Library Guides: Holocaust Education Week: Home

John & Molly Pollock Holocaust Collection

John and Molly Pollock donated their comprehensive collection of books about the Holocaust to Centennial College in Toronto, Canada, to help others understand and remember the Nazis' brutal attempt to eliminate European Jews. This important collection, housed at the college and sampled and described here, is available to students, teachers, researchers and members of the community.

Visit the collection online

Videos

Sleeping Tigers: The Asahi Baseball Story
In pre-World War II Vancouver the Asahi baseball team was unbeatable, outplaying the taller Caucasian teams and winning the prestigious Pacific Northwest Championship for five straight years. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the Canadian government sent every person of Japanese descent, whether born in Canada or not, to internment camps.
Truth & Reconciliation
This film explores the darkest chapter in Canadian history. From the establishment of the early Residential Schools to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this film shines a light on to the cultural genocide that was perpetrated by the Canadian Government and churches towards Canada's Indigenous People. Written and directed by multiple award-winning Métis filmmaker Matt LeMay.
Sisters in the Struggle
This short documentary features Black women active in politics as well as community, labour and feminist organizing. They share their insights and personal testimonies on the double legacy of racism and sexism, linking their personal struggles with the ongoing battle to end systemic discrimination and violence against women and people of colour.
Rwanda Genocide, in Where Were You, 22
There are some global events of such impact that they stay with us forever. They are so important that we sit up and pay attention as they are happening: we sit glued to the television we pour over newspapers we frantically search out more information to understand. This series looks at some of the most shocking events of the 20th and early 21st Century analyzing how the news of their occurrence spread across the globe and what impact they had on the modern world. This episode focuses on the genocide in Rwanda.
Chichinette: The Accidental Spy
The untold story of Marthe Cohn, a feisty young woman who joined the French resistance during WWII. After keeping silent for almost 60 years, Marthe now shares the extraordinary story of how she managed to beat the odds and fight the Nazis as a spy.

Journal and Newspaper Articles

Germans as Victims? Thoughts on a Post –Cold War History of World II’s Legacies.
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Moeller, Robert G. History and Memory, 2005, Vol. 17, Issue 1-2.
Never Forget: The Performance Workshop Theatre Company creates a `living' Holocuast lesson.
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Walkie, Deborah.Baltimore Jewish Times; Baltimore. Vol. 251, Iss. 4 (Jan 28, 2000): 44.
Reconstructing the past and attributing the responsibility for the Holocuast.
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Dresler-Hawke, Emma. Social Behavior and Personality: An international journal, 2005, Vol. 33, Issue 2.
Will the real Anne Frank please stand up?
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Ivry, Benjamin.American Theatre; New York Vol. 15, Iss. 1, (Jan 1998): 42-45.

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About Holocaust Education Week

Centennial College engages annually in Holocaust Education Week to help foster increased awareness of human rights and social justice issues, and the importance of respect for diversity. The goal of the event is to promote values and attitudes of care and empathy for others, that ultimately contribute to building a more inclusive, just, and peaceful society.

This is an annual event hosted by the Centennial College Libraries, in partnership with the School of Advancement and the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Inclusion, as part of the larger Neuberger Holocaust Education Week (HEW) which is also held annually in the GTA.

HEW Events at Centennial

Voices of the Holocaust: the need to listen and remember

Every November Centennial College commemorates Holocaust Education Week to honour the experiences of Holocaust survivors through their testimonies. With time, these treasured voices and narratives are disappearing. From today forward it is with greater consciousness we must keep the lessons from the Holocaust alive. We must continue to strive and build our community based on the foundations of responsibility and respect.

Join us on Monday November 9, 2020, for our live, virtual event with keynote speaker, Andy Reti, Holocaust survivor. As a child survivor of the Shoah, Mr. Reti will share his memories of his family’s capture and separation by recounting the experience of being forced into a Jewish ghetto. Register today to hear this incredible and courageous story of survival and resilience.

When: Nov 9, 2020 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Voices of the Holocaust: the need to listen and remember

Find out more about the Holocaust and other Genocides by exploring this interactive presentation.

Register in advance for this webinar

Past Events

Watch recordings of previous commemorative events and speakers hosted by the Library and Centennial College.

From Learning Comes Life: A New generation of Holocaust Scholarship
11/05/2019

Now, more than ever, it is important to connect to the past to provide answers for the future. Max Eisen, a concentration camp survivor whose masterful book, By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz, won Canada Reads 2019, presented testimony to the harrowing event of the past.

Generations to Remember: Passing Down the Pivotal
11/01/2018

Each narrative of survival in the Holocaust is as unique as the individuals themselves. The personal transfer of our history through generations is essential, as it ensures that divers stories are preserved. Captain Martin Maxwell, a living witness who fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938 and returned to fight for the Allied Forces, will give first-person testimony.

