Sunday, 3 November

An intergenerational program where the community will have the opportunity to hear testimony from survivors of the Shoah who are part of the BAYT family. Over breakfast, survivors will tell their personal stories in small table discussions, sharing their experiences and answering questions in an informal setting. Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, Senior Rabbi at the BAYT, and Arielle Wasserman, a young member of the BAYT who recently travelled to Poland, will also speak.

Generously co-sponsored by Tamara and Jerry Balinsky in memory of the members of our family murdered in the Holocaust and in gratitude fo those who survived. Co-sponsored by Hillel of Greater Toronto.

Registration required: www.bayt.ca

An intergenerational program where the community will have the opportunity to hear testimony from survivors of the Shoah who are part of the BAYT family. Over breakfast, survivors will tell their personal stories in small table discussions, sharing their experiences and answering questions in an informal setting. Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, Senior Rabbi at the BAYT, and Arielle Wasserman, a young member of the BAYT who recently travelled to Poland, will also speak.

Registration required: www.bayt.ca

Generously co-sponsored by Tamara and Jerry Balinsky in memory of the members of our family murdered in the Holocaust and in gratitude for those who survived. Co-sponsored by Hillel of Greater Toronto.

Jewish resistance during the Holocaust came in many forms, from organized rebellions to individual pursuits for freedom. Doris L. Bergen will examine Holocaust resistors and the psychology of resistance. An exemplar of Jewish resistance, Cantor Severin Weingort was only 15 years old when he escaped and rescued his parents from a Nazi forced labour camp. He recently recorded his journey of survival on film, which will be shared for the first time at this lecture.

Severin Weingort was born in Poland. He immigrated to Toronto in 1948 and studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music and Opera School. He performed with the Canadian Opera Company for fifteen years. In 1966, he became the Cantor of Temple Sinai Congregation of Toronto, and is now Cantor Emeritus of Temple Sinai.

Doris L. Bergen is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on issues of religion, gender and ethnicity in the Holocaust and the Second World War and comparatively in other cases of extreme violence. She has taught at the Universities of Warsaw, Pristina, Tuzla, Notre Dame, and Vermont.

Cantor Severin Weingort Holocaust Education Lecture. 

How do next generations understand and internalize the narratives of the Holocaust in the context of 21st century world issues? This symposium will invite participants to examine narratives (local, national, past, present) and evaluate themselves as individuals and as a collective in the effort to preserve and personalize history. Keynote presentation from Yishai Goldflam, Holocaust educator, guide and filmmaker.

A symposium for people in their 20s and 30s. The program is free of charge. Light lunch will be served; Kashruth observed. Co-presented by Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto, and in partnership with numerous community and civic organizations in Toronto.

Online registration opens soon.

Generously co-sponsored by Fran and Ed Sonshine; by Annalee and Jeffrey Wagman; and by Martin and Eleanor Maxwell in memory of his sisters, Josephine and Erna Meisels who died in the Holocaust.

Cette journée a pour theme la pensée et aura deux principales composantes.

Le matin—Conférence « Aux fondements des pensées totalitaires : nazisme, communisme et autres intégrismes biologiques et idéologiques » Par Boris Cyrulnik

L’apres-midi—Atelier « Enseigner la pensée historique a travers les récits de témoins d’événements historiques » Par Aurélien Bonin et Stéphane Lévesque

Stéphane Lévesque est professeur de didactique de l’histoire a l’Université d’Ottawa, spécialiste de la pensée historique et co-auteur du manuel de référence pour l’Ontario sur la question de l’enseignement de la pensée historique.

Aurélien Bonin est éducateur a la Fondation Azrieli.

Événement gratuit présenté en collaboration avec la Fondation Azrieli, le Consulat général de France et le Neuberger Holocaust Centre.  

This program features Polish Holocaust survivor Manny Langer who will speak about his personal experiences during the Holocaust.

Generously co-sponsored by Edna and David Magder in memory of Reisl Chana Brodi and Marc Weissman, who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Tales of heroism and compassion make the past come to life through stories and songs of the Holocaust. Suitable for children ages 9+.

Eli Rubenstein is the National Director of the March of the Living Canada.

Co-presented by Jewish Storytelling Arts.

This Canadian-produced documentary tells the story of the Roma, commonly referred to as Gypsies, a people who have been both romanticized and vilified in popular culture and who have endured centuries of intolerance and persecution in Europe, including during the Holocaust. A People Uncounted depicts their colourful but often difficult lives, including how their present condition has been shaped by the tragedies of the past. (2011, English, 99 minutes.) Gina Robah-Csanyi, Director of the Roma Community Centre of Toronto, will participate in a Q&A following the film.

Co-presented by the Roma Community Centre.  

Memory: A Holocaust Survivor’s Story is a 2012 film by Classrooms Without Borders in Pittsburgh. Howard Chandler travelled to Starachowice (Wierzbnik), Poland, in the summer of 2011 to visit his childhood city and to recount his wartime experience. In 1942, his town was liquidated by the Nazis and two-thirds of its Jewish residents were murdered at Treblinka. For more than 65 years, survivors and descendents have conducted an annual memorial program for those murdered. (2012, English, 51 minutes.)

Dr. Zipora Gur, Executive Director and Founder of Classrooms Without Borders, has worked in the field of Jewish education for more than 35 years. She holds a doctoral degree from the University of Pittsburgh, Division of Teacher Development, Curriculum and Supervision.

For Howard Chandler’s bio, FILL

This program will include a candle-lighting ceremony. Children over ten years of age are welcome to attend. Copies of the DVD will be available for purchase.

