United Jewish People’s Order-Canada on International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Shoes on the Danube. Photo: https://www.ulysses.travel/en/shoes-on-the-danube-bank-budapest

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day that the Soviet Army liberated the notorious death camp, Auschwitz. On this day we remember and grieve for all those who lost their lives as a result of the Nazi genocide — Jews, Roma, people with disabilities, LGBTQI+ people, Afro-Germans, Poles, Russians, and others whose lives were stolen from them. We also recall the process that led to the death camps — the ideology and laws that legitimated discrimination and the criminalization of peoples; the steps that led to genocide.

In the current climate of ever-growing right-wing power, we call for an end to all war, an end to fascism, and an end to all racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all other forms of discrimination. From the Shoes on the Danube honouring Hungarian Jews to the shoes that honour Indigenous children’s lives lost at Indian Residential Schools, we commemorate these losses by pursuing justice.

As Jews, in the wake of the hostage-taking at the Colleyville, Texas synagogue, we say Never Again...For Anyone.

27 January 2022

Signs and children's shoes line the steps of the Spirit Catcher in downtown Barrie in memory of the 215 children whose graves were discovered in Kamloops, B.C. — Photo: Shawn Gibson