New Westminster will declare Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day and will light up Anvil Centre in yellow lights in recognition of the day.
Lizz Kelly, a member of the city’s multiculturalism advisory committee, presented the committee with a motion that New Westminster commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, which is the anniversary of the liberation of the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, Aushwitz-Birkenau.
“We want to make sure no one forgets the six million Jewish lives who were victims of the atrocities carried out by the Nazi regime and its collaborators,” she told council Monday. “It’s more important now than ever that the lessons learned, the horrors of the Holocaust, remain present in the public consciousness so that they aren’t ever repeated.”
As a New West resident who has witnessed anti-Semitic incidents in the past few years, Kelly said it’s an important day to recognize. When she took the motion to the committee, she said it was her intent that the city would honour this day every year, not just in 2022.
Rabbi Jonathan Infeld of Congregation Beth Israel urged the City of New Westminster to declare Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. He said one of the reasons he became a rabbi was his family’s history.
“My entire family, outside of just my parents, were killed in the Holocaust. My parents were Holocaust survivors. My mother escaped in 1938 from Germany and my father survived five years – one year at the Krawkow ghetto and four years of concentration camps,” he told council Monday night. “I believe that the lesson of the Holocaust is really something that is not only for the Jewish community but, quite frankly, for the entire world.”
Infeld said his father grew up in a city that was a little over one-third Jewish; between 1939 and 1941, he said one-third of that city’s population disappeared, with almost 90% of those people being killed.
“I think that this is an incredibly important lesson for us to teach not only all of the residents of the city specifically, but specifically the children,” he said. “I highly encourage New West to take on Holocaust Remembrance Day as an opportunity to teach and an opportunity to learn.”
New West resident Deborah Folka called on the city to support a declaration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“It’s long overdue,” she said. “It was 2005 that the UN General Assembly brought in International Holocaust Remembrance Day. But it was only 2020 that the City of Vancouver adopted it and illuminated its city hall with yellow lights. I would just like to, as a lifelong resident of New Westminster, a business owner, a homeowner and a Jew, to encourage you to do the same.”
In addition to declaring Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, council referred the issue to the city’s social issues committee to create a process around important days and months that should be recognized every year.
“This is something that we want to acknowledge and recognize every year,” said Coun. Nadine Nakagawa of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Coun. Chinu Das, chair of the multiculturalism advisory committee, said the city should have a strategy that acknowledges days and events that need to celebrated or commemorated throughout the year.
“We need to build an understanding in this community of all the significant cultural days, events, our joys and our pains,” she said. “That takes all sorts of different types of recognition.”
Follow Theresa McManus on Twitter @TheresaMcManus
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