{"id":6020,"date":"2017-05-05T14:08:29","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T18:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=6020"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:48:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T20:48:58","slug":"ottawa-holocaust-survivors-testimony-project","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/ottawa-holocaust-survivors-testimony-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa Holocaust Survivors Tell Their Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Ottawa Holocaust Survivors Tell Their Stories\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Kati Morrison was four years old when her grandmother pulled her and her year-old sister into the dimness of a stairwell and saved their lives. The three waited silently while the other 100 or so residents of the building \u2013 neighbours, friends, Kati\u2019s great aunt \u2013 were marched away to the edge of the Danube, methodically lined up and shot. It was January 1945 in Budapest, Hungary and the Second World War and its black shadow, the Holocaust, had four murderous months left to run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This chilling incident is part of Morrison\u2019s story of surviving the Holocaust, which she tells with calm dignity. She has told it to countless students in the Ottawa area over the last 12 years, and now it is captured on film and available online<\/a> as one of a collection of 10 stories that make up the Ottawa Holocaust Survivors Testimony Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Shoes
Shoes on the Danube Bank is a memorial in Budapest to honor the people (mostly Jews) who were killed by the fascist Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest during World War II. Jewish people, like Morrison\u2019s great aunt, were marched away to the edge of the Danube, methodically lined up and shot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“There is nothing more powerful than first-hand testimony,” says Mina Cohn, director of Carleton\u2019s Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship (CHES), which organized the initiative after opening as Ottawa\u2019s first Holocaust centre in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Importance of Remembrance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The impetus was the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Most of those who were adults in 1939, when the war started, are very old or no longer with us,” says Cohn.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“We needed to find a way to preserve the stories of the remaining survivors in the Ottawa area.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The 10 testimonies, each of which covers life before, during and after the war, as well as survivor perspectives on the importance of remembrance, present a range of experiences, from working amid atrocities in Nazi concentration camps to hiding in a dugout in Ukraine for two years. The oldest participant was 17 at the start of the war, and the youngest was a baby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Morrison's
Morrison’s paternal grandparents, Jozsef and Hani Fisch, aged 64, were transported to Auschwitz. Both died en route: her grandmother had a stroke and was thrown off the cattle car. Her grandfather jumped after her, and was immediately shot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The films, which were crafted to industry standards at Carleton\u2019s Media Production Centre<\/a>, were edited to about 30 minutes to ensure sufficient time for class discussion; two-minute excerpts are also available for quick review. In the project\u2019s next phase, the CHES committee is developing resources for each film that will also be available online. They also offer a teachers\u2019 workshop. The response from area institutions and schools, Cohn reports, has been encouraging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers and historians, meanwhile, can find the 10 hours of original, unedited interviews in the archives of Carleton\u2019s MacOdrum Library.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

An Important Resource for Research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy hope is that the university will promote this valuable, authentic primary research material,\u201d says Cohn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Annette Wildgoose was a volunteer for the project, which was completed on a shoestring budget that was crowdfunded on Carleton\u2019s FutureFunder<\/a> platform. She got involved for personal reasons: her mother was a Holocaust survivor and Wildgoose left it too late to talk to her about what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cI wish I had asked more questions. Her story was important to what remains of our family.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Wildgoose\u2019s role was to conduct pre-interviews with Morrison and with another survivor, Elly Bollegraaf. She was more nervous than they were and she remains in awe of their strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt takes guts to relive those stories. They are remarkable people and demonstrate, in person and on video, tremendous resilience. But they know that if they don\u2019t speak about this, no one else will.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The foyer of the ‘safe house’ that Morrison and members of her family stayed in during the war.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Morrison, who emigrated to Canada in 1967 and worked as a psychiatrist, continues to visit schools. \u201cIt\u2019s worth the price. The children are very attentive and thoughtful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She, in turn, is inspired by educators who teach how to raise children who will speak out when others are being bullied or intimidated and stand up against intolerance and prejudice, regardless of peer pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cI go to the schools to help students understand that there is no such thing as a silent bystander. Everyone who allows cruelty to take place is a participant.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

All three women see a new timeliness for the Holocaust testimonies in today\u2019s political climate. As Wildgoose says: \u201cWhen we know what happened when racism and violence took over, we learn to be kinder to one other. We learn not to turn our backs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch the two-minute excerpts<\/a> and full-length films<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here<\/a> to view the Carleton FutureFunder page for this project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kati Morrison was four years old when her grandmother pulled her and her year-old sister into the dimness of a stairwell and saved their lives. The three waited silently while the other 100 or so residents of the building \u2013 neighbours, friends, Kati\u2019s great aunt \u2013 were marched away to the edge of the Danube, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[28],"cu_story_tag":[1920],"class_list":["post-6020","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","hentry","cu_story_type-community-partnerships","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/6020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/6020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98550,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/6020\/revisions\/98550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=6020"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=6020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}