and, he said, deniers ask, “Why would you kill a viable workforce? It doesn’t make sense. The deniers count on that.”
The delegation of journalists also visited the recently opened exhibit on Adolf Eichmann, which marks 50 years since his capture and trial. Among his many crimes, Eichmann stepped up the machination of genocide, even at the expense of Nazi resources that were needed to fend off the Allies. In the exhibit, there were several items that had never before been publicly shown, as well as papers and photographs showing that, after the war, Eichmann obtained documents under false pretenses from the International Red Cross before fleeing to Argentina. In 1960, after Mossad surveillance, he was captured and spirited away to Israel, where he stood trial. Found on his person at the time of his arrest were Argentine coins, glasses and identification papers, all of which were on display. As well, the film of the trial was on view at the exhibit.
Even in the heavy shadow of the Nazi killing machine, there were non-Jews who went out of their way to hide and save their Jewish neighbors. Thus far, approximately 24,000 Righteous Among the Nations have been recognized around the world, “to not only commemorate the victims but remember the heroes,” said Irena Steinfeldt, director of Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations department. The most recent distinction bestowed in Canada was for Julia Ciurko, posthumously, whose granddaughter accepted the award at this year’s annual national Holocaust remembrance ceremony in Ottawa in June, led by the CSYV with the collaboration of 30 other organizations, known as the Zachor Coalition.
While I still struggle to grasp the totality of the evil and the heroics that took place during the Holocaust, Dr. Yehuda Bauer, professor emeritus of history and Holocaust studies for Yad Vashem, contends that understanding is possible.
“I’m not one of those people who believe that the Holocaust cannot be explained or understood,” Bauer said. “All human events can be explained. It was not done by Satan or God, but by humans.”
Dave Gordon is a freelance writer. His website is davegordonwrites.com.
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