HOLOCAUST EDUCATION AND GENOCIDE PREVENTION FOUNDATION

Our World, Our Responsibility: Yo u r A c t i o n ! April 13 - 17, 2015 23rd ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM ON THE HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE, VANIER COLLEGE

The Vanier College Department of Music and the HEGP’s Gedenkdienst intern, Benedikt Baratsits-Gruber are organizing a unique music event, “Vanier College: Band Competition” Current and previous Vanier music students will compete on stage. The audience will vote immediately after the Bands’ performance using the mobile application “myVote.”

A unique and particularly significant goal of this social event is to raise funds to continue Vanier College’s and HEGP’s 23rd Annual Symposium on Genocide and the Holocaust.

The price of admission is $10.

Tickets may be purchased online: www.preventinggenocide.org

For further information: [email protected] 438 403 1133 HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS’ TESTIMONY

Hermann Gruenwald Eva Kuper Born at the start of WW II in Warsaw, Poland, Eva Hermann Gruenwald's idyllic survived the war through a series of childhood came to an end in 1944 miraculous events involving luck, when he and his family were sent to coincidence, as well as the courage Auschwitz. During his incarceration, and faith of several individuals. She Mr. Gruenwald’s instinct for survival immigrated to Canada with her helped him survive three family in 1949 where she grew up concentration camps, including “practically Canadian” with the Auschwitz. He offers a vivid portrayal history of the Holocaust always in of growing up affluent and Jewish in the background. She was educated at class-conscious Hungary during the Sir George Williams University and interwar period. Concordia, and subsequently devoted herself to education and educational administration. In Yehudi Lindeman this lecture, Eva will present the film Hidden Children, Unknown Heroes (2009). Born in Holland in March 1938, during the week of the German Al Gilbert invasion and occupation of Mr. Gilbert will speak about his escape and survival during Austria know as the Anschluss, the Shoah. In the summer of 1940 he and his family left Yehudi Lindeman was four years Belgium to seek refuge in England. When he asked his old when he went into hiding. father where they were going.he was told that they were “It was the beginning of an on their way to a picnic area in Belgium. He survived the itinerant existence that would war years in England and emigrated to Canada with his take me to at least fifteen different locations, none of family in 1947. them stable or permanent. I stayed at several other farms, both poor and prosperous, at a dentist’s house, a flower shop, a butter factory, the list goes on and on, and I don’t even remember all of them. The only sense of stability I Leading English Education and Resource Network felt was when yet another stranger, some young man or (LEARN) is a non-profit organization with a mandate woman (a courier working for the resistance, no doubt), to serve the educational needs of the public and private would take me once again to a new place of hiding, usually Anglophone, and Aboriginal, Youth and Adult on the back of a bicycle." Education sectors of Québec. We bring together the collective expertise and efforts of educators, students, Paul Herczeg parents and partners in our community to cultivate success for all learners. When the Nazis came for him, 15-year- old Paul Herczeg was a fifth-generation LEARN: Hungarian Jew, assimilated into the life creates and provides access to quality of suburban Budapest. During the dark, learning resources; develops and hopeless days in the camps, an supports innovative online and important incentive to survive was to blended learning approaches; models be able to tell the world afterward what and encourages the pedagogical use of happened, as well as to honour and information and communication remember those who didn’t survive. technologies; initiates and supports Paul Herczeg provides his eyewitness, opportunities for professional growth; first-person account of history in an fosters collaboration and sharing; effort to help tomorrow's leaders avoid communicates information in and repeating the horrors of the past. about our community

The 23rd annual symposium will involve LEARN students across Quebec.

