International Holocaust Remembrance Day
The VHEC is partnering with two online events in commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day:
IHRD Richmond
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
7 pm
Please join the Bayit in partnership with the VHEC, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Kehila Society of Richmond and Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver to virtually welcome his Worship Mayor Malcolm Brodie as he proclaims January 27th, 2021 as Holocaust Remembrance Day in the City of Richmond.
Featuring Holocaust survivor speaker Alex Buckman.
Register here.
IHRD Canada
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
3 pm
Please join the VHEC, the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies and others for an online IHRD program featuring guest speakers Heather Dune Macadam and Michael Berenbaum, who will share their insights on the future of Holocaust education.
Heather Dune Macadam is the acclaimed author of the international best seller, 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz.
Michael Berenbaum is a renowned writer and professor and director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust.
Register here.
January 27 is designated by the United Nations General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Since 2005, the UN and its member states have held commemoration ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and to honour the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the millions of other victims of Nazism.
The purpose of IHRD is two-fold: to serve as a date for official commemoration of the victims of the Nazi regime and to promote Holocaust education throughout the world.
Naomi K. Lewis in conversation with Dr. Abby Wener Herlin
Monday, February 22, 2021
5:30 – 6:30 pm
In Tiny Lights for Travellers, Naomi K. Lewis retraces her beloved Opa’s escape from Nazi-occupied Netherlands in the summer of 1942. Travelling alone from Amsterdam to Lyon, she discovers family secrets and her own narrative as a second-generation Jewish Canadian.
With vulnerability, humour, and wisdom, Lewis’s memoir asks tough questions about her identity as a secular Jew, the accuracy of family stories, and the impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations.
NAOMI K. LEWIS is the author of the novel Cricket in a Fist, the short story collection I Know Who You Remind Me Of, and the co-editor of the anthology Shy. Her memoir Tiny Lights for Travellers, was a finalist for the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction. Her journalism has been shortlisted for provincial and national magazine awards. She lives in Calgary.
Dr. ABBY WENER HERLIN is an educator, writer and therapist, founder of Threads Education. She teaches at UBC and specializes in social justice issues for classroom and curriculum.
Tickets here.
Event hosted by the Cherie Smith JCC Book Festival in partnership with the VHEC.
DATE AND TIME TO BE ANNOUNCED:
Rediscovering History: Collecting & Researching the Jewish Garment Industries of Germany & Austria
A presentation by Claus Jahnke, Fashion Historian and Collector
Vancouver-based fashion historian and collector Claus Jahnke is the owner of one of the most significant collections of German and Austrian historical clothing outside of Europe. Pieces from his collection have been exhibited in Vancouver, Toronto, New York and Vienna. Jahnke began collecting as a young man, often finding treasures at auctions and in thrift stores, or, in exceptional cases, from the descendants of emigrants in North America. In the 1990s, Jahnke discovered a pair of shoes at the Salvation Army in New Westminster. Manufactured by Gallus Shoes in Göttingen, Germany—a factory belonging to the Hahn family—the shoes are intrinsically linked to the VHEC’s current exhibition, Treasured Belongings: The Hahn Family & the Search for a Stolen Legacy.
Claus Jahnke regularly consults for historians and other researchers. In 1999, he acted as co-curator for the VHEC-produced exhibition Broken Threads: The Destruction of Jewish Fashion Industry in Germany and Austria, which examined the methodical destruction of Jewish involvement in the European fashion industry in the 1930s and 1940s.
