Holocaust centre milestone

OLGA LIVSHIN AND BASYA LAYE

This month, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre celebrates 18 years since its opening in November 1994. Nina Krieger, VHEC’s new executive director, talked to the Independent about the centre’s notable history and discussed its plans for the coming decades.

“The centre opened with the exhibit Anne Frank in the World: 1942-1945,” Krieger said. In 18 years, the VHEC has “presented 48 exhibits and educated between 15,000 and 25,000 students annually.”

The numbers may seem huge, but Vancouver Jews had experience organizing memorial events long before the centre’s official establishment. According to Krieger, the city maintained a strong tradition of Holocaust remembrance since the early 1950s, when the Warsaw Ghetto committee first set up an annual observance.

In History of Holocaust Education in Vancouver, B.C., 1975-2005, a document he provided to the Independent, Dr. Robert Krell, founding president of the VHEC and child Holocaust survivor, writes, “Commemorative efforts related to the Holocaust depend on being faithful to memory. Over time, we learned that memories as such are not enough if they remain personal and private. Our memories of the Shoah need to be shared publicly, not only in the arena of worship and remembrance but in the educational forum as well.

“I had become fully aware of my personal preoccupation with memories, their distortion and denial, by 1975,” he continues. “The personal grief of the survivor was becoming more public, seemingly elicited in part by an uncaring world. It was time to use that memory and begin to teach about the tragedy to younger generations in order to make them aware of the dangers of unbridled prejudice and racism.”

In the mid-1970s, Krell led a dedicated group in establishing the Holocaust symposium for high school students. He writes about this experience in his document:

“It was clear that the most powerful instrument[s] of education were the eyewitness accounts offered by the survivors. We personally ‘recruited’ survivors to join us. We began to tape audio-visual testimonies in 1978. The first two accounts were those of Vera Slymovics and Leon Kahn. As a national vice-president of CJC [Canadian Jewish Congress], I proposed at the 1980 national meetings that we tape Canada’s Holocaust survivors.

“Aba Beer, the National Holocaust Remembrance chairman, structured a committee under the direction of Stan Urman, which secured a large Multiculturalism Grant. In 1982, we taped the accounts of about 80 survivors across Canada. In 1983, I began the local audio-visual testimonies project and, with Ernie Forrai as its volunteer coordinator, we taped about 100 accounts. Copies were sent to Yale University as a permanent collection in the Fortunoff Video Archives of Survivor Testimonies.”

With such complex projects underway, it became clear to Krell and others that the city needed a special organization to coordinate all Holocaust-related programs. In 1984, he announced his intention to build a Holocaust education centre with a commemorative component. He remembers: “With so many activities resting on the shoulders of relatively few people, I called together some of the ‘activist’ survivors at my home on June 27, 1984, to form an incorporated society which could raise funds, offer tax receipts and administer the educational and commemorative activities.”

The Vancouver Holocaust Centre Society for Remembrance and Education was incorporated in February 1985. The society’s first priority was to build a memorial, a symbolic gravesite. After consultations, the memorial at Schara Tzedeck Cemetery was unveiled in 1987. An estimated 1,300 persons attended the unveiling. “It was a momentous event for the survivor community, the existence of a site where each survivor and their families could say Kaddish,” writes Krell.

The second significant project for the society was to create a home for the existing Holocaust programs and establish a museum facility for exhibits. After intensive fundraising and negotiations for space, and with the assistance of dozens of volunteers, the centre opened in its current location at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver in 1994. Krell served as its first board president, until 1998.

“During my tenure, Dr. Roberta Kremer, who had earlier consulted on the proposed centre, was hired to be the executive director. Freda Miller was added to our small but effective staff as director of education,” he notes.

Later presidents included Robbie Waisman, Rita Akselrod, Jody Dales and the current president, Ed Lewin.

Today, the VHEC is a primarily a teaching museum. Its dedicated staff plays an important role in the centre’s education and remembrance mandate. Krieger has been a staff member since 2006, but her life has been interlinked with the centre for much longer, she explained.

“My first involvement at the centre was as a research assistant,” she told the Independent. “I was a recent graduate of the UBC honors history program. It was in this position ... that I first became interested in how past events are represented and negotiated in museum settings.”

