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Religion and FaithThe Jewish faith centres around belief in, and

service to, a single all-knowing and forgiving God.

As a people, Jews have a sacred agreement with

God, called a covenant: in exchange for God’s

continued help and support, Jews promise to

follow God’s laws and to bring the spirit and

practice of those laws into all aspects of their lives.

Jews across pre-war Europe chose numerous and

varied ways to apply their beliefs to their lives. For some,

Jewish identity was tied less to religious observances

than to a sense of connection with thriving Jewish

artistic and literary cultures. For many others, religious

faith and ritual were part of most aspects of daily family

life and shaped the rhythm of their weeks and years;

observing the Jewish Sabbath on Fridays, marking the

Holy Days, and keeping the dietary (kosher) guidelines

established in the Jewish holy texts were part of a

covenant with God.

In eastern Europe in particular, it was common to find

communities in which religious Judaism was part of the

fabric of everyday life for the great majority of residents.

Life that Was

Jews have lived in Europe for more than 2,000

years. Prior to the Holocaust, Jewish life in Europe

was characterized by the abundance and diversity

of Jewish communities. Throughout Europe,

factors that helped to shape one’s experience as a

Jew—religious thought, language, state-instituted

freedoms and restrictions—varied over time.

By the 19th century, Jews in western European countries

began to integrate more fully into the main cultures.

Some married non-Jews, and many spoke the national

language as their mother tongue. A religiously liberal

form of Judaism developed and grew in popularity.

A similar process began to occur in eastern Europe in

the early 1900s. There, however, it remained common

for Jews outside the urban centres to live in smaller

towns composed almost entirely of Jews, called

shtetlekh, where Yiddish was primarily spoken.

Likewise, in southern Europe, Ladino, a Jewish language

with roots in Old Spanish, remained common into the

20th century.

Across these different regions, Jews, though always a

minority, were vital participants in social, cultural and

economic spheres of European life. In spite of

exclusionary, antisemitic attitudes and regulations,

Jewish life in Europe was vibrant due to the work of

Jews in wide-ranging professions and locations.

Antisemitism—the hatred of Jews—existed in

Europe long before the Nazis’ rise to power. Prior

to the 19th century, religious antisemitism was

fueled by the false beliefs that Jews were

responsible for the death of Christ and that Jews

required the blood of Christian children for ritual

use, among other superstitions. Such allegations

frequently led to outbreaks of violence against

Jews, called pogroms, and expulsion.

During the 19th century, pseudo-scientific theories

about race, biology and religion produced a new racial

antisemitism which emerged alongside the spread of

nationalism across Europe to reinforce the belief that

Jews were a foreign group.

When the National Socialist German Workers’

Party—the Nazis—came to power in the 1930s, its

leaders harnessed the language of racial and political

antisemitism to cast Jews as an “inferior” racial group

that was “alien” to the German nation. The Nazis sought

public support by blaming Germany’s loss of the First

World War, and subsequent economic crisis, upon the

betrayal of the German nation by its internal enemies—

the Jews. Galvanizing the antisemitism of centuries

prior, the Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany’s

hardships. Within a decade, the Nazis took this

antisemitism they had started to genocidal ends.

The Longest Hatred

The Longest Hatred

The Rise of NazismThe Nazi Party began in 1920 as a far-right fringe

party in Germany. The Nazis’ promise of a strong,

expansionist Germany became attractive to a

German population oppressed by the Treaty of

Versailles, the economic, social and political turmoil

in 1920s Germany, and the Great Depression.

By 1932, the Nazis were elected to more seats than any

other party in the German Reichstag and assumed

power legitimately with the appointment of Adolf Hitler

as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. The “Enabling

Act” of March 1933, gave Hitler complete control of the

Reichstag, ending democracy in pre-war Germany.

Within a year, Hitler outlawed all other political parties to

solidify his position as dictator.

For German Jews, this meant escalating persecution and

exclusion. Between 1933 and 1939, Jews were barred from

German civic life through a series of laws that stripped

Jews of their citizenship, excluded them from economic,

professional, and social life and segregated them in

neighbourhoods apart from other Germans. Even before

the violent, nation-wide Kristallnacht pogrom of 9-10

November 1938—and the first mass deportations of

German Jews to concentration camps—the Nazis had

created a German society in which the isolation and

persecution of Jews was firmly entrenched.