Our Responsibility to Remember
11/8/2016

Looking to the future, how will we take responsibility for new generations learning about the victims of the Holocaust? How will they hear the personal stories of those who survived? Through selected video clips and student projects, this program explored how artistic skills, photography, and new technologies are being used to carry forward the visual and auditory memories of victims and survivors of genocide.

Books

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
ISBN: 9780679406419
Publication Date: 1996-11-19
THE DEFINITIVE EDITION: The Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel acclaimed as "the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust" (Wall Street Journal) and "the first masterpiece in comic book history" (The New Yorker). A brutally moving work of art--widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written--Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author's father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history's most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.
Resilience and Courage by Nechama Tec
ISBN: 9780300093551
Publication Date: 2003-03-11
In this riveting book Nechama Tec offers insights into the differences between the experiences of Jewish women and men during the Holocaust. Her research draws on a variety of sources: wartime diaries, postwar memoirs, a range of archival materials, and most important, direct interviews with Holocaust survivors. Tec reveals how women and men on the road to annihilation developed distinct coping strategies and how mutual cooperation and compassion operated across gender lines. "Tec is able to paint a more nuanced picture of the realities of Jewish resistance than previous historians. . . . A remarkable and important book."--"Tikkun""Tec offers compelling evidence that gender-related analyses add significantly to our understanding of Jewish experiences during the Holocaust."--"Jewish Book World""While this is a work of powerful emotionality, it is also a groundbreaking study of how gender is inexplicably bound to history and experience."--"Publishers Weekly "(starred review)
The Holocaust and Other Genocides by Helmut Walser Smith (Editor)
ISBN: 9780826514028
Publication Date: 2002-06-14
The Nazi genocide of the Jews, while unique in some ways, was not the only genocide of the twentieth century. This innovative book, the product of a year-long collaboration of scholars from many disciplines, is the first curriculum to systematically tie the teaching of the Holocaust to an analysis of the genocides in Armenia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and Rwanda. The book consists of five parts: introduction; history of the Holocaust; representations of the Holocaust in literature, film, and the arts; other genocides; and ethics. The curriculum, shaped with feedback from those who teach Holocaust studies, consists mainly of primary documents and their analysis. Each section includes a general introduction to a body of knowledge that reflects current research and detailed introductions to particular documents. Throughout the book, there are provocative discussion questions and suggestions for further reading and other resources. Each section features "links" to other parts to encourage interdisciplinary reflection. The final section on ethics addresses the difficult questions raised by genocide. The Holocaust and Other Genocides is designed as a model for flexible, innovative teaching about this complex subject. It is also a sophisticated, interdisciplinary effort to create the conditions for discussing and understanding the genocides of the twentieth century.
Journey Through Genocide by Raffy Boudjikanian
ISBN: 9781459740754
Publication Date: 2018-05-15
Powerful accounts by genocide survivors, a journalist seeking to bear witness to their pain. Darfuri refugee camps in Chad, Kigali in Rwanda, and the ruins of ancient villages in Turkey -- all visited by genocide, all still reeling in its wake. In Journey through Genocide, Raffy Boudjikanian travels to communities that have survived genocide to understand the legacy of this most terrible of crimes against humanity. In this era of ethnic and religious wars, mass displacements, and forced migrations, Boudjikanian looks back at three humanitarian crises. In Chad, meet families displaced by massacres in the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan, their ordeal still raw. In Rwanda, meet a people struggling with justice and reconciliation. And in Turkey, explore what it means to still be afraid a century after the author's own ancestors were caught in the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Clear-eyed and compassionate, Boudjikanian breathes life into horrors that too often seem remote.
A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal; Elie Wiesel (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780316043403
Publication Date: 2009-04-20
Thomas Buergenthal, now a Judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, tells his astonishing experiences as a young boy in his memoir A Lucky Child. He arrived at Auschwitz at age 10 after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp. Separated first from his mother and then his father, Buergenthal managed by his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck to survive on his own. Almost two years after his liberation, Buergenthal was miraculously reunited with his mother and in 1951 arrived in the U.S. to start a new life. Now dedicated to helping those subjected to tyranny throughout the world, Buergenthal writes his story with a simple clarity that highlights the stark details of unimaginable hardship. A Lucky Child is a book that demands to be read by all.
Our Stories: First Peoples in Canada
We have endeavoured to tell Indigenous truths through storytelling. Truths about the times before the settlers, truths about the interactions of Indigenous communities, clans, and Nations, and the settlers, and truths about the ways we must move forward towards reconciliation.