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May 2, 2003
Lessons from the Shoah
Art Hister's keynote talk reflects fear and pessimism.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Current affairs and ancient history underpinned an emotional, moving
ceremony Monday night as Vancouver marked Yom Hashoah, Holocaust
Memorial Day. The proximity of the annual commemorative event to
Passover was mentioned by two speakers, who said the Jewish celebration
of Passover is illustrative of a Jewish communal memory that has
celebrated victory and provided cautionary tales of bitter defeat
over thousands of years.
But Rabbi Avi Baumol, in whose Schara Tzedeck Synagogue the commemorative
evening took place, said Yom Hashoah, unlike Pesach, is a time to
recall the darkest moment of Jewish history – a pain, he reminded
the audience, that "is not thousands of years old, but tens
of."
Dr. Art Hister, a well-known physician and media personality, offered
the keynote remarks at the commemorative evening, recalling his
experience growing up in post-war Montreal. Hister described how
he had rejected many of the lessons taught to him by those Jews
whose life experiences in Europe had instilled in them a deep distrust
of non-Jews and a sense of constantly impending danger.
Hister is a member of the second generation – his mother, Pola,
and his father, Chaskel, who became known as Henry in Canada, both
survived the Holocaust by hiding in the cellar of a Polish farmer's
house, along with 13 other people, over a period of nearly four
years. Of his mother's huge extended family, only she and a brother
survived. Of his father's equally large family, just Hister's father
remained after the Holocaust.
The society Hister was raised in was one of new Canadians –
greenhorns – who had come from the DP camps of Europe in a
great wave after 1948, and who carried very distinct emotional remnants
of their experiences. Hister grew up without aunts, uncles, cousins
or grandparents; he knew only one old person. The first French words
he learned were "maudit Juif."
Almost all the Jews Hister knew while growing up, except for his
parents, had numbers tattooed on their arms.
As he was growing up and even now, when Hister visits them, he said,
these survivors find an opportunity to whisper conspiratorily to
him: "You mustn't trust anyone who isn't Jewish, Arthur."
Hister moved to Vancouver after medical school and engaged himself
in the world of the 1960s, when it felt like a generation was going
to change the world. Hister's generation believed that bigotry would
die out and, further, that Jewishness would cease to be a target
for hatred.
Hister's optimism is gone.
"What I've reluctantly learned over the last few years, however,
is that my mother was right and I was very wrong. The world is not
nearly as safe a place as I had hoped – as I pretended –
it was, especially for Jews..... The world is, in fact, a very dangerous
place."
Hister made a direct parallel to the current atmosphere in the world
and centuries of anti-Semitism. Over the centuries, he said, there
were people who killed Jews and there were people who justified
the killings. From deicide to blood libels to theories of corporate
and world domination, anti-Semitism has proved malleable and resilient,
he said.
"Now they're killing Jews because, they say, we're occupiers
of land that is not ours, and that we're humiliating the people
who live in the lands we've taken over and, of course, there are
still those who justify it.... Seen in that light, I know now that
the Holocaust was not nearly as unique or as much an accident of
history as I once believed it to be."
As part of the evening's ceremony, candles were lit in memory of
the Six Million, and the Vancouver Jewish Men's Choir sang "Enosh"
and, with Cantor Yaacov Orzech, "El Moleh Rachamim." As
is traditional, the event ended with the passionate singing of the
"Partisan Song." The anthem to Jewish defiance was penned
in the Vilna Ghetto 60 years ago, when news was received about the
month-long Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. That uprising, 60 years ago this
Passover, ended in disaster, but symbolizes the spirit of Jewish
resistance. Maurice Moses sang and Gillian Hunter played several
selections on her violin. Featured guest violinist Gabriel Bolkosky
could not make it to the commemoration.
The annual memorial event was organized Ethel Kofsky, Cathy Golden
and Rome Fox, and sponsored by Schara Tzedeck Synagogue, the Jewish
Federation of Greater Vancouver and the Gail Feldman Heller Endowment
Fund of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.
Pat Johnson is a journalist and commentator.
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