Open HeartsClosed doors

The War Orphans Project

MARCH 1 – JUNE 30, 2016

V a n c o u V e r H o l o c a u s t e d u c a t i o n c e n t r e

supported by the Isaac and sophie Waldman endowment Fund, held at the Vancouver Foundation

V a n c o u V e r H o l o c a u s t e d u c a t i o n c e n t r e

M O N D A Y T O T H U R S D A Y • 9 - 5 P M | F R I D A Y • 9 - 4 P M

5 0 – 9 5 0 W e S T 4 1 S T A v e N U e , v A N c O U v e R

6 0 4 . 2 6 4 . 0 4 9 9 | W W W . v H e c . O R G

t his exhibit tells the story of the arrival in canada of 1,123 Jewish children orphaned

by the Holocaust. It chronicles the lives of these children as they emerged from the

Holocaust into Displaced Persons (DP) camps and orphanages, and eventually to the

ships that would lead them to new lives in canada. It also tells the story of the efforts of

Jewish organizations and international agencies that helped identify these children and bring

them to canada.

The exhibit speaks to the efforts of Jewish social workers, members of the Jewish community

and Jewish foster families who cared for them after their arrival. The individual stories,

documents and photographs of the war orphans attest to the power of communities to act and

make a difference.

Originally developed by and presented at the vHec in 1997, the Open Hearts – Closed Doors

teaching exhibit is being re-presented to provide opportunities for visitors to engage with

canadian immigration policies from a historical perspective, using case studies of Holocaust

survivors from the local community.

DENMARK317 YRS LITHUANIA

600 YRS

ESTONIA600 YRS

LATVIA400 YRS

HOLLAND800 YRS

BELGIUM700 YRS

LUXEMBOURG653 YRS

GERMANY1,618 YRS

POLAND850 YRS

RUSSIA550 YRS

UKRAINE822 YRS

CZECHOSLOVAKIA1,000 YRS

FRANCE1,936 YRS

AUSTRIA1,030 YRS

ROMANIA1,800 YRS CRIMEA

1,900YRSYUGOSLAVIA1,000 YRS

HUNGARY1,900 YRS

ITALY2,100 YRS

GREECE2,239 YRS

The age of Jewish communities in europe by 1939. Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, Maps and Photographs, Anti Defamation League of Bnai: 1994.

Jewish Communities in Pre-war euroPe

Before 1933, approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in the 21 countries that were later occupied by Germany during the Second World War.

These communities had a richly diverse set of Jewish cultures, many of which were dynamic and highly developed, that drew from centuries of Jewish life on the continent. The divergent nature of individual Jewish communities in occupations, religious practices, involvement and integration in regional and national life made for fruitful and varied Jewish life across europe.

The largest Jewish populations were concentrated in eastern europe, including Poland, the Soviet Union, Hungary and Romania. Jews living in the Baltic regions of

Latvia, Lithuania and estonia represented five percent of the region’s total population. Large Jewish communities existed in central europe, as well as in Western and Southern europe.

europe’s Jews had been subject to religious antisemitism since the third century Bce. even though their emancipation in the 1800s ensured their civil equality, european Jewry remained beset by antisemitism and social discrimination.

By 1945, most of europe would be conquered, occupied, or annexed by Nazi Germany and its Axis partners, and the majority of european Jews — two out of every three — would be dead, victims of a systematic genocide carried out by the Nazi state and its allies and collaborators.

Life Before the war

eastern european Jews lived separate lives as a minority within the culture of the majority. Many lived in shtetls (Jewish towns); others lived in larger urban centres. In Lithuania and Poland, a vibrant Jewish culture flourished with its own language (Yiddish), literature and traditions. In contrast to the eastern european Jews, the Jews in Western europe made up much less of the population and tended to adopt the culture of their non-Jewish neighbours. Some Jews were religious, some spoke Yiddish, others only the language of their native land.

common to all was the value and importance placed on the role of children within Jewish family life.

Jews could be found in all walks of life, as farmers, tailors, seamstresses, factory hands, accountants, doctors, teachers, and small-business owners. Some achieved success as scholars, politicians, artists and scientists. Some families were wealthy; many more were poor. Many children ended their schooling early to work in a craft or trade; others looked forward to continuing their education at the university level.