Manipulating the MassesThe systematic use of antisemitic and

ultra-nationalist propaganda by the Nazis was

essential to acquiring and maintaining power.

State-sponsored propaganda was used to promote

the myth of a “German national community” and to

identify groups for exclusion from that community,

such as Jews, Roma, homosexuals and the disabled.

Designed to incite hatred and justify measures against

these “outsiders”, Nazi propaganda was disseminated

throughout every aspect of German life in contexts as

various as school curricula, art exhibitions, films of

pro-Nazi rallies, and radio addresses from leading Nazis.

In all these contexts, propaganda preyed on people’s fears

of German social and economic decline and exploited

their desire for national pride by promoting a sharp divide

between “us”—people the Nazis considered part of a

“pure” northern European “Aryan” race—and “them”—

people they considered “non-Aryans” such as Jews. By

the time of the first mass killings of Jews in 1941,

propaganda had been employed for years to persuade the

German public that these “outsiders” were “inferior,” a

“danger to national culture,” and ultimately “undesirable”

and “unworthy of life.”

The Nazis spread their propaganda in each country they

invaded, where it was often aided by pre-existing

antisemitism and racism.

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E≠orts to LeaveBy the mid-1930s, Jews in Nazi Germany faced an

increasingly hostile political, social, and economic

situation. In response, some sought to leave the

country but found their options for emigration

limited.

Although Jewish emigration from Germany was

encouraged before the Second World War, taxes and

other regulations imposed by the Nazi government

made it difficult for Jews to leave. Many were reluctant

to leave older relatives behind and hoped, instead, that

the threat posed by Nazism would pass as antisemitic

movements had done in previous generations.

The restrictive, often racially or ethnically-based

immigration policies of immigrant-receiving countries,

including Canada, posed a critical barrier to Jews fleeing

Germany. As the head of the World Zionist Organization

at the time summarized: “The world seemed to be

divided into two parts—those places where Jews could

not live and those where they could not enter.” 1

International Jewish organizations assisted some

European Jews to reach Palestine, China, the United

Kingdom, and North and South America. Between 1938

and 1940, approximately 7,500 Jewish children fled to

Great Britain in the Kindertransport rescue operation.

Many German Jews fled to countries in western Europe,

only to fall again under Nazi rule within a few short years.

1 Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Manchester Guardian, 23 May 1936.

Without rescuers and helpers, few Jews could have

escaped Nazi-occupied Europe or survived in

hiding. After the outbreak of war, Jews fleeing

Europe required real or forged documentation to

facilitate their escape and entry into one of the few

countries that accepted refugees. Those who

sought to survive within Europe were desperate for

places to hide and for helpers willing to risk their

lives to sustain Jews in hiding.

Diplomats and religious institutions could often exploit

the independence granted to them by the Nazi

occupiers to shelter Jews in their embassies, safehouses,

convents and orphanages, or to issue visas permitting

passage out of Nazi-occupied countries. Assistance also

came from individual citizens acting independently or in

organized resistance groups to provide hiding places,

rescue networks, food, medicine and forged identities.

Helpers came from diverse religious, social, educational,

and economic backgrounds. They were motivated by

moral, religious or political beliefs to help both

neighbours and strangers in peril. Despite the personal

danger, helpers were active in every European country,

including Nazi-occupied eastern Europe where the

punishment for assisting Jews was death for helpers and

often their families. Rescuers, however, were relatively

few, representing only a small fraction of the total

population in Nazi-occupied countries.

Help and Rescue

Stripped of their citizenship and forbidden to exist

in their communities, Jews unable to escape the

Nazi regime through emigration could only avoid

deportation to ghettos and camps by going into

hiding.

Jews in hiding were at constant risk of discovery, arrest

and death. Many had to remain physically concealed in

silence and in cramped hiding places that ranged from

attics, to hay bales, to underground cellars. Others

assumed false identities in attempt to pass as Christians.

In rural regions, particularly the forests of eastern

Europe, some Jews fled to remote areas and survived

with other escapees as part of resistance groups.

