Thank you to the Isadore and Florence Burstyn Memorial Fund, KSW Calgary Holocaust Education & Commemoration Endowment Fund, Viewpoint Foundation, and donors to the Human Rights and Holocaust Education Fund at the Calgary Public Library Foundation for generously supporting these programs and engaging Albertans in critical dialogue.
13programs held
2,449Albertans attended
14,332students reached
Upcoming Programs
Here to Tell: Faces of Holocaust Survivors
Here to Tell: Faces of Holocaust Survivors is a commemorative and educational photography exhibit featuring both living and deceased Holocaust survivors with a connection to Calgary. The exhibit sheds light on each of the survivors’ Shoah (Hebrew word for the Holocaust) experiences, while also providing a glimpse into their lives lived post-war. In partnership with Calgary Jewish Federation.
The exhibit will be on display at Central Library during the month of January.
The Auschwitz Album
Date: February 5, 2023
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Virtual Event
The Auschwitz Album is the only surviving visual evidence of the process leading to the mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration & extermination camp. Presented virtually from Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem, participants will explore Auschwitz through photos taken by the SS, letters from prisoners, & survivor testimonies.
Art Spiegelman has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves. In 1992, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his masterful Holocaust narrative Maus— which portrayed Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. Maus II continued the remarkable story of his parents’ survival of the Nazi regime and their lives later in America. Spiegelman believes that in our post-literate culture the importance of the comic is on the rise, for “comics echo the way the brain works. People think in iconographic images, not in holograms, and people think in bursts of language, not in paragraphs.”
Hear from the Pulitzer Prize-winning artist on February 21, during the first Forward Thinking Speaker Series event of 2023, “A Conversation with Art Spiegelman”. During this moderated event, Spiegelman will discuss his career, the recent banning of Maus by some schools and his art.
This virtual talk is presented during Freedom to Read Week which encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom. “A Conversation with Art Spiegelman” is presented in partnership with Edmonton Public Library.
PLUNDER: A MEMOIR OF FAMILY PROPERTY AND NAZI TREASURE
Date: February/March 2023
This memoir by Menachem Kaiser outlines his quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland, and while doing so, he discovers that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a secret Nazi tunnel complex. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance – material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
In partnership with Calgary Jewish Federation.
INHERITED LEGACY
Date: March 2023
Hear from Fie Huskler, the daughter of George Asselbergs, who hid Jews from Nazi occupiers, and Myriam Gerber, a descendant from Nazis. The late George (Jos) Asselbergs has been honoured by the State of Israel and Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations. During the darkest days of WWII, Mr. Asselbergs, at the risk of great personal peril, hid a Jewish man by the name of Dik Beit and 10 others from certain death at the hands of Nazi occupiers in the Netherlands.
In partnership with Calgary Jewish Federation.
YAD VASHEM’S AUSCHWITZ ALBUM
Date: April 2023
Presented virtually from Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem, participants will have the unique opportunity to explore and learn about Auschwitz. Through photographs, actual letters from prisoners, and survivor testimony, this virtual presentation gives participants an important piece of visual documentation of the workings at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. This program also includes a pre-recorded tour of Auschwitz Block 27 (the Jewish block).
In partnership with Calgary Jewish Federation.
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION SYMPOSIUM FOR SCHOOLS
Date: April 2023
Hosted by Edmonton Public Library. In partnership with the Jewish Federation of Edmonton.
NO VISIBLE TRAUMA: VIRTUAL SCREENING AND PANEL DISCUSSION
Date: May 2023
Hosted by Edmonton Public Library, in partnership with Calgary Public Library, Vancouver Public Library, Regina Public Library, Halifax Public Library and Toronto Public Library.
KLABONA KEEPERS
Date: June 2023
Hosted by Edmonton Public Library.
HUMAN RIGHTS SPEAKER SERIES
Date: Q4 2023
In partnership with the Jewish Federation of Edmonton and the University of Alberta.
Is there any connection between recent antisemitic attacks and recent controversies about public Holocaust education? Actually, yes, and it’s built into a strange historic bargain struck between Jews and non-Jewish societies. Here are the parameters of that bargain, and the reasons why we all should opt out.
Dara Horn’s book People Love Dead Jews was the Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice and Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction.
In partnership with Calgary Jewish Federation.
2022
Date: November 10, 2022
Time: 7:00 – 8:30 PM
Location: Virtual and the Patricia A. Whelan Performance Hall at Central Library
Following a virtual school-aged program in the morning, Ben M. Freeman, author and Holocaust educator, shared with attendees how to identify internalized oppression, why Jews represent the canary in the coal mine, and how to combat the self-loathing and oppression that we must all face.
Date: September 25-November 27, 2022
Location: Stanley A. Milner Public Library, Edmonton AB
In April 2016, artist Carol Wylie attended the Saskatoon Holocaust Memorial service. As survivor Nate Leipciger spoke of his horrifying experiences in a Nazi death camp, and his ongoing efforts to educate and shed light on these atrocities, she was struck anew by the extent of abuse a human being can endure at the hand of another. Several events followed that service, and Carol was reminded of the residential school experience of 150,000 Indigenous children. This exhibition consists of eighteen portraits of Jewish Holocaust and Indigenous Residential School Survivors. In Jewish tradition, eighteen represents the word ‘chai’, which means life. Themes including trauma, ongoing recovery, shared pain, and the indomitable human spirit, are central to this work. With numbers of Holocaust Survivors dwindling, and the same eventual loss of Residential School Survivors, these portraits remain and continue to reflect the strength and courage of these individuals.
