{"id":73200,"date":"2021-01-29T15:24:26","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T20:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=73200"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:14:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:14:33","slug":"international-holocaust-remembrance-day","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/international-holocaust-remembrance-day\/","title":{"rendered":"What Was Lost: Carleton Commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n What Was Lost: Carleton Commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day\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

\u201cIf you want to learn about the Holocaust, you have to have to start understanding what you lost,\u201d says photographer Tal Schwartz, the researcher-protagonist of the documentary Glass Negatives<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThis is, for me, what this collection has. When you look at those thousands of faces, you start to get a sense of this huge loss.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On Jan. 27, 2021, Carleton marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day with an online commemoration that gathered students, community members, dignitaries and other guests. Schwartz and Jan Borowiec, director of the documentary, joined the virtual event from Israel and Poland to discuss their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"What
A scene from the documentary Glass Negatives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2012, Polish construction workers renovating a Lublin tenement found almost 3,000 glass negatives hidden in an attic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To this day, the photographs clearly show thousands of faces from the city\u2019s past. They are the faces of children playing with toys and of musicians posing with instruments; of families at home around the dinner table and of partying friends raising glasses. They are the faces of workers posing in uniform, of parents holding babies and of couples on their wedding days. They are the faces of girls and boys on the cusp of becoming women and men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of these people were Jews, which means many of them were murdered. In Lublin, the Nazis extinguished the lives of 43,000 Jewish people during the Second World War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The renovation crew had the glass negatives cleaned, sorted and donated to a local cultural arts and heritage organization called Grodzka Gate \u2013 NN Theatre Centre. When Schwartz and Borowiec met, they decided to investigate the collection to discover the names of the people in front, and behind, the camera.<\/p>\n\n\n

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

Lost Memory, Forgotten Lessons? Holocaust Education & the Challenge of Anti-Semitism Today<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Carleton Religion Prof. Deidre Butler, director of the Max and Tessie Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies<\/a>, and University of Ottawa Prof. Hernan Tessler-Mab\u00e9, co-coordinator of the Vered Jewish Canadian Studies Program<\/a>, led a discussion with the film\u2019s creators. The event was called, Lost Memory, Forgotten Lessons? Holocaust Education & the Challenge of Anti-Semitism Today<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carleton
Carleton Religion Prof. Deidre Butler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The evening began with the announcement of a gift of essential history books to the Carleton and University of Ottawa libraries. The Embassy of Israel in Canada offered the donation that, said Butler, \u201cstands against the international tide of willful forgetting of the Holocaust, through Holocaust denial, minimization and distortion, and calls us to never forget the victims or the trauma of the survivors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Embassy of Israel Charg\u00e9 d\u2019Affaires and Deputy Chief of Mission, Ohad Kaynar, called the gift a modest effort to further the purpose of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday we come together as a community to say no to prejudice, to say no to anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, to say no to hatred, to stand for inclusivity, for our common shared humanity,\u201d said Carleton President Benoit-Antoine Bacon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"President
President Benoit-Antoine Bacon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

University of Ottawa President Jacques Fr\u00e9mont echoed the sentiment by defining the fight against anti-Semitism as a fight against the very idea of racism and all forms of racial discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe share a duty to speak out to remember the atrocities of the past in order to eliminate such terrible events from our future,\u201d said Fr\u00e9mont.<\/p>\n\n\n

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

Honouring the Survivors and the Rescuers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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The event included remarks from Carleton Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Dean, Pauline Rankin, University of Ottawa Faculty of Arts Dean, Kevin Kee, and Embassy of Israel Consul Orly Erlich, a third-generation descendant of Holocaust survivors who shared her family\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"FASS
FASS Dean Pauline Rankin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Irwin Cotler, Canada\u2019s special envoy for Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Anti-Semitism, noted that while Holocaust education must showcase the atrocities of Nazi Germany, it should also honour the survivors and the rescuers of human history\u2019s darkest chapter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHolocaust survivors endured the worst of inhumanity,\u201d said Cotler, \u201cbut somehow they found in the resources of their own humanity the ability to go on, to rebuild their lives, to start families, and to make contributions to whatever community and country they became a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"What
A scene from the documentary Glass Negatives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Schwartz and Borowiec, digging into the past of Lublin wasn\u2019t just about putting names to faces, or identifying the photographer of the glass negatives. Their journey became a storytelling about something that wasn\u2019t entirely lost to the Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cI hope the viewers, like us, realize that the answer to the name of the [photographer] is not the most important answer,\u201d said Borowiec.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cThe question is an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full documentary <\/em>Glass Negatives can be made available to students or community members by reaching out to the <\/em>Zelikovitz Centre<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"What
A scene from the documentary Glass Negatives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

—
\nMore Stories<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you want to learn about the Holocaust, you have to have to start understanding what you lost,\u201d says photographer Tal Schwartz, the researcher-protagonist of the documentary Glass Negatives. \u201cThis is, for me, what this collection has. When you look at those thousands of faces, you start to get a sense of this huge loss.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":73245,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[28],"cu_story_tag":[1930],"class_list":["post-73200","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-community-partnerships","cu_story_tag-equity-diversity-and-inclusion"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/73200","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":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/73200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98007,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/73200\/revisions\/98007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=73200"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=73200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}