163256: A Memoir of Resistance

Chapter Eleven. Fighting Back by Telling the Truth

CHAPTER ELEVEN Fighting Back by Telling the Truth so many requests had been made for a central resource for holocaust education that in 1985 the United Jewish Appeal (uja) Federation of Greater Toronto set up the Holocaust Remembrance Committee and the Holocaust Memorial Centre to educate students and other groups about the history of the Holocaust. When the program started, the Holocaust Remembrance Committee asked survivors to come forward and tape their testimony as a permanent record for others, especially young people, to learn about what happened to the Jews in World War II.The committee also asked survivors if they were willing to speak to students and other groups about their experiences. The idea appealed to me as a way of reaching the younger generation and educating them about the Holocaust. I felt as though I had been wasting my time chasing Nazis when it was clear that they were never going to be held accountable for their crimes. The educational work that the Holocaust Centre was doing promised to be much more rewarding. I haven’t been disappointed. Every year, twenty-five thousand students and other visitors come through the centre itself, and the outreach program arranges for Holocaust survivors to speak in Toronto schools. When a group first arrives at the centre, they are greeted by a docent, a volunteer guide, who explains what people will see and hear as they go through. The first exhibit is a thirty-minute slide show about the Holocaust that was prepared and written by Paula Draper and narrated by Lorne Green. It is an educational account of the persecution and murder of European Jews during World War II. Most of the photographs in the slide show 81 were taken by the German concentration camp guards and commanders, but some of the pictures were taken by the Allied liberation forces when they entered the camps. After the slide show is over, a Holocaust survivor takes over and speaks to the group about the experience of living under the Nazi regime as a Jew and about being in the camps. Of course, one of the most important aspects of the program is the question and answer session at the end. I started with the program in April 1988, and since then I have spoken to all kinds of people at public schools, high schools, colleges, universities , synagogues, churches, special schools run by groups such as Amish and Mennonites,libraries,police forces,and,once,a large group of psychiatrists. My work at the centre has also turned out to be just the beginning. Every year I participate in Holocaust Education Week, which has been proclaimed annually by the mayor of Toronto in the first week of November since 1981. During that week, churches, libraries, bookstores, schools, synagogues, and renowned local, national, and international speakers all participate in various aspects of Holocaust studies.And for the last eight years, I have been invited to speak at the “Annual Student Seminar Day on the Holocaust ” for teachers and students at the Ontario Institute for Studies in 82 Fighting Back by Telling the Truth Michael speaking to students about the Holocaust Education.At the end of the seminar, I often hear from the teachers in the audience, “You did more in two hours than we can do in two years of Holocaust teaching.” Comments like these give survivors an incentive to go on with the work, even though it isn’t easy to speak publicly about what we experienced and to be bombarded with questions. But I have learned that the more questions I am asked, the better the class. Now I start to worry when I don’t get enough questions. Over the years that I have been speaking to groups about the Holocaust, many of the same questions have come up again and again. Here are some of the most commonly asked questions and the way that I usually answer them. How could the Holocaust have happened in a democratic country like Germany ? As a fully democratic country, Germany adhered strictly to the principle of freedom of speech. I believe that Hitler took full advantage of this freedom and used his democratic rights to destroy democracy in Germany. He used the media of the time—radio and newspapers—to disseminate his hatred for Jews and other non-Aryans. He blamed the non-Aryans for Germany’s economic and political problems and convinced...