Some families managed to hide together. Others were

forced to split up, entrusting their children to non-Jews

willing to risk the dangers of concealing a Jewish child in

their homes, either in exchange for payment or out of

moral conviction. Communication between Jews in

hiding was dangerous, and hidden Jews often moved

locations to avoid detection. Thus, it was difficult for

family members to remain in touch with their children

and each other while in hiding. Fear, boredom, abuse,

hunger and the emotional distress of separation from

family were just some of the challenges faced by hidden

Jews.

Life in Hiding

Identity and BelongingJews who managed to flee the Nazi regime were

forced to leave behind their possessions,

communities, and families to face the difficult task

of building new lives in foreign countries. For the

children sent alone to safety in England and

elsewhere, retaining a sense of their pre-war

identities was particularly challenging.

In Nazi-occupied Europe, many Jewish children who

survived the Holocaust did so by hiding in Christian

homes, convents and schools and by assuming Christian

identities as cover. These identities were often

reinforced through baptism. Although false identities

were essential to protect hidden children from the

Nazis, they created complex questions of identity for

children who had been assigned multiple names,

families, and religions in their young lives.

For many hidden children, the end of the Second World

War did not bring an end to their trauma. Reunions with

parents were often joyous, but also difficult. Many child

survivors were too young to remember their families

and struggled to recover a sense of comfort with their

pre-war Jewish identities. For children whose families

did not survive, there was little to help them regain their

connection with Jewish culture and faith. Long after the

war, many survivors still grappled with questions of

identity and belonging.

Imprisoned in GhettosWhen the Nazis invaded Poland in the fall of 1939,

they reinstated a practice dating back to the Middle

Ages of creating confined areas, called ghettos,

where Jews were forced to live. The establishment

of ghettos became a key step in the isolation and

persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust.

Removed from their homes, Jews were forced into

cramped accommodation in ghettos, often created in

the poorest area of a city. Most ghettos were then

sealed off from the rest of the city by walls and barbed

wire. Access to food, sanitation and medical supplies

was severely limited within the ghettos and contact with

outside assistance was cut off. Death from starvation

and illness was common and Jewish councils, appointed

by the Nazis to administer the ghettos, could do little to

reduce the suffering except ration scarce resources.

In response, physical resistance by Jews developed in

ghettos throughout Europe, the most famous being the

armed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Despite the

desperate conditions, Jews also strove to ensure that

educational, religious, and cultural life continued in the

ghettos by establishing underground schools, hospitals

and orphanages and by documenting Jewish life in

records preserved in secret ghetto archives.

Imprisoned in Ghettos

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Imprisoned in Ghettos

The Holocaustby Bullets In 1941, the Nazis invaded areas of eastern Europe

that had been occupied by Soviet forces earlier in

the Second World War. As the German military

moved into the newly-conquered territory, so did

specialized SS “mobile killing squads,” called the

Einsatzgruppen, and German paramilitary police

forces, called the Order Police.

Starting in the summer of 1941, the Einsatzgruppen, the

Order Police, and local collaborators perpetrated what

has become known as the “Holocaust by Bullets.” In

contrast to the killing centres that were later

established by the Nazis, Jews in the easternmost

stretches of Nazi-occupied Europe were killed in mass

shootings. Entire Jewish populations of towns across

the Eastern Front were gathered together in town

squares or main buildings, marched to areas close by

and shot over the course of hours or days into pits

which served as mass graves.

Approximately 1.5 million eastern European Jews were

killed in this way, and the vibrant Jewish communities

that had been so prevalent in the region for centuries

were almost entirely wiped out.

In the years that followed, the Nazis turned to gassing as

the primary method of mass killing because shooting

victims at close-range was too traumatizing for the men

tasked with the executions.

Nazi Camps

The Nazis established concentration camps in

Germany as early as 1933. In a network of camps

that grew over the years that followed, the Nazis

detained political opponents such as communists

and socialists, Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s

Witnesses, and others they deemed to be threats.

Insufficient food, overcrowding, and lack of

sanitation in the concentration camps led to

disease and death.

By 1934, the Nazis began to use camp prisoners for

forced labour. Labourers were tasked with backbreaking

work often designed to injure and humiliate them.