Still, whatever their differences, they were the same in one respect: by the 1930s, with the rise of the Nazis in Germany, all children became potential victims, and their lives were forever changed.

ernest and Thea Dannenberg at home, Berlin, 1921. The Dannenbergs were the aunt and uncle of Irene Kirstein Watts who, at the age of seven, was one of the 10,000 children who escaped Germany by being sent to Great Britain as part of the Kindertransport. Courtesy the Irene Kirstein Watts Collection – VHEC Archives.

Regina Feldman’s (née Bulwik) kindergarten class (front row, far right). Bendzin Poland, 1937. Courtesy the Regina Feldman Collection – VHEC Archives.

Pre-war portrait of Leslie Spiro with father Adolf, mother Helen and sister Katalin, 1929. Courtesy the Leslie Spiro Collection – VHEC Archives.

“As the baby in my family, I was very pampered and felt that everything revolved around me. My only regret is that I don’t have any pictures of my family. I am always envious of people who have pictures of their parents.” – Robbie Waisman

as “Aryans” and members of the “master

race.” Jews, along with Roma and Sinti, and Africans, were classified as an “inferior” race and declared enemies of the German state. Nazi racial ideology viewed history as a struggle between races. This resulted in some races being destined to dominate, whereas other groups faced enslavement or annihilation.

The Nazis’ first coordinated anti-Jewish action was a boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933. This action signalled a first step in the removal of Jews from the cultural and commercial life of Germany. The April 7, 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional civil Service excluded Jews and political opponents from university and government positions.

The 1935 Nuremberg Laws excluded Jews from Reich citizenship and placed further restrictions on Jewish civil and economic rights. contact between Jews and Aryans was restricted and Jews were the object of a torrent of racist propaganda in

Life Began to Change

The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and annihilation of more than six million Jews as a central act of state by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.

After assuming power in 1933, the Nazis created a Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community) based on race. Hitler’s racial laws reversed decades of Jewish emancipation and integration in Germany. Nazi racial ideology considered Germans and those of northern european descent

An SA picket stands in front of the Jewish-owned Tietz department store wearing a boycott sign that reads: “Germans defend yourselves; don’t buy from Jews!” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #11300. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park.

Germans pass by the broken shop window of a Jewish-owned business destroyed during the Kristallnacht pogroms, Berlin, November 10, 1938. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #86838. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park.

the Nazi-controlled media.Kristallnacht, “the Night of Broken Glass,” was a defining moment in the history of the Holocaust. On November 9, 1938, Jewish synagogues, stores and homes in Germany and Austria were looted and destroyed. Jews were murdered and thousands deported to concentration camps. This marked a new level of ferocity in the Nazis antisemitic policies.

The Holocaust did not only destroy the lives of individuals; it extinguished communities and a rich cultural life that has never been recreated.

“In 1940 our area became part of Hungary. It was at this time that we began to notice antisemitism. Refugees from Poland and Germany streamed into Hungary, telling local Jews what had happened to them. For us there were quotas on high school attendance, beatings in the streets, and people were told to boycott Jewish shops. Since I could no longer attend school, I began training as a furniture maker. I remember beginning to have the sense of being hunted.” – David Ehrlich

CLosed doors

Jews that could, tried desperately to emigrate from pre-war Nazi Germany. The lack of resources and restrictive immigration policies in most countries were barriers to emigration and all hopes of leaving Germany ended with the outbreak of war in 1939. The Jews of europe, residing in the Third Reich and occupied territories, were driven into hiding, ghettos and concentration camps.

To survive in hiding, children had to assume other identities — changing their names and passing as non-Jews. Separated from their families, frightened and alone, they lived in constant danger of discovery. Attempts by Jews to flee Nazi Germany by immigrating to canada were obstructed by canada’s severely restrictive race-based immigration

Myron Taylor addresses the International conference on Refugees at Évian-les-Bains, France, July 1938. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #87868. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park.

