(Image Credit: CFJC News)

By Sydney Chisholm

Holocaust Remembrance Day

‘Education has to be the primary weapon to use against antisemitism’: Holocaust Remembrance Day

Jan 27, 2023 | 4:54 PM

KAMLOOPS– Today (Jan. 27) is the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Holocaust Remembrance Day was established on Jan. 27, 2005, to commemorate the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and to develop programs and education to prevent future genocides.

Though the Jewish community in Kamloops is small, locals are reminded to educate themselves on the history behind Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“The Holocaust Memorial Day is so important, I think for everyone– but particularly Canadian Jews and Jews around the world,” Tom Friedman, former president of the Kamloops Jewish Community told CFJC News.

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TRU philosophy professor, Jeff McLaughlin edited two books by Vera Schiff, a Holocaust survivor: Lost to the Shoah: Eight Lives and Bound for Theresienstadt: Love, Loss and Resistance in a Nazi Concentration Camp.

McLaughlin said Vera is an inspiration to him. He is glad he could help share her story.

He told CFJC News, without individual stories, it’s hard for people to grasp the full magnitude of the Holocaust.

“One of the difficult things regarding the Holocaust specifically is the fact that there are so many victims,” McLaughlin said. “It’s hard to grasp that number of six million.”

In 2021, there was a reported 47 per cent rise in antisemitic hate crimes in Canada.

“There’s a lot of concern and I think all Canadians would be very concerned,” Friedman said, acknowledging a notable rise in antisemitism in the past few years.

Despite the rise, Friedman says there haven’t been any notable incidents in the Kamloops Jewish community.

He says he feels safe practicing and celebrating his faith in Kamloops but knows of several Jewish community centres in the Lower-Mainland needing security patrols.

“That’s so disturbing, that’s something that should never happen,” he said. “A place of worship, a place of learning and celebration should never have to have armed patrols to protect people.”

He believes education on the Holocaust and remembering the horrors faced are especially important right now.

“We feel that again education has to be the primary weapon to use against antisemitism,” Friedman said.