In December 1941, the Nazis opened Chelmno death

camp in Poland, the first of their killing centres to which

Jews were deported and killed using poison gas.

High-ranking Nazi officials defined the details of their

plan to murder Europe’s entire Jewish population in

January 1942. In the subsequent months, five more

death camps became operational in Poland, including

Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, and

Treblinka. Jews were deported to the killing centres in

train cars designed to transport animals. Without

ventilation, toilet facilities, food or water, many people

died during the multi-day transports to the camps.

Some survivors recall that the nature of the camps was

not clear to them when they first arrived on the railway

platforms; though it was apparent they had not arrived

at the farms many had been promised. In fact, more

than three million people who disembarked the trains at

the extermination centres were killed immediately in the

gas chambers, or died of disease, exhaustion, and

starvation within the camp network.

In Defiance

Of the millions of Jews and non-Jews persecuted

during the Holocaust, thousands participated in

acts of resistance against their oppressors in

Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. Individual

and collective acts of defiance assumed many

forms, ranging from symbolic gestures, to

life-saving rescue operations, to violent sabotage

and assassination attempts.

Jews participated in armed and unarmed resistance

activities in ghettos, slave labour camps, and

extermination camps. Resistance in the camps

succeeded in destroying a crematorium, killing guards,

setting fires and facilitating escapes. Outside the

camps, Jewish partisan units sabotaged the

operations of the Nazis and their collaborators by

blowing up railways, bridges and infrastructure, and

attacking local auxiliary police.

Jewish defiance was also expressed through efforts to

perpetuate Jewish culture and maintain humanity in

the face of attempted annihilation. Spiritual resistance

in ghettos and camps included clandestine prayers and

the creation of artistic works and books. In some

ghettos, underground schools were formed, and secret

archives were established to document the Holocaust.

Lack of resources and severe punishment made

resistance to the Nazis dangerous and difficult. The

Nazi tactic of “collective responsibility” held entire

families and communities accountable for individual

acts of resistance, making the extent of defiance during

the Holocaust truly remarkable.

Liberation and LossWhen the Soviet Red Army entered Majdanek

camp in July 1944, the surviving prisoners became

the first to be liberated from a Nazi death camp. In

the following months, Allied Forces, including

Canadian troops, moved across Europe and

liberated prisoners from the network of Nazi

concentration camps. Jews who had survived in

hiding were now able to emerge.

Liberation was experienced by survivors with a mixture

of joy, relief and sorrow. Some reunited with surviving

family members. Most searched in vain for their families

and were confronted with the immensity of the Nazis’

program of murder and destruction. Survivors were

often so weakened by starvation and disease that they

did not live long after liberation.

Those who did survive had few places to go, their homes

having been destroyed or confiscated in the Second

World War. The Allies hastily erected Displaced Persons

(DP) camps, frequently on the sites of former

concentration camps, to house over 250,000 Jewish

DPs between 1945 and 1952. There, survivors started

their lives anew—by marrying and having children,

working with Zionist organizations, applying to emigrate

from Europe, continuing their education and job

training, and celebrating religious holidays—while also

searching for lost family members and friends.

War Orphans

Over a million Jewish children were killed in the

Holocaust. Those who lived were often the only

survivors of their family and thousands of

orphaned children remained in DP camps for years

after the Second World War. In 1947, the Canadian

Jewish Congress persuaded the Canadian

government to open its doors to Jewish orphans in

an initiative called the “War Orphans Project.”

Canadian representatives travelled to Europe seeking

children eligible for immigration only to discover

unanticipated levels of devastation. So few young

children had survived the Holocaust that the age of

eligibility for the War Orphans Project was increased

from age 15 to 18. Screening to assess the orphans’

health and ability to adjust to life in Canada took months.

Eventually 1123 orphans were chosen to travel by ship

and train to foster families and group homes in 38

communities across Canada.

Most war orphans were teenagers accustomed to

fending for themselves and found the restrictions

imposed on them by foster parents and life in

small-town Canada difficult. Foster parents struggled to

comprehend the atrocities these children had

experienced, so the close bonds which developed

among the orphans were critical during their early years

in Canada. In time, many of these new Canadians

became pillars of their communities.