Passengers crowd the deck of the SS St. Louis, June 1939. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #88369. Courtesy of Herbert & Vera Karliner. © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

policies, developed and enforced by the Director of canada’s Immigration Branch, Frederick charles Blair.

In 1938 canada reluctantly attended the evian conference convened by American President Roosevelt to

discuss the issue of Jewish refugees. canada, along with the 31 other countries at evian, refused to accept any further refugees. In May 1939, following the example of cuba and the United States, canada refused entry to the 937 Jewish refugees aboard the SS St. Louis, forcing the ship to return to Nazi europe.

canada held the worst record of receiving refugees of any large non-european country, allowing fewer than 5,000 Jews entry between 1933 to 1939. Of the 65,000 refugees that canada admitted from 1945 to 1948, only 8,000 were Jews. Blair’s rigorous enforcement of antisemitic immigration policies sealed the fate of thousands of european Jews who would have escaped death had canada not turned them away.

from PerseCution to genoCide

The German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 resulted in an additional two million Jews under Nazi occupation. The Nazis’ expansionist ideals of gaining additional Lebensraum (living space) in order to settle Germans living beyond the Reich’s borders, was the catalyst for the invasion of Poland. The Nazis did not have a clear plan for these additional “Polish Jewish racial enemies.”

As european countries came under German occupation during the Second World War, the Nazis and their collaborators tried to find a solution to the Judenfrage “Jewish Question.”

An aerial reconnaissance photograph of the Auschwitz concentration camp showing Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau), Poland, June 26, 1944United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #91530. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park.

A page from the Protocols of the Wannsee conference that lists the number of Jews targeted in the plan for the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question.” The number was estimated at 11 million. Political Archives of the Foreign Office, Berlin, R100857.

this Judenfrage referred to the sense that the existence of Jews in Germany posed a problem for the state.

The first ghettos were established in late 1939 and many Jews died of disease and starvation in the ghettos of the Generalgouvernement,an area, formerly in Poland, established as a Jewish reserve. In June 1941, Germany invaded Russia and the invasion marked the start of the large-scale murder of Jews. Within six months, more than one million Jews were killed by Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units). Most of these victims were shot and buried in mass graves.

In January 1942, Nazi officials met in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to coordinate the next stage of the Holocaust. The genocide was to be expedited by deporting Jews to one of six extermination centres, wherethey would be murdered in gas chambers by carbon monoxide and a commercial pesticide, Zyklon B. Half of the six million victims of the Holocaust perished in the six death camps: chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec and Auschwitz-Birkenau. One-and-a-half million of the six million victims of the Holocaust were children.

When the Second World War began in September 1939, there were approximately 1.6 million Jewish children living in the territories that the German armies or their allies would occupy. When the war in europe ended in May 1945, more than 1.5 million Jewish children were dead, targeted victims in the Nazis’ program of genocide.

The Holocaust dealt a mortal blow to european Jewish families and to Jewish life in general. Jewish families were torn apart and childhood became a time of fear and a struggle for survival. children suffered fear, separation, disease, starvation and death.

The Nazis considered every Jewish child unworthy of life simply because he or she was Jewish, based on a belief in the biological and thus absolute inferiority of those groups. They murdered Jewish children with the intention of creating a biologically pure “Aryan” race. The chances for survival for adolescents between 13 and 18 years of age were greater, as they could be deployed as forced labor. Pre-adolescents were too young to be of use for forced labor and so were often killed when they arrived at a death camp. Starvation and exposure killed many other children. Only 6 – 11% of europe’s prewar Jewish population of children survived as compared with 33% of the adults.

Jewish famiLies torn aPart

child survivors walk out of the children’s barracks in Auschwitz, 1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #70262. Courtesy of Lydia Chagoll.

“Even in the most barbaric times, a human spark glowed in the rudest heart, and children were spared. But the Hitlerian beast is quite different. It would devour the dearest of us, those who arouse the greatest compassion — our innocent children.” – Emanuel Ringelblum, chronicler of the Warsaw Ghetto, 1942

LiBeration & reaLization of Loss

At liberation in 1945, the few children who had survived the Holocaust emerged from concentration camps and places of hiding. Many found themselves orphaned. Most who had survived the camps were adolescents and the majority of them were boys. For the most part, only those who were older and strong enough to work had been able to endure the hardships in the camps. Liberation signified their release from captivity.

