Entries by VHEC

Revitalizing Access: The Journey of Bringing the VHEC’s Legacy Collections Online  

An abundance of historical materials recounting the lives of Holocaust survivors before, during and after the Second World War can be found in the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre’s legacy collections. When the VHEC was first established, the local survivor community donated photographs, diaries, testimonies, ephemera, clippings, posters, identity and travel documents, correspondence and other documentary […]

Reflections on Profound Losses

A Message from VHEC Executive Director Nina Krieger Survivors of the Holocaust are central to the VHEC’s mission and to the impact of many of our educational programs. A small and exceptionally dedicated group of survivor speakers share their eyewitness accounts of loss and survival with audiences at our annual and district-wide symposia, at the […]

Conserving a beloved artefact

This child’s shoe, recovered from the Kanada barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau, has been used by the VHEC in several past exhibitions to represent the loss of life and experience of children during the Holocaust. The shoe is a favourite of docents and visitors alike. In 2017, we noticed that bits of leather were flaking off the […]

Becoming the Enlightened Witness

Post contributed by VHEC Program Coordinator Pascale Higham-Leisen. On the evening of February 13, 2023, Holocaust survivor and acclaimed author Lillian Boraks-Nemetz shared her experience of surviving the Holocaust with members of the Ben Gurion Society at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. The Ben Gurion Society is the Jewish Federation’s national leadership and donor recognition […]

Vigour in the archives: Honouring International Women’s Day at the VHEC

Post written by Chase Nelson, Collections Assistant. Chase is a recent graduate of the UBC iSchool.  What does it mean to be an activist? Is an activist someone who takes to the streets, linking arms with allies to collectively call for what is right? Do they ingrain themselves within a community in order to understand […]

Unfolding Memories and Reflections: Jennifer Roosma

Guest post by donor to the VHEC collection, Jennifer Roosma, jroosma.wordpress.com. Around the time of my 17th birthday, five years after the death of my grandmother, my mother handed me a file folder filled with typewritten pages in English. The pages were covered with edits and corrections, some in pen, some in pencil, in handwriting […]

Video tutorials introduce users to collections research at the VHEC

For the past two semesters, the VHEC worked with students enrolled in LIBR 535: Instructional Role of the Librarian, taught by instructor Fiona Hunt at UBC.  The goal of this course is to provide students with a foundation in learning theory, instructional design and information literacy instruction. Students work with real clients, like the VHEC, […]

Studying the Netherlands at the VHEC

Six years ago, when I was a master’s student of history at the University of Groningen, I joined the VHEC as a research intern for the Canada Responds to the Holocaust exhibit. It was arguably one of the best times of my life. I loved Vancouver and the work I got to do at the […]

UBC Student Podcast: VHEC Collections

For their class on public history at the University of British Columbia, graduate students in HIST 595B, taught by Dr. Richard Menkis, created podcast episodes engaging with library materials, artefacts and archives in the VHEC collection. Podcast episodes were created with the assistance of Georgia Twiss, a co-host of The Broadscast. Maya Porebska-Smith looks at […]