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Journey to CanadaAt the end of the Second World War, there were an

estimated 250,000 Jewish survivors who had no

homes or communities to return to. They remained

in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany,

France, Italy, and Belgium for up to seven years.

Despite growing and widespread awareness of the

atrocities of the Holocaust, few countries opened their

doors to Jewish DPs in the postwar years. Canada, which

had admitted only 5,000 Jewish refugees between 1933

and 1939 as a result of its racially-selective immigration

laws, did not relax its restrictions until two years after

the war.

Beginning in 1947, Jewish survivors with close family

members in Canada were able to gain entry to the

country, as were those with experience in select

industries which required workers in the post-war

economic boom.

The experiences of the survivor immigrants in

establishing new lives in Canada varied as they came

from diverse educational, national, social, and religious

backgrounds. For most, the primary concerns were

finding housing and employment and learning English or

French. Those who arrived in Canada as war orphans

faced the additional challenges of adjusting to life with

foster families and making up for the years of education

denied to them during the Holocaust.

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“Enemy Aliens”

Following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, over 80,000 German

and Austrian Jews found refuge in Great Britain. However, once

Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, many British citizens

feared that German and Austrian immigrants living among them

could serve as spies for the Third Reich. Consequently, the

British government interned 30,000 civilian “aliens” most of

whom were Jews who had fled Nazi persecution.

See continuation in drawer to your right…

“ENEMY ALIENS” CONT.See introduction in drawer to your left…

In 1940, over two thousand of these refugees were forced to

make the dangerous trans-Atlantic crossing to internment

camps in eastern Canada. There they experienced indefinite

confinement, tedious regimentation, and mistreatment.

Antisemitic attitudes were common among Canadian camp

guards, and Jewish refugees were detained alongside Nazi

prisoners-of-war. Britain soon acknowledged that the

internment of Jewish refugees was without cause, but the

Canadian government refused to alter its restrictive

immigration policies to permit the release of the refugees into

Canada. Many of the refugees were to remain interned for the

next three years.

The Jewish internees included professors, scientists, artists,

musicians, activists, religious leaders and students. In response

to their confinement, they established educational programs,

camp newspapers, musical performances, artistic works and

religious services. Throughout their internment, the primary

focus for most internees remained securing their freedom

from the camps.

Bearing Witness

“Whoever listens to a witness, becomes a witness,” 1

—Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner

Holocaust remembrance shows respect to the 6 million

Jewish and 5 million non-Jewish victims of Nazi German’s

genocidal policies. Remembrance often includes efforts to

combat present day social injustice, racism, and antisemitism.

Since 1951, Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, has

been observed by the State of Israel and Jewish communities

worldwide on the 27th of Nisan (April/May). More recently, in

2005, the United Nations designated 27 January as

“International Holocaust Remembrance Day.”

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, is

Israel's official memorial dedicated to preserving the memory

of the victims of the Holocaust. The institution also honours

non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust, known as the

“Righteous Among the Nations.”

In the decades following the Holocaust, survivors’ willingness to

share their experiences and the public’s interest in hearing their

testimonies, led to extensive eye-witness documentation. The

recognition of the Holocaust as an unprecedented event in

human history, that ultimately challenged the foundations of

civilization, has also inspired many Holocaust education

initiatives.

The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, founded by local

survivors of the Shoah, is one of many institutions worldwide

that are devoted to Holocaust based anti-racism education.

1 Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), in his speech at the Legacy of Holocaust Survivors Conference at Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Communities, April 2002.

Messages toLoved Ones

People who had been forewarned of their deportation often

sought to contact family and friends who already had been

deported or from whom they had otherwise become

separated. They held onto the hope of being able to find each

other once again.

See continuation in drawer to your right…

“MESSAGES TO LOVED ONES” CONT.See introduction in drawer to your left…

Once deported to the camps, the chances of communicating

again with the outside world were extremely small and any

correspondence was heavily censored. In camps like the

Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, Jewish prisoners were not

permitted to correspond with their families. In some camps,

letters that were purportedly written by Jewish camp prisoners

were, in reality, sent out by Nazi officials who either faked the

correspondence or forced prisoners upon arrival to write that

they were well and experiencing good living conditions. By the

time the recipients received these notes, their writers had been

murdered in the gas chambers.

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