It鈥檚 the type of storytelling process teeming with raw emotions and graphic imagery, but one that the co-creators insist must be told particularly to the decision makers of tomorrow.
On display at the 麻豆传媒映画Holocaust Education Centre, Canada Responds to the Holocaust, 1944-45 is an exhibit focusing on the final days of battle in Europe during the Second World War.
Specifically, it offers first-person perspectives from soldiers, survivors, aid workers and chaplains as they realized the extent of the Nazi campaign across Holland, Belgium and France.
鈥淚 just feel that it鈥檚 an underexplored area that can teach us a great deal about the time and how people reacted to Nazi Germany, how they reacted to knowledge of the Holocaust, and the difficulties in dealing with traumatic events,鈥� said exhibit co-creator Richard Menkis.
Menkis is a history professor at UBC who specializes in the Jewish history and Holocaust research. He teamed up with documentary photographer Ronnie Tessler to put together the exhibit, which consists of newsreels, archival photos, era-specific propaganda, copies of letters and other personal artifacts.
Some of the rarest items in the collection came by way of pieces gifted by Second World War veteran Edward Sheppard. He was part of a Canadian unit that freed Dutch prisoners from the Westerbork concentration camp in 1945.
Sheppard kept a diary during his wartime service, which he lent to the exhibit, along with his uniform.
He also lent the exhibit a token of appreciation he was given by one of the concentration camp survivors: a Star of David that all Jews had to wear in the camps to denote their religious affiliation. 鈥淲hen the soldiers encountered the evidence or survivors, they were coming from different places 鈥� some of them may have had some knowledge of the Holocaust, some of them may have had no knowledge at all. Others couldn鈥檛 believe the information that was coming to them at the time,鈥� Menkis said.
The exhibit serves as an extension of the work Tessler and Menkins began more than a decade ago. At that time they produced a CD-ROM for the Holocaust Education Centre that was then given to other educators to use in classroom settings.
Their current collaboration built upon that previous research, and archival information was accessed from Israel, Holland, the U.S. and from the national archives in Ottawa. A pair of researchers 鈥� one based in Amsterdam and the other in 麻豆传媒映画鈥� also spent time on the project.
Tessler鈥檚 ancestors are Russian Jews, though her extended family has been in Canada for two generations. Combing through horrific images and sentiments as part of the year-long research process was emotionally and spiritually taxing.
鈥淵ou have a collective feeling for your ethnic history and it鈥檚 very painful,鈥� said Tessler, who served as director of the Holocaust Centre for more than six years. 鈥淵ou have to take a breath now and then and take care of yourself and go back to the work because it has a larger purpose.鈥�
While the exhibit focuses on historic takeaways, there are also tangible, physical ones as well.
Illustrator Colin Upton created a 24-page comic called Kicking at the Darkness for the exhibit. It depicts Canadian soldiers moving across northwestern Europe and eventually ending up at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. It was the first major concentration camp liberated by Allied forces, and more than 60,000 people were interned there in 1945.
鈥淭he thing that鈥檚 remarkable to me is how much effort we have to put in to preserving historical fact,鈥� said the 56-year-old 麻豆传媒映画resident. 鈥淲hen I look at Donald Trump, the conspiracy theories I see on the Internet鈥� it鈥檚 very depressing but necessary that we have to tell these stories again and try to convince people that these things actually did happen.鈥� 聽
The comic is given to everyone who takes in the exhibit, and the majority of visitors to the Holocaust Centre are high school students.
鈥淚 hope that they understand how we can descend into violent racism, how we can overcome it and hopefully keep our democratic processes going so that we welcome people to our country, we understand them and we help them become part of us,鈥� Tessler said.
The exhibit is on display until March 31. For information, go to .
@JohnKurucz
