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International Day of Holocaust Commemoration
January 16, 2012
Montreal, January 16, 2012 - On Thursday, January 26th, the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, in partnership with the National Theatre School of Canada (NTS), will highlight International Day of Commemoration for victims of the Holocaust. Starting at 6:30 pm, volunteer museum guides will present the story of 10 objects and their owners at the Museum. During this exceptional guided tour, visitors will be able to touch and handle certain artefacts. Those interested in participating must make a reservation.
Francis Richard, graduate of the NTS, staged Memory at Your Fingertips, a guided tour during which the public will have a unique opportunity to see original objects that are not exhibited in the museum, as well as reproductions made especially for visitors to handle. The Centre invites the public to honour the memory of the victims of the Holocaust by discovering the history of their personal artefacts, from a Hanukah candle to a column from a synagogue, destroyed after the Warsaw ghetto uprising
The 10 artefacts have been selected from the collection of the MHMC comprising over 8,000 items, documents and photographs. This is the largest collection of objects related to the Holocaust in Canada. The objects tell a great deal about the history of the Holocaust, Jewish life before the genocide and the resilience of survivors. They are of great importance and value not only from the point of view of memory and remembrance but also from an educational perspective. They have all been donated to the MHMC by survivors or their families, and people who were close to survivors of Nazi persecution who immigrated to Canada after the war. Thanks to them, the Centre can develop tools to sensitize the public and combat antisemitism, racism and intolerance.
January 27th became the International Day of Commemoration for victims of the Holocaust in 2005. On January 27, 1945 the soviet army entered Auschwitz, Birkenau and Monowitz and liberated some 7,000 prisoners. About 1.3 million people went through this sadly infamous camp, the symbol of the Nazi concentration camp system, between 1940 and 1945. 1.1 million were murdered here, of whom 1 million were Jewish. One million people were murdered in Auschwitz, in a concerted effort aiming for the annihilation of the Jews of Europe. In total, over 6 million people were killed for one simple reason: that they were Jewish - this is what we call the Holocaust.
The NTS has cooperated with the MHMC for the past three years. Established in Montreal in 1960, the National Theatre School of Canada is one of the few schools in the world offering professional training, in English and French, in a setting that unites all the theatre arts: acting, playwriting, directing, set and costume design, and production. The Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, which educates people of all ages and backgrounds about the Holocaust, while sensitizing the public to the universal perils of antisemitism, racism, hate and indifference, is thankful to be able to count on the talents of the graduates of the NTS on this occasion.
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If you would like to know more about the objects that will be presented during the guided tour or meet a Holocaust survivor or any other person involved in this project, please contact Audrey Licop, Events and Communication Coordinator at 514-345-2605, ext.3026 or 514-892-2605 (cell.) or at audrey.licop@mhmc.ca.
