A new museum opens in Toronto

Not long ago, we wrote about #JewishHeritageMonth. This is the time when many Canadian figures, from politicians to medieval stars, who belong to Jewish culture remembered. We published a text celebrating Howard Shore, the legendary Canadian composer with Jewish roots who wrote music for "The Silence of the Lambs" and "The Lord of the Rings".

And at the very beginning of June, the Government of Canada opened the Toronto Holocaust Museum. As the official website says, "The Toronto Holocaust Museum is a space for education and dialogue". It is exactly what is needed today in Canadian society facing many diverse challenges.

Unlike many other topics that rage in the Canadian parliament, this one is not divisive: both the Liberal and the Conservative parties are unanimous even in passing a law for Holocaust denial.

Of course, Canada has quite a few museums to take the family to on weekends, or galleries to go to for an evening exhibition. These include the Ontario Art Gallery and the Royal Museum British Columbia, as well as the Hockey Hall of Fame, the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal and the National Gallery in Ottawa.

Now a new one will be added to them. The Museum will not only have a permanent exhibition showing an artifact of the era. Keeping up with modern times, the Holocaust Museum is no longer a boring space, but a contemporary and technological center. There will be a movie theater, for showing both feature films and documentaries. There will also be classrooms, thematic galleries, and additional classrooms for discussion.

"To ensure that history does not repeat itself and that future generations continue to learn from their heritage, it is important to keep these stories alive," said Dara Solomon, executive director of the Museum.

Like any museum, The New Toronto Holocaust Museum is always a conversation about modernity through the events of the past. Yes, school curricula in various countries devote space to this dark page of history: some have chapters and large sections while others mention only a few lines.

The current museum serves not only to popularize knowledge of the catastrophe of the European Jews, but also to raise awareness among those who are hostile to any nation or people today.

During #JewishHeritageMonth the Toronto Police Service released a crime report: 26% of the victims of hate crimes were of European descent, and yet Toronto's Jewish community is only 3.4% of the city's population.

"Anti-Semitism and hatred of all kinds is a growing threat in Canada and, more specifically, in Toronto. It is imperative that we meet this threat head-on by raising education and awareness," Solomon said.

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The museum holds more than 70 video interviews of survivors of the tragedy of the twentieth century. Their stories, museum exhibits, interactive exhibitions, and lively discussions with schoolchildren during excursions preserve the memory of the past.

Canada that became a salvation

Needless to say, that thousands of European Jews left for Canada and the United States after World War II. Many of them made careers, hundreds and thousands excelled in politics, economics, law and the arts. Canada became home to those who left their lives in Europe in search of a new life.

One of them was Henry Morgentaler, a Canadian doctor who helped perform abortion surgery when it was against the law. A man deserving of a movie, a model of courage and resilience, he was sent to prison for believing that women had the right to decide for themselves what to do with their lives and bodies. Today in Canada this is hardly a doubt, it is a right bestowed upon everyone, but the way to achieve it was not at all easy.

It is true that this was not immediately possible: in 1945 there was a debate how many Jewish refugees should be allowed to enter Canada. A famous phrase of a Canadian official at the time was, "None is too many." In 1946, 49% of the respondents were against Jewish immigration, but a year later in 1947 the mood began to change and countries around the world began to accept those who wanted to start a new life. Between 1947 and 1955, Canadian Jews helped about 35,000 Holocaust survivors and their children to move to Canada.

Talking about the past, talking about the present

In 2020, Canada took the historic step of appointing its first Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, the Honourable Irwin Cotler. In 2022, the Government of Canada pledged to make the position of Special Envoy permanent.

"We must never forget the lessons of the Holocaust or the memories of those who survived it, because anti-Semitism can have no place in Canada or anywhere else," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the time.

On July 21, 2021, the Government of Canada held a National Summit on Anti-Semitism, and the 2022 budget proposed CAD5.6 million over five years for work on Holocaust remembrance and Antisemitism. Work is also underway on the creation of a Montreal Holocaust Museum.

Comprehension

Sometimes we end our texts on important topics by recommending films. This was the case with woman's right to abortion, and we also publish articles about Canadian culture, most recently on cinematography and music. And so we decided to compile a small selection of obvious and not the most famous films on such an important topic, because cinema, like any art form, speaking to us about yesterday, speaks to us about today and tomorrow.

1. "Schindler's List," Steven Spielberg (1993)
   A benchmark drama about a German industrialist who discovers the atrocities of Germany and decides to save the Jews. Based on real events, one of the best films in history and a groundbreaking work by a great film director.

2. "Life is Beautiful," by Roberto Benigni (1997)
   A fairy tale film about a father and his son who find themselves in a concentration camp. The father offers the child a big game not get caught by the warders for anything, and the son begins to believe him.

3. "The Pianist," Roman Polanski (2000)
   A screen adaptation of the biography of the Polish pianist Władysław Szpilman, made by director who himself miraculously avoided going to Auschwitz at the very last moment.

4. "Sophie's Choice," Alan J. Pakula (1982)
   The story of a Polish woman who tries to love and in time in post-war America, but secrets of the past catch up with her everywhere. Great Meryl Streep role.

5. "Son of Saul," Laszlo Nemes (2016)
   A debutante film about a concentration camp inmate who sees one of the victims as his son and now must bury him according to Jewish custom against all odds.

6. "Jojo Rabbit," Taika Waititi (2019)
   Tragicomedy about a boy who discovers a family secret and begins to rethink his own life.

7. "Farsi Lessons," Vadim Perelman (2020)
   A film by a Ukrainian filmmaker about a Jew who pretends to be Persian in order to teach the camp commander Farsi, because he wants to open a restaurant in Tehran after the war. A heartbreakingly brilliant finale.

8. "The Reader," Stephen Daldry (2008)
   A film adaptation of the novel by the German lawyer Bernhard Schlink, which was a sensation in the 1990s but was screened only 13 years later. A German teenager has an affair with a woman twice his age. A movie of the highest caliber.

9. "Shoah," Claude Lanzmann (1984)
   A Film for the brave film lovers is a nine-hour documentary about Holocaust survivors, co-conspirators, and perpetrators. An uncompromising creative act that took nine years to produce.

10. "Zone of Interest," Jonathan Glaser (2023)
    A film reflecting the present day, based on the prose of Martin Amis: the prosperous life of a German family that does not notice (or does not want to notice) the horrors behind the neighboring fence. The head of the family is the commandant of Auschwitz.