Jewish community remembers those lost in Holocaust in order to never forget

Noting that Judaism holds the act of remembering in highest regard, Rob Berkowits invited members of the Winnipeg Jewish community and others to the annual reading of the names of Holocaust victims Monday at Congregation Etz Chayim.

“By reciting their names, we remember each individual,” said Berkowits, chair of Unto Every Person There is a Name,” which organized the event.

Names read at the event, held on Yom Hashoah — Holocaust Memorial Day — were among the more than 3,000 names inscribed on the Holocaust monument on the grounds of the Manitoba legislature. They belong to victims who have or had family members in Winnipeg or whose family members survived the Holocaust and moved here after the Second World War.

Readers at the event included members of the Jewish community and others.

B’nai Brith Canada director Ruth Ashrafi spoke about the rise of antisemitism in the country.

The most recent B’nai Brith report found a 109 per cent rise in antisemitism in Canada in 2023, much of it related to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

There were 5,791 incidents last year, a troubling spike over the 2,769 incidents in 2022, Ashrafi said.

Manitoba and Saskatchewan, had the “questionable honour” of leading the nation with a 400 per cent rise in incidents, Ashrafi said.

“It is becoming unsafe to be openly Jewish in Canada today,” she said.

The number of antisemitic incidents on Canadian university campuses is another alarming trend, she said, adding Jews are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to hate.

“What starts with Jews doesn’t end with Jews,” she said.

Ashrafi praised the province for adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, going on to say she looked forward to next steps of implementing and applying it, along with detailing the consequences for antisemitic activity.

The Manitoba government said Monday that Holocaust education will be in the curriculum for all students beginning this fall.

“All students should learn about the Holocaust because we are one Manitoba and cannot be divided by hatred,” Premier Wab Kinew said in a news release.

The province is committed to a curriculum that teaches history and human rights and respects diversity, Education and Early Learning Minister Nello Altomare said.

“Antisemitism and divisiveness have no place in our classrooms,” Altomare said.

The Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Toronto has brought its cross-country Tour for Humanity to Winnipeg this week.

The 30-seat mobile education centre is visiting schools.

“The goal is to bring human rights conversations to students,” Elena Kingsbury, an educator travelling with the tour to Vancouver, said.

“This is an interesting time to be talking about this subject,” Kingsbury said, referencing the Israel-Hamas war. Students, she said, bring up the subject “in a respectful way.”

Conversations with young people about the Holocaust are especially important, because the number of survivors is dwindling, she said.

“We have an obligation to preserve and protect their stories,” she said.

The Tour for Humanity has visited more than 1,200 Canadian schools since 2013. This is the second time it has travelled in Western Canada.

fatih@freepress.mb.ca

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