We must learn from this story and let its lessons guide our actions today and in the days to come. We cannot and we must not turn away from this uncomfortable truth and Canada’s part in it. There were more than 900 refugees on board-European Jews seeking sanctuary here in Canada-and our government turned them away.įorced to return to Europe, 254 were eventually killed in the Holocaust. The most egregious example of this misguided policy where between 19 the Canadian government accepted only about 5,000 Jewish refugees, was in 1939 when Canada turned away the MS St. More than 70 years after the end of the Holocaust, it is easy to feel removed in time and in space.īut it also is an opportunity to remember that while the Holocaust took place on distant shores, as Canadians, we must always ever acknowledge our own errors and misdeeds. But what has struck me the most today, and every time I think about it…since then what I have thought about is how important it is for Nate to tell this story to everyone who is ready to hear it. He was just slightly older than my oldest son. Being there with a survivor, who today is nearly 90 years old, who saw first hand, through the eyes of a child, the boxcars, the barbed wire, the smoking chimneys. It was there that he told me his own survivor’s story, and I’ll never forget it. Nate was at my side when I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau last summer. Survivors like Nate Leipciger, who I’m sure many of you know. One of the most powerful ways that we can come to understand these truths and learn these lessons is by listening to the stories of survivors. And in keeping with this year’s theme, as I have been reminded on a deeply personal level this past year, the facts and the universal lessons and stories of the Holocaust must be known by everyone. Yad Vashem works tirelessly here in Canada and around the world to educate people about the Holocaust. I would also like to thank the…the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem for bringing us all together today. Thank you Fran and Bruce for those words, for your kindness, and most of all for your leadership over the years with the Society for Yad Vashem and this wonderful event for so many of us on the Hill.
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