PAGE 2 SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS Heidi Berger Corrie Sirota Heidi Berger, is an award-winning producer, who created a Corrie Sirota MSW, PSW is a Clinical Social Worker in unique, 40 minute interactive video presentation for high private practice who has helped numerous schools and school and university students, and adults. The video organizations address the issue of bullying. This chronicles her mother’s experiences during the Holocaust. workshop will focus on empowering the victims of bullying and will offer techniques and strategies for Jacky Vallée bystanders in order that they may effectively support Jacky Vallée teaches anthropology at Vanier College and is a those who are targeted by bullies. co-founder of the Open Door Network and the Vanier Indigenous Circle. His talk will address the social, political, Nakuset and ideological contexts of the persecution of people Nakuset, the Executive Director of the Native Women’s perceived as gay before, during, and after the Holocaust. He Shelter of Montréal, is Cree from Lac la Ronge, will discuss the ways in which the symbol of the Pink Saskatchewan. She has three beautiful boys, Kistin, Triangle has been appropriated by sexual minorities in Mahkisis and Mahihkan. She was adopted by a Jewish western societies. family in Montreal and draws on her experience as an adoptee to offer insight into her work as an advocate for Benedikt Baratsits-Gruber Aboriginal children in care. She is the co-president of Moral Responsibility: Witnesses for the Future, was developed in the Montreal Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy conjunction with, Gedenkdienst interns Benedikt Baratsits- Network. Her most recent accomplishments include Gruber and Florian Windberger. The presentation is creating, producing, and hosting the television series particularly relevant given the contemporary savagery “Indigenous Power,” as well as being voted “Woman of occurring daily in the Middle East and Africa as well as the the Year” by the Montreal Council of Women. recent murders in Canada of Warrant Officer Patrick Vincent and Corporal Nathan Cirillo. Gina Roitman Gina Roitman was born in Passau, Germany to Project Goals Holocaust survivors and is the co-producer and subject • To provide an overview of the Shoah (Holocaust), and to of the film, "My Mother, the Nazi Midwife, and Me" address the Rwandan genocide and the mass killings in which documents her return to her birthplace to Darfur. uncover the truth about how her mother saved her life. • The theme, “Abuse of Power” is treated with specific reference to Austria’s role in the Holocaust and the subsequent view of Austrians as the first victims of Nazism. • The role of the Internet in disseminating information is contrasted with media during the time of the Shoah.

BOOKING SYMPOSIUM EVENTS Marlene Grossman, Vanier College Symposium Co-coordinator 514 744 7500 ext. 7483 [email protected]

CANADIAN DEBUT: OF MANY Set against the dramatic backdrop of violence in the Middle East and the tension between Jewish and Muslim students, Of Many focuses on the surprising and transformative relationship between an orthodox rabbi and imam, who serve as university chaplains in New York City. We witness young religious Jews and Muslims working together and overcoming long-standing divides. This short documentary offers an inspiring and hopeful narrative in the face of a seemingly irreconcilable conflict. Rabbi Yehuda Sarna and Imam Khalid Latif will be present to answer questions after the screening. April 14th, 2015, 1:00 - 2:30 pm, Auditorium

PAGE 3 GLOBAL GENOCIDE EDUCATION

The Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service (AHMS) is an alternative to Austria’s compulsory national military service. AHMS was founded in 1992. Since 1998 it is part of the Austrian Service Abroad. AHMS representatives work at major Holocaust memorial institutions in 23 countries worldwide. The German name is Gedenkdienst (Memorial Service). The organization is interested in the causes and consequences of Nazism and offers support to its victims. Women have been allowed to participate in the programme since 2013. The Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service and the Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention Foundation began to work together in 1994.

Vanier students, 2013 “Holocaust and Totalitarianism: Journeys House of Responsibility through Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.” The House of Responsibility in Braunau am Inn (HRB) will be an international meeting place for young people wishing to work on educational projects in Hitler’s birth house. The During the 2013 March Break at Vanier College, 38 house is located in the upper-Austrian town of Braunau am students and 5 teachers travelled to Europe as part of the Inn. The former tavern was a cultural center for the Nazi international component of a new universal party during the Third Reich. Later, the heritage house was complementary course entitled “Holocaust and used as a home and workshop for people with disabilities. Totalitarianism: Journeys through Germany, Poland and It has been vacant since 2011. The Holocaust Education the Czech Republic.”It was the culminating point of 7 and Genocide Prevention Foundation has given its weeks of classroom lectures the students had attended statement of support for the HRB: prior to their departure, in which they studied the period covering the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany up to the Braunau am Inn is the birthplace of history’s most reviled figure. demise of the Soviet Union, and analyzed the major Given that this location is being transformed into a House of themes of genocide, totalitarianism and the Cold War. Responsibility is a tribute to Austrians’ changed view of their The class then complemented their knowledge with history. The significance of the House of Responsibility is the visits to important sites associated with the material transformation of Hitler’s birthplace into an education centre, covered in class, including Berlin’s Check Point Charlie, whose goal is to counter the past crimes against humanity the Wall, Warsaw’s Ghetto, Krakow’s Schindler Factory committed by Hitler’s Nazi Party. Sadly, this building attracts neo- Museum, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration Nazis, who gather with a view to promoting past hatred. The camps. Forty students have enrolled in the 2015 course. proposed House of Responsibility wil function as a true monument. Monument derives fom the Latin term “monere,” meaning to Mathieu Mackay, a 2013 student will be available remind and warn. This house wil stand as a constant reminder during the 2015 Symposium to show his group’s and warning to those who attempt to rekindle the atrocities of the video and speak about the trip. past.

To book Mathieu in your class contact Vanier College Symposium Co-coordinator Marlene Grossman: 514 744 7500 ext. 7483 [email protected]

Andreas Maislinger and Austrian President Fischer, with 2013 Gedenkdienst interns in Hofurg, Vienna.

PAGE 4