Hosted by Edmonton Public Library in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Edmonton.
Date: June 10, 2022
This one-day virtual conference for young writers in grades 10-11 was inspired by human rights, creative expression, and the life and works of Anne Frank. Students in Calgary and Edmonton heard from activists and writers and were inspired to find their voice through poetry, song, memoir, and more. Attendees also had an opportunity to submit their works for an anthology that will be published in Fall 2022.
This conference was organized through a collaboration between Edmonton Public Library and Calgary Public Library.
Mossad agent Avner Avraham discovered the original documents surrounding Adolf Eichmann’s capture and trial – an event of world importance. He later became consultant for a major motion picture on Eichmann’s capture – MGM’s Operation Finale starring Ben Kingsley. In this virtual program, Avraham shared his fascinating insights into this rich chapter of history.
Date: Tuesday, March 22, 2022
Time: 7:00
All the Frequent Troubles of our Days – The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
In this virtual program, author Rebecca Donner chronicled the extraordinary life and ruthless death of Mildred Harnack, the leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany during WWII. Fusing letters, testimony and declassified intelligence documents, Donner reconstructed the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.
In partnership with Calgary Jewish Federation and the Jewish Federation of Edmonton.
Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, is the ultimate source for Holocaust education. Come explore the history of the Holocaust with one of Yad Vashem’s expert guides on a one-of-a-kind virtual tour of the Holocaust History Museum. This exclusive tour will give you the chance to learn the stories behind the personal items on display.
In partnership with Calgary Jewish Federation.
Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Time: 1:30 PM
In honour of Black History Month, Edmonton Public Library and Calgary Public Library invited grades 4-9 classes to a free, virtual presentation by award-winning and internationally renowned Canadian author, Lawrence Hill. Hill read from his middle-grade debut, Beatrice and Croc Harry, and students learned about Hill’s writing practice, his inspiration for the book and the significance of his literary contribution to a greater understanding of black history in Canada.
In partnership with Edify Magazine.
Date: Wednesday, February 2, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm
In a talk about his new novel Beatrice and Croc Harry, Lawrence Hill discussed writing for both children and adults, the formation of racial identity, the artistic challenges he faced in using humour to explore sensitive subjects, and the joys of playing with language and inventing words for readers of all ages. He drew parallels between Beatrice and Croc Harry and his well-known novel The Book of Negroes, and discussed his own experiences with censorship and with the title change of his earlier novel. This event was moderated by Natasha Deen.
In partnership with Edify Magazine.
Date: Thursday, January 27, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm
In honour of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, internationally renowned Jewish author and educator Ben Freeman discussed Jewish identity, combating antisemitism and raising awareness of the Holocaust. The Holocaust may have ended years ago but the story that led to it is still being written today.
In partnership with the Calgary Jewish Federation.
Fanny was 14 years old when Nazis invaded her hometown of Korzec, Poland (today Koretz) and conditions for the Jews quickly deteriorated. Through this program, Grade 11 students had the rare opportunity to speak with a Holocaust Survivor after watching a video where she recounted her harrowing experiences from the Holocaust.
This program was part of Holocaust Symposium presented by Calgary Jewish Federation (in partnership with MRU) to Social 20 students across Alberta. 96 teachers registered and 4,951 students attended.
This virtual Human Rights poetry event united Alberta’s two largest cities, Edmonton and Calgary, and their 2021 Poet Laureates. Titilope Sonuga, Edmonton’s Poet Laureate and Natalie Meisner, Calgary’s Poet Laureate performed their Human Rights related pieces and discussed the impact of the arts on Human Rights advocacy.
In this virtual program, DJ Schneeweiss, former Israeli Consul General to Toronto and Western Canada and award-winning public speaker, provided an insider’s view of one of Israel’s most important intellectual and cultural institutions. Participants got to experience some of the Library’s most exquisite and rare pieces, saw a sneak peek of the iconic new building opening in the heart of Jerusalem in 2022, and learned about innovative digital, cultural and educational initiatives that give the NLI an ever-more significant role in the fabric of life in Israel and in the Jewish world.
Hosted by Jewish Federation of Edmonton (JFE); Partnered with Calgary Jewish Federation (CJF)
Support
Human Rights and Holocaust Education Fund
Calgary Public Library and Edmonton Public Library have partnered to raise awareness and engage Albertans in critical dialogue about Human Rights and Holocaust Education. In addition to supporting the Human Rights and Holocaust Education program series for three years, donor funds will support physical exhibits and virtual tours that build on program and events, facilitate community storytelling opportunities and enhance Library collections related to human rights.
The collaboration between Alberta’s two largest municipal libraries is generously supported by the Isadore and Florence Burstyn Memorial Fund for Human Rights & Holocaust Education, KSW Calgary Holocaust Education & Commemoration Endowment Fund, Viewpoint Foundation and other donors.
For more information about this initiative, or to discuss further, please contact
Sade Nasser
Director of Development sade@libraryfoundation.ca
403 260 2675
