Through working with Ottawa Holocaust survivors over many years, members of the recently created CHES recognize that there is an urgent need to record and preserve survivor accounts for future generations and for educational and research purposes before it is too late. CHES is in contact with local Holocaust survivors and is already working with those interested in participating in this project.
The goal of this project is to document and preserve the testimonies of Ottawa Holocaust survivors as primary oral historical resources that will allow future generations of students, researchers, teachers, and others to hear and see the people who experienced and witnessed the genocidal policies and crimes of the Nazis and their collaborators.
The project will ensure the preservation of Ottawa Holocaust survivors’ accounts and their experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust. These recorded testimonies would become a powerful pedagogical tool to be used in any educational institution or setting and would allow Carleton professors and students to explore online the unique power of survivors’ memoirs. The recordings and associated educational materials will form the basis of a special Ottawa based Holocaust Memorial project and will become a public resource freely accessible on the website of the Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship (CHES) at the Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies (ZC) at Carleton University.
In addition to creating videos of individual survivors, we also plan, depending on funding, to edit the videos into thematic or topic-specific videos that would be particularly useful to teachers and researchers. We hope to focus on particular questions, experiences, and locations using multiple survivors’ voices.
This project was recently featured on the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) website. Click here to view the article.