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A
poster exhibit about Holocaust history:
These
8 posters (in PDF format) may be downloaded
and used for not-for-profit educational purposes All of the personal
narratives in this exhibit are from people who live or who have lived
in Victoria, BC, Canada - where the HopeSite originates. (Funding
for this exhibit was contributed in part by BC Multiculturalism
and the Department of Canadian Heritage)
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From
the exhibit's introduction:
"
Victoria,
BC, Canada is many kilometres, and many years, from the horrors
of the Holocaust. For most of us, the murder of six million European
Jews between 1933 and 1945 is an event whose sharpness is now blurring
into the sepia-toned images of a history lesson. Yet, our parents,
our grandparents, our great grandparents, witnessed what happened.
The people of Victoria knew what was happening in Europe. Accounts of anti-Semitic
riots and attacks on Jewish businesses and places of worship were printed
in large type in our local newspapers during the 1930s and 1940s....."
[See
the full poster]
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Tour
the Exhibit
(
Each tour topic begins with sample images and text)
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The
Rise of Nazis in Germany
"Anti-Semitism
had been a part of European culture for hundreds of years. Jews
had experienced persecution and exclusion in many parts of Europe.
But in the 1930’s, the National Socialist — or Nazi — Party
in Germany made anti-Semitism their official policy. The Nazi
Party came into being after the social, political and economic
unrest following the First World War. And when the Nazi leader
Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor in 1933, the world of the
German Jews began to fall apart..."
[See
the full poster]
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"I was in Breslau on
Kristallnacht. My grandmother woke me up, 'Kurt, leave the house,
the synagogue is burning, get out of the house.' My
grandfather already disappeared, he had German friends to hide
him. He was gone. We lived
close by the synagogue. It was a beautiful building, many meters high,
with two domes, and had been newly renovated. So I ran out, but
before I ran out,
I grabbed my army pass and put it in my pocket. I thought it wouldn’t
hurt.bout 50 meters, I ran into two Gestapo. SS men. They stopped me. 'Are
you a Jew?' 'What are you talking about,' I replied. I took out my army
pass and showed it to them, but not the inside page. On the street I passed
only
the smashed stores, a liquor store with everything poured on the street.
Everything smashed, a crystal store. I went to my girlfriend. It was November
and it was snowing...
[See
the full poster]
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"After the invasion of Poland, Canada
declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939... Anti-semitism
in Canada was a significant force. Within Canada, fascist groups
in Ontario and Quebec tried to keep Canada from fighting against
Germany. Canadian anti-Semitic groups tried to label Jewish citizens
as 'enemy aliens'..."
[See
the full poster ]
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Jewish Refugees
and Canada
"Prime Minister MacKenzie King and
Immigration Director F.C. Blair kept the number of Jewish refugees
small. As
the influence of Nazi-inspired hatred threatened the Jewish communities
of Europe, Jews tried to head to safety in the United States,
Canada, Australia, and even Cuba. Between 1933 and 1945, less
than 5000 Jews
were accepted into Canada..."
[See
the full poster]
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"Many individuals resisted Nazi rule.
Although many nations fell to Nazi occupation, some citizens
fought against oppression. In February of 1941, the people of
Amsterdam held an anti-Nazi general strike. In Denmark, 7200
Jews were secretly ferried to Sweden and safety. Risking their
own lives and the lives of their families, Europeans of many
religious and cultural backgrounds hid Jews in their homes, sometimes
for years at a time..."
[See
the full poster]
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"Entire communities were taken to their
destruction. Trains pulling cattle cars, devoid of air, water,
light and toilet facilities, transported the Jews of Europe away
from their homes to places with names we have come to associate
with evil: Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, Bergen-Belsen.
On arrival, families were separated. There, people were used
as slave labour or sent directly to their deaths...”
[See
the full poster]
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"Within Jewish families,
the Holocaust was usually not talked about. The children of survivors
of the Holocaust, the ‘second generation’, often
have many questions about what their parents experienced. It
is a difficult
journey, exploring a tragedy that helped to shape these families
in so many ways... Many people, Jewish and non-Jewish, work diligently
in this community to overcome anti-Semitism, to educate students
about racism and tolerance issues, and to build bridges of understanding..."
[See
the full poster]
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