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Holocaust Education Week features Culture of Memory theme

October 30, 2012 | Jewish TribunecloseAuthor: Jewish Tribune Name: Jewish Tribune
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The 32nd annual Holocaust Education Week (HEW) will offer more than 100 fascinating programs across the GTA from Nov. 1 to 8.

“We’ve taken a new direction this year by placing an emphasis on artistic and literary representations of the Holocaust spanning across generations and nationalities,” said Mira Goldfarb, executive director, Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. “Reflecting upon the [theme of] Culture of Memory invites new audiences and new generations to engage in a subject that is universal and continues to be so relevant in today’s world. The programs are diverse and compelling, offering multiple points of entry and dialogue.”

Cultural explorations will include films, staged readings of plays, photographs, music, literature, poetry and multi-media exhibits. Specific towns and sites will be examined, as will the experiences of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community during the Holocaust and issues such as restitution. Numerous Holocaust survivors will give their first-hand testimonies at different libraries in the GTA and beyond.

Other people’s stories will also be told, including the European Roma who were targeted by the Nazis, the Cambodians who were killed by the Khmer Rouge, the Chinese who were attacked by the Japanese in the Nanking Massacre and the First Nations, Métis and Inuit children who were sent to residential schools by the Canadian government.

The HEW opening event will be held at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and will feature Nathan Englander, author of the collection of short stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, in conversation with Sara R. Horowitz, director, Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies, and professor of comparative literature, York University, who teaches the course, Imagining Anne Frank: The Girl, the Diary, the Afterlives.

The documentary, Viktor and I, about Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, will have its Toronto premiere.

A symposium for people in their 20s and 30s will address remembrance of the Holocaust in the context of a shared legacy.

Dark Lords, Death Eaters and Other Images of Evil: Reading the Holocaust in Harry Potter, will be presented by Dr. Kori Street, director of programs, USC Shoah Foundation Institute and delegate to the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research.

The League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada and the National Task Force on Holocaust, Education, Remembrance and Research will present a panel discussion Testing the Boundaries: An Exploration of Sensitive Areas in Holocaust Literature, at 6 p.m. on Tues., Nov. 6 at 15 Hove St. Topics such as using humour or giving perpetrators a voice when writing about the Holocaust will be tackled by Alain Goldschläger, professor of French literature and director of the Holocaust Literature Research Institute, University of Western Ontario (UWO), national chair of B’nai Brith’s Holocaust Task Force and Canadian delegate to the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research; Désirée Lamoureux, doctoral candidate, French studies department, UWO; and Aviva Atlani, doctoral candidate, comparative literature program, UWO.

“Grief Tourism,” the process of taking people on organized tours of Holocaust sites, will be probed by a panel of experts consisting of Karen Polak, head of education, Anne Frank House, Amsterdam; Robert Jan van Pelt, HEW scholar-in-residence, world expert on Auschwitz-Birkenau and formerly a national advisory committee member for the National Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research; and Yuri Dojc, world-renowned photographer. Dan Rahimi, vice president, gallery development, ROM, will serve as moderator.

For the full Holocaust Education Week program, call (416) 631-5689 or visit www.holocausteducationweek.com. Please note that some events require pre-registration and may charge a fee.

Tags: current education HEW Holocaust Toronto week