One of the young survivors of Buchenwald writes in German “Where are our parents?” on the side of a train prior to the departure of the children’s transport from Buchenwald for France. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #44251. Courtesy of Willy Fogel. © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Liberation was also a time during which survivors were confronted with the enormity of what had happened and the extent of their losses.

At the end of the war, a primary motivation of surviving children was to find their families. An answering shout from someone on a truck such as “I saw her in Budapest” would send a penniless 12-year-old on a journey of hundreds of miles. The lucky ones found a parent or a relative alive. Most did not. With nowhere else to go the children drifted back to orphanages and Displaced Persons camps.

“I stayed in Bistrita for about six months, hoping that someone else from our family would return. My parents, my brothers Leibel, who might have become a rabbi, and Moishe, who had apprenticed as a shoemaker, had all perished.” – David Ehrlich

“I wanted to find the rest of my family and I wanted to show off to them because they didn’t believe, they were always concerned about me and worried. How is the baby going to survive? How’s he going to make it? So I was going to show off, show them. Look, I made it. But that pleasure was never mine.” – Robbie Waisman

where Can we go?

At the war’s end, there were 250,000 displaced Jewish refugees in europe, among them approximately 4,000 war orphans. Many feared that these children were too damaged to ever live normal lives. Most had no homes to return to and there were few countries willing to admit them.

Despite the refugee crisis, Western nations were slow to change their restrictive wartime immigration policies. canada’s policies reflected an earlier agricultural vision of canada and were used as a way of keeping out undesirable or “unassimilable racial groups” of immigrants. During the war, the canadian Jewish community had tried, with little success, to convince the canadian government to admit Jewish refugees. After the war, canada was one of the first countries to cautiously open its doors. Between 1945-1948 only canada, Australia, england, Palestine and the United States admitted refugee children. In 1947 the canadian government issued the Order in council #1647 granting permission for 1,000 Jewish war orphans to enter canada.

Sinaida Grussman holds a name card intended to help any of her surviving family members locate her at the Kloster Indersdorf DP camp. This photograph was published in newspapers to facilitate reuniting the family. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #86785. Courtesy of Lilo, Jack and Micha Plaschkes. © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“People were shouting that we were free. I didn’t know what freedom meant. Where do you go, what do you do, who will take you? I was thirteen years old.” – Regina Feldman

FINDING THe cHILDReN How does one find the thousands of children lost in the chaos and reunite them with their families? Teams from the Red cross and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency combed europe looking for “unaccompanied” children. Great efforts were made to reunite family members. Relief organizations cooperated to gather and distribute names of refugees in the various Displaced Persons camps and orphanages. Some family members were reunited through these posted lists or by word of mouth.

children were photographed holding signs with their names painted on them. These photographs were circulated throughout europe on the chance that they would reach someone, anyone, who might know the fates of the children’s families.

dP CamPs & orPhanages

Jews found themselves displaced along with millions of other non-Jews in the post-war chaos of europe. Displaced Persons (DP) camps were established in Germany, France, Italy and Belgium, often on the sites of former labour or concentration camps. Initially, many displaced Jews were housed behind barbed wires, guarded and exposed to humiliating treatment. Nutrition, sanitary conditions and accommodations were poor. In cities they were sometimes lodged in requisitioned houses or public buildings.

At first, the basic necessities of food, clothing and medical supplies were provided by the Allied Forces and the united nations rehabilitation and Relief Administration (UNRRA). By the fall of 1945, the relief effort was taken over by Jewish welfare organizations. The American Joint Distribution committee (JDc) provided emergency aid and ran childcare centres, hospitals and trade schools.

Peterswald children’s Home, circa 1945. established by the Jewish committee of Lower Silesia for children orphaned by the Holocaust, the orphanage was called a “children’s home” in an effort to make seem as welcoming as possible. Courtesy the Shia Moser Collection – VHEC Archives.

Harry Weinsaft of the American Jewish Joint Distribution committee distributes Red cross packages to Jewish DPs in vienna, Austria, 1945-46. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #46501. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park.

