Yom HaShoah Events

Learning about the Holocaust and Its Meaning Today

Below are a set of links to Yom HaShoah events of note for our local community. 

Online participation is possible. 

Click on the links below to reach the event or learning materials.

• Toronto Holocaust Museum:  Commemoration of the Holocaust
• Yad Vashem:  Remembrance Day
• Yad Vashem:  A Lost World:  The Destruction of Jewish Communities (A Central Theme for Holocaust Remembrance Day)
• B’Nai Brith:  Yom HaShoah Commemorative Gathering in Ottawa. 
• Echoes and Reflections:  a free 4-week course offering:  Foundations of Holocaust Education:  Deepening Student Learning, May 2024.  
• TOLI:  Days of Remembrance:  The Kindertransport
• A collection of 12 poems of remembrance from the Congregation Beth Israel (Vancouver):  Yom HaShoah poems. 
  

   

  A Yizkor Poem by Peterborough’s Poet Laureate:  Ziysah v. Bieberstein

Yizkor:  Our Commitment to Remember

6 million worlds extinguished.

6 million pairs of hands that could no longer be held

6 million lifetimes of stories that could no longer be told

We cannot undo these horrors

What we can do is honour

We honour 6 million worlds in our candle lighting

We honour 6 million worlds in our remembering

We honour 6 million worlds by saying Never Again

We honour by bearing witness, by teaching this difficult history to our children. We honour by asking:

Where is the seed of this hate?

How was it made to blossom?

How was this hate elected?

Who is feeding it today?

To every soul that perished in the Nazi Holocaust, Jewish, Roma, disabled, gay, trans, to the millions of universes we can no longer explore,

To each of you, we pledge: We will keep learning, we will keep teaching, we will keep speaking, we will keep thinking, we will keep loving, we will keep building relationships across difference

We refuse to believe that we are powerless against hate, we refuse to abandon faith in humanity, we refuse to take anything for granted. In your memory, in the shadow of 6 million worlds, We will do everything we can to make never again mean never again.