Sunday, January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and our partner, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC), has three events coming up to mark the day. We are proud to support their work through the Federation Annual Campaign.
The VHEC is an acclaimed museum with more than 4,000 items in its collection, anti-racism programs that reach more than 25,000 students annually, and events and programs that attract almost 8,000 people every year.
On Thursday, January 24th, VHEC and Hillel BC will remember Holocaust survivors at an event starting at 1:00 p.m. at Hillel House on the UBC campus. Buchenwald survivor Robbie Waisman and Dr. Uma Kumar, who teaches a course at UBC about the Holocaust, will speak. Everyone is welcome to this free event; Holocaust survivors are invited to participate in the candle-lighting. Jewish Federation is proud to sponsor this event.
On Sunday, January 27th, VHEC presents In Focus: The Holocaust through the VHEC Collection, and Faces of Survival: Photographs by Marissa Roth. Admission is by donation and is free to VHEC members. At 1:00 p.m., there is a docent-led tour of the exhibition. At 2:15 p.m., guest speaker Richard Lowy introduces a film about his father, Leo Lowy z”l, a Mengele twin, entitled Leo’s Journey: The Story of the Mengele Twins.
Also taking place on Sunday is a screening of the film Who Will Write Our History, which details how a clandestine group of journalists, scholars and community leaders in the Warsaw Ghetto, known by the code name Oyneg Shabes and led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum, used their wits and their writing skills to fight Nazi propaganda and tell the world what was happening there. The screening will take place at 7:00 p.m. at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture. Seating is limited, so please click here to RSVP. Admission is by donation.