Young people outside of Aglasterhausen children’s centre, Germany, 1947. Courtesy the Regina Feldman Collection – VHEC Archives.

“In Feldafing Displaced Person’s camp we stayed in large spacious barracks and had ample food. We could never get enough of it.” – David Ehrlich

heLPing agenCies

the united nations rehabilitation and Relief Agency (UNRRA) conducted the greatest relief operation in history, a unique experiment in international cooperation. It played a central role in providing care for young people and established the only international children’s centre, Kloster Indersdorf, ten kilometers from the former Dachau concentration camp.

The Society for Rehabilitation and Training, known as ORT, ran schools and provided training programs wherever refugees were assembled across europe.

A class conducted for the older children at Kloster Indersdorf, Germany, November 1945. The children’s centre was established by the UNRRA in a former convent to house displaced children. United Nation Archives S-1058-0001-01-00170.

The (American Jewish) Joint Distribution committee was another major agency providing emergency aid to Jewish refugees. The JDc ran child care centres, hospitals and trade schools in the Displaced Persons camps.

Within many DP camps, Zionist organizations and kibbutzim were formed. Refugees learned Hebrew and the farming skills they would need in Palestine. Despite the dangers of the British blockade, the majority of orphaned youth registered to go to Palestine.

children leaving a transit centre en route to Kloster Indersdorf children’s centre, May 1946. United Nation Archives 5884.

children being fitted with new clothing at at Kloster Indersdorf, Germany, November, 1945. United Nation Archives S-1058-0001-01-223.

“We were everything to those children. But beyond everything — mother, father, doctor, nurse and teacher — we knew that a vital part of our work was to help the children talk about what had happened to them. Millions of unrepeatable stories of pain and suffering that the mind could not comprehend — we knew that these stories had to come out. We also felt a strong responsibility to history and recorded as many of the children’s stories as possible. In order to do this, we had to function with just the right amalgam of bravery and numbness. To cry with the children would not have helped them.” – Greta Fischer, UNRRA Worker

Jewish immigrants on board the General S.D. Sturgis, Halifax, Nova Scotia, February 6, 1948. Formerly a military ship, the General Sturgis was later used after the war to transport refugees from europe. The canadian Jewish congress and the Jewish Immigration Aid Services of canada facilitated the immigration of these individuals from Displaced Persons camps.Ontario Jewish Archives #628.

As Holocaust orphans embarked on the ships that would take them to canada, they took with them small suitcases containing a few personal items acquired in the DP camps. Most had identity cards or travel documents that had been issued to them after liberation. A lucky few had family photographs that had been retrieved after the war.

To qualify for the War Orphans Project the young people had to prove that they were under the age of eighteen. However, as the orphans waited for immigration approval many turned eighteen and became ineligible for the project. In desperation, some of these young people claimed to be younger than they were in order to qualify

for the program. Attempts by canadian Jewish congress to have some of the orphans’ older brothers and sisters included in the project were rejected.

The war orphans were subjected to a screening process that took two to six months. They were observed and given medical examinations. To be granted a visa, they had to express a desire to come to canada and demonstrate “the ability to adjust.” Sometimes immigration officials excluded children who wore glasses or could not read. Most of the orphans came in small groups, accompanied by a member of the canadian Jewish congress. Although the canadian Privy council Order of 1947 had given permission for 1,000 orphans, in the end 1,123 were admitted.

JourneY to Canada

weLCome to Canada

War orphans’ arrival in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Courtesy Mariette Doduck.

cover of the Congress Bulletin, Montreal, 1947. By September of 1947, two groups of war orphans had already arrived in canada. With more en route, organizing committees feared that a shortage of Jewish foster families could jeopardize the entire project. Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives (Formerly Canadian Jewish Congress CC National Archives)

Between 1947 and 1949, 1,123 Jewish orphans came to canada. The orphans came from 15 different european countries, 783 from concentration camps and 229 from hiding. Socially they were a diverse group. Some were from farming families, a large number from comfortable middle-class homes. There was little time to do a full assessment and carefully match children with prospective families.