Generously co-sponsored by Lisa Richman and Steven Kelman in loving memory of her father Joseph Richman, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor. Co-sponsored by the Wierzbniker Society.

רעדט װעגן דעם באַהאַלטענעם אַרכיװ אין דער װאַרשעװער געטאָ און איין היסטאָריקער׳ס באַשטימונג איבערצולאָזן צײַט קאַפּסולן, אָנגעשטאָפּט מיט דאָקומענטן, באַגראָבן אין דער געטאָ. די קאַפּסולן זײַנען אױסן געװען זיך אַנטקעגןצושטעלן די דײַטשן װאָס האָבן ניט נאָר געװאָלט צו נישטמאַכן דעם פּױלישן ייִדנטום, נאָר אױך זייער זכר. לעקציע אױף ייִדיש

This Yiddish-language lecture will discuss the secret archive in the Warsaw Ghetto and Ringelblum’s determination to leave time capsules buried under the ghetto streets. These capsules contained documents intended to thwart the German plans to obliterate not only the Jews of Poland but also their memory.

Dr. Samuel Kassow is an internationally recognized scholar with special interest in modern Jewish and European History and the Holocaust. He is a consultant to the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Dr. Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College and was a recent visiting professor at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto.

Co-presented by UJA Federation’s Committee for Yiddish, Friends of Yiddish and Toronto Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring.

Bo Lidegaard presents his brand-new book, Countrymen, about the remarkable story of Denmark’s Jews during the Holocaust. In the fall of 1943, Danes living under Nazi occupation helped 6,500 of their fellow countrymen flee to Sweden. The refugees kept diaries and letters, which form the basis of this riveting account of moral courage in the Holocaust. Book sales and signing will follow the program.

Bo Lidegaard is a Danish historian, diplomat, author and editor-in-chief of daily broadsheet newspaper Politiken. Bo Lidegaard received his degrees from Gentofte Statsskole in 1976, the University of Copenhagen in 1984 and his PhD in 1997. He has authored a number of books on Danish history.

Co-presented by St. Timothy’s Anglican Church.

This film is based on Professor John Davis’ book, The Jews of San Nicandro, about a group of Roman Catholics in Fascist Italy who underwent a mass conversion to Judaism in the late 1920s–1930s at a time when it was dangerous to be Jewish. They left Italy and immigrated to the new state of Israel in 1949. (2012, English / Italian / Hebrew, 67 minutes.) The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Producer/Executive Producer Vanessa Dylyn.

Vanessa Dylyn is a producer of documentary and factual programming. Her new projects include development on The Science of Sainthood for Vision TV, and Urania, a feature film project on Charles Dickens. Previous credits include the Gemini-winning The Musical Brain; Fixing My Brain, the highest-rated film on CBC Newsworld in 2008; the series Exotic Lives; the documentary, Made in Canada: the Italian Way; and the series Best Evidence. Vanessa’s films have been distributed in over 100 countries.

Generously co-sponsored by the Rapoport and Rosenthal families in honour of Mania Rapoport and in memory of Jack Rapoport, both Holocaust survivors.

 In 1940, as part of a Polish resistance operation, Captain Witold Pilecki volunteered to go behind the gates of Auschwitz. The result is an incredible tale of bravery and espionage. Imprisoned until his escape in 1943, Pilecki risked his life to give the Polish Underground and the Allies a direct testimony of what was going on behind the barbed wires of Auschwitz. University of Toronto Professors Piotr Wróbel and Tamara Trojanowska will examine Pilecki’s firsthand account, The Auschwitz Volunteer, and frame the newly released English-language book and related film in the context of literary representation of history. The book will be available for purchase following the program.

Piotr Wróbel holds the Konstanty Reynert Chair of Polish History at the University of Toronto. During his long academic career in Europe and North America he wrote and edited many books on Polish history and the history of Polish Jews. Piotr Wróbel is a board member of The Polish–Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada.

Tamara Trojanowska is a director of the Polish Language and Literature Program in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto where she teaches courses in Polish literature and culture. Her research and publications focus on discourses of modernity with particular interest in issues of identity.

Co-presented by the Polish–Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto, with the support of the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Toronto.

 “In telling these stories, the writers have liberated themselves. For so many years we did not speak about it, even when we became free people living in a free society. Now, when at last we are writing about what happened to us in this dark period of history, knowing that our stories will be read and live on allows us to feel truly free.” —David J. Azrieli, C.M., C.Q., M.Arch., Holocaust survivor and philanthropist.

Holocaust Education Week Opening Night features the five most recently published authors with a premiere screening of five new Azrieli Series Short Films. The evening will provide an opportunity to meet the authors and hear the individual voices of those who prevailed in such terrible adversity.

The Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program was established in 2005 to collect, preserve and share the memoirs and diaries written by survivors of the Holocaust who came to Canada after the war. The Program is guided by the conviction that each survivor has a remarkable story to tell and that such stories play a significant role in education, teaching us about the importance of acceptance and the dangers of remaining silent in the face of prejudice in our diverse, multicultural society.

The Program is committed to honouring survivors and giving them a voice. These are Jewish stories of survival—and they are Canadian stories of rebirth. The memoirs also commemorate the six million Jews who perished whose voices and stories are lost to us forever. These stories are written from the intimate, personal perspective of those who lived through the Holocaust: more than half a century later, the diversity of stories allows readers to put a face on what was lost and to grasp the enormity of what happened to six million Jews—one story at a time. Coffee reception, with book sales and signing, follows the program.

Co-sponsored by The Azrieli Foundation. The reception following the program is generously sponsored by Zippora and Mark Orland in honour of Honey Sherman and her chairmanship of the Neuberger.

Parking and directions: Queen Elizabeth Theatre