21st Annual Vanier College Symposium on the Holocaust and Genocide

For the 21st year, Vanier College and the Kleinmann Family Foundation will hold the Annual Symposium on the Holocaust and Genocide from November 11-15, 2013. This year’s theme From Tolerance to Acceptance explores the question of whether society has moved from simply tolerating someone’s existence in spite of their difference to actually accepting them as they are.

Throughout the week guest speakers will make presentations addressing the theme From Tolerance to Acceptance. Guests include survivors, filmmakers, social workers, and writers such as the following:

• Gina Roitman, whose documentary film My Mother, the Nazi Midwife, and Me tells the chilling tale of the systematic murder of 52 Jewish babies in a Displaced Persons' camp run by the American military after the end of the war.
• Heidi Berger is an award-winning producer who created a unique, 40-minute interactive video presentation that chronicles her mother’s experiences during the Holocaust.
• Corrie Sirota, is a Clinical Social Worker who has helped schools and organizations address the issue of bullying. In this workshop she emphasizes empowering students to deal with bullies and not to be bystanders.
• Tim MacKay, from the Azrieli Foundation, will make a presentation that shows the unique power of survivor memoirs and how, by delivering these stories and the relevant messages they carry in ways that utilize the collaborative and interactive nature of technology, memoirs can be an effective tool in combatting indifference and foster a progressive social awareness.
• Jacky Vallée, who teaches anthropology and methodology at Vanier College, will address the social, political and ideological persecution of gays before, during and after the Holocaust and the ways in which the symbol of the Pink Triangle has been re-appropriated today among many LGBT communities.

Kristallnacht Commemoration Ceremony On Wednesday November 13, 2013, at 12:30 pm, Cantor Sharon Azrieli will lead a Kristallnacht Commemoration. During the ceremony, former Vanier teacher and author Ron Headland will speak on the history of Kristallnacht; Vanier students who travelled through Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic as part of a Vanier course on the Holocaust and Totalitarianism will speak about their travels and their impressions of the Holocaust centers they visited; and students from the Micropublishing and Hypermedia program will discuss their research and creative process in producing exhibits on Kristallnacht.

Symposium poster This year’s Symposium poster was chosen from several submitted by Micropublishing and Hypermedia students in a poster contest. The winning poster was designed by student, Clara Lhomme.

Three-dimensional exhibits on Kristallnacht Students from the Micropublishing and Hypermedia program also prepared complex mixed media three-dimensional exhibits on Kristallnacht. Some are on display throughout the Symposium week, but many others will also be mounted on tables only on Wednesday in the Carrefour area of the college.

See the schedule for event times and details.