Most entered the country through Pier 21 in Halifax. All groups were met by members of the Halifax Jewish community and representatives of the canadian Jewish congress. After a short stay in Halifax, the children boarded trains for communities across the country. Thirty-eight communities across canada received these refugee children.

“We both looked at a map of Canada and said, “Winnipeg is a good choice because it is geographically in the middle.” As we travelled by train I began to realize just how huge Canada was — this was a revelation.” - David Ehrlich

War orphans with Joe Kage (at left), Assistant to the National executive Director of the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society of canada, at the door of the Herzl Dispensary, Montreal, circa 1948.Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives (Formerly Canadian Jewish Congress CC National Archives)

expectations sometimes resulted in a change of living arrangements. Most host families provided a secure base from which the orphans could forge new lives. Many orphans and their host families formed lifelong attachments. Wherever the young refugees settled, they knew they could rely on help from the Jewish community. Social workers, like Mrs. Jean Rose in vancouver, went beyond their professional roles and became surrogate parents to the orphans.

BeComing Canadian

Prior to their arrival, the canadian government required that the Jewish community be responsible for these children. Jewish communities responded with open hearts. The community saw the arrival of these young people as a renewal, the first tangible result of many years of effort. The commitment to look after these children was a heavy burden for the small Jewish community of 1947.The orphans expected to find homes with Jewish families, continue their education and find work. Many families expected to receive young children, but the majority who arrived were older adolescent boys. Only 37 of the 1,123 were under age ten.

The relationship between host families and the young people was not always an easy one. Differing

“I ran away twelve times in the first year and each time Mr. Satanov found me he would say; ‘You’re mine and you’ll always be mine.’ ... I marvel at how the Satanov’s put up with me.” – Mariette Doduck

“When my twin sister and I arrived in Vancouver, we were separated and sent to live in different homes.”– Bill Gluck

War orphans group at a baseball game, Winnipeg, 1948. Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives (Formerly Canadian Jewish Congress CC National Archives).

War orphans attending evening school classes sponsored by the canadian Jewish congress, Montreal, circa 1948.Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives (Formerly Canadian Jewish Congress CC National Archives).

new LiVes

In the 1950’s, psychiatrists and psychologists often viewed survivors as traumatized people who were expected to have difficulties adjusting. At first some of the young survivors demonstrated unusual behaviours such as hoarding food. They required time to unlearn these behaviours that they had adopted to cope with their environments during the war. Despite their appalling early experiences, there was an almost complete lack of juvenile delinquency or crime within this group of refugees.

The orphans often cite the security and love of their early pre-war lives as the basis for their inner-strength, their ability to cope and build new lives. In the end these orphans displayed a resiliency and an ability to adapt that was remarkable.

Familiar with several european languages, they learned english quickly and many continued their education or found jobs and achieved independence. At first some of the orphans felt excluded

by canadian young people of their own age. Many formed close-knit groups among themselves, helping one another, socializing and often marrying one another. The impetus to create families and homes of their own was part of a fundamental need to replace what had been destroyed during the war. Most married, had children and later grandchildren. Many became not only productive members of the community but also its pillars.

War orphans together on a Sunday afternoon get-together outside the Peretz School, calgary, circa 1950. Courtesy Robbie Waisman.

Letter from the Honourable Jack Pickersgill, the Minister of citizenship and Immigration to Robbie Waisman, congratulating him on his canadian citizenship, October 7, 1954. Courtesy Robbie Waisman.

LEGACIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

Bosnian Refugees fleeing across the Sava River, August, 1995. © UNHCR/R.LeMoyne.

The search for refuge frames the years before the Holocaust and its aftermath. The unprecedented nature of Nazi crimes transformed understandings of mass violence, and at the end of the Second World War steps were taken on an international scale to prevent future atrocities like the Holocaust. The concept of “crimes against humanity” (widespread or systematic attacks against civilians), along with the understanding that the international community has a moral obligation to fight such crimes, was reflected in the decision to prosecute the leading perpetrators of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials in 1945-46. In 1948, the United Nations (UN) adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to enshrine the “lessons” of the Holocaust. Also in 1948, and in no small part due to the tireless efforts of Holocaust survivor and lawyer Raphael Lemkin, the UN adopted the convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of Genocide. This convention established genocide as an international crime characterized by the “intent to destroy,” in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, and required signatory nations “undertake to prevent and punish” such actions.