Inspired by her initial VHEC experience, Krieger continued her education in museum studies in London, England, and, later, after completing her master’s degree, working in educational and public programming for various art galleries and museums in London and Vancouver.

“When Frieda Miller transitioned from her education role to the directorship of the VHEC in 2006, I was encouraged to apply for the education coordinator position,” Krieger recalled. “The opportunity seemed like the ideal one in which to bring together my academic background, my love of history, my work experience in museum education and my desire to effect change ... in my community.”

She also had a personal tie to the centre through her grandfather’s cousin, Else Dunner, who was among those rescued by Oskar Schindler. “Else was one of the first local survivors to give her testimony to students,” Krieger said.

Her work as education coordinator and, later, as education director of the VHEC was “tremendously fulfilling,” Krieger said. “Educational initiatives are central to the VHEC’s mandate and I was able to contribute to the development of school programs, curricula, professional development initiatives for teachers and the growth of our high school symposia on the Holocaust programming.

“I also had the opportunity to curate exhibits, including Framing Bodies: Sport and Spectacle in Nazi Germany, which was exhibited alongside More than Just Games: Canada and the 1936 Olympics. In fact, during my last 18 months as education director, my responsibilities were primarily curatorial as we developed our current exhibit, ‘Enemy Aliens’: The Internment of Jewish Refugees in Canada, 1940-1943.”

Krieger’s new position provides even broader opportunities. “Since starting my new role, I have never worked as hard, learned as much or been more engaged in my work,” she said. “This is a time of transition and reflection for many cultural organizations, particularly those devoted to Holocaust education. We’re faced with a number of pressing questions: How do we continue to meet the needs of students and teachers, both in terms of being able to meet the demand for our programming, and in terms of ensuring that our programs remain effective and adaptive to changing pedagogies, curriculum and student populations? How do we engage new audiences in our work? How do we make meaningful connections between the Holocaust and other social justice issues, including other genocides? When our survivor community, including our outreach speakers, has been so central to the success of our work, how do we educate about the Holocaust in a meaningful way in a fast-approaching post-eyewitness age?

“As a staff and board, we are currently engaged in a careful consideration of these questions, and in long-term planning discussions,” she continued. “The VHEC is about to embark on a comprehensive planning study, supported by a City of Vancouver Cultural Infrastructure Grant, to assess how best to reconfigure our exhibition and collection spaces in order to support our work into the future.”

Some of the bigger challenges Krieger raised during the interview involve creating meaningful connections between the Holocaust and other social-justice issues, including other genocides, and continuing to educate students about the Holocaust in a meaningful way.

“As the Holocaust recedes in time, we contemplate not only the events of the Holocaust but also memorialization, post-memory, counter-memory – cultural spaces that I believe will become increasingly important areas of engagement,” she explained.

“Of course, eyewitnesses of the Holocaust are our most powerful educators,” she continued, echoing Krell’s statement. “Each year, as the number of speakers diminishes, the demand for their presence in classrooms and programs seems to rise. Their commitment to the VHEC mandate is truly remarkable and presents an inspiration and challenge for us as museum educators.”

Other issues the VHEC faces in the years ahead include adapting to new demographics and new technologies. “Virtual exhibits have enabled us to go beyond our museum walls, and we are increasingly using technology within our exhibits and resources,” Krieger said. “The centre also tries to reach a broader audience. We recently welcomed a school group from Kelowna. We have our speakers Skyped into classrooms across the province.... Teachers across Metro Vancouver and beyond are looking for ways to draw lessons from the Holocaust for their multicultural student populations.”

To date, the centre has risen to the new challenges. Its current exhibit, for example, “Enemy Aliens,” speaks to Canadians’ common cultural heritage, engaging audiences in a little-known piece of wartime history: the internment of Jewish refugees in Canada. “The exhibit prompts discussions about displacement, internment, refugees, advocacy and the contributions of immigrants, all of which are timely for Canadians,” Krieger said.

Overall, Krieger is clear that looking back to the centre’s founding principles is what will keep it grounded during its next 18 years. “The survivors who founded the VHEC envisioned a lasting legacy, and the staff, board and I are committed to maintaining that legacy and ensuring that their experiences during the Holocaust, and the important questions and lessons the Holocaust presents for all citizens, continue to be transmitted in compelling, innovative ways.”

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

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