Other post-war legacies include the 1951 UN Refugee convention, which established definitions and international responsibilities relating to refugees that are still in effect today. According to Immigration, Refugees and citizenship canada, “refugees are people who have been forced to leave their country and who are afraid to return because of war, violence or persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.” This definition is complex and ever shifting, influenced by political change, public perception and history. While the international efforts and values of the post-war UN Declarations and conventions remain, “never again” has become “again and again” since the Holocaust, as seen in cambodia (1975-1979), the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995) and Rwanda (1994). The continuation of genocide, crimes against humanity, and the displacement of persons that result from such violence, present challenges that nations and individuals continue to face.

sudanMali

soutH sudan

YeMen

IRAQ

eTHIOPIA

soMalia

BANGLADeSHeGYPT

central AFRIcAN RePUBLIc

NIGeRIA

MYanMar

deMocratic RePUBLIc

OF THe cONGO

AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

COUNTRIES AT RISk OF GENOCIdE TOdAY

“That which has happened is a warning. To forget it is guilt. It must be continually remembered. It was possible for this to happen, and it remains possible for it to happen again at any minute. Only in knowledge can it be prevented.” – Karl Jaspers

Studies of past atrocities show that we can detect early warning signs of genocide and if policy makers act on those warnings and develop preventive strategies, we can save lives.

Initiatives such as the early Warning Project use a wide range of data to identify countries at risk of new mass atrocities. The statistical component of their model focuses solely on cases of state-led violence, meaning a state acting against its own people.

How can you take action against genocide?• Learn about places at risk of genocide or crimes

against humanity.• contact the media with feedback on their coverage

and advocate for better reporting.• communicate with decision-makers about the need

to provide humanitarian assistance, protect civilians and promote solutions to crises.

• engage with your community and share knowledge with classmates, family, colleagues and members of organizations you belong to.

• Research and support education and relief efforts.

LOWeST R ISK H IGHeST R ISK

Darfur refugee camp, chad, 2005. © Mark Knobil. | World map of the countries currently projected as currently having the highest risk of genocide, as projected by the early Warning Project. © the Trustees of Dartmouth College.

All rights reserved. Early Warning Project, Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.

Myanmar 13.2% | Nigera 12.3% | Sudan 8.5%

egypt 5.4% | central African Republic 5.3%

South Sudan 4.5% | Democratic Republic of the congo 4.2% | Afghanistan 4.0% | Pakistan 3.9%

Yemen 3.7% | Somalia 3.2% | ethiopia 3.0% | Bangladesh 2.8% | Iraq 2.7%

In 1948, chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first President: “The world seemed to be divided into two parts — those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter.” Today, millions of refugees face the same division: places where they cannot live — and places where they cannot enter. The stories of Holocaust war orphans who came to canada prompt us to reflect on the kind of world we, as canadian and global citizens, want to create today and in the future.

OpEN HEARTS – OpEN dOORS: REFLECTIONS

Young Syrian refugees walking through an informal settlement near Zahle, Lebanon, January 22, 2016. © UNHCR/Sam Tarling.

“To Canadian young people, I ask that you be understanding and open to newcomers. Extend your hand, put your welcome into words. Acceptance doesn’t happen by yourself.” – Celina Lieberman

“I think this is the greatest country in the world. I think young people should keep an open mind when they see and meet newcomers to this country. Each one of us possesses wonderful qualities, regardless of our colour or religion.” – Robbie Waisman

“I think that if children could visit different temples, churches and synagogues, they would see that all people are the same. That is what I taught my children and my grandchildren.”– Mariette Doduck

Holocaust survivor and War Orphan, Robbie Waisman speaking during the “Reconciling Injustices in a Pluralistic canada” community dialogue. Courtesy Simon Fraser University Centre for Dialogue.

Holocaust survivor and War Orphan, Mariette Doduck speaking to students at York House School, vancouver, 2014. Courtesy York House School.