TORONTO — For many Jews, the words “six million” subconsciously and automatically connect to the Holocaust.
In addition to the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, millions more were victimized by the Nazis.
March of the Living and the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind (IGDCB) have organized a special tour that will honour the tens of thousands of people with disabilities who were murdered by the Nazis in their evil quest to create an Aryan master race.
On April 16, a group of about 22 people – including six visually impaired Israelis and their guide dogs – will spend five days touring Poland’s concentration camps on a March of the Living tour.
“It’s really a powerful statement, because as the Nazis used dogs to kill and maim, we are going to show how dogs are used for independence… and self-worth,” said Sara Gabriel, the executive director of the Canadian Friends of IGDCB, an Israeli non-profit organization that provides visually impaired Israelis with trained guide dogs.
The Nazis began persecuting their most vulnerable citizens in 1933 after passing a law that stated anyone suffering from a mental illness, physical deformity, blindness or deafness was to be sterilized, and was labelled as “life unworthy of life.”
By the end of World War II, about 275,000 people with disabilities were murdered.
But Eli Rubenstein, who’s led March for the Living Canada for the last 25 years and volunteers as IGDCB’s chair, said this trip is about more than highlighting the Nazis’ crimes against the vulnerable.
“March of the Living is not just about what the Nazis did, it’s about telling ourselves and the world that Jewish people stand for exactly the opposite of what the Nazis stood for,” Rubenstein said.
“They were out to build a world of cruelty and barbarism and exclusion, and not to build a world of compassion and kindness and inclusion. In Judaism we believe that all humanity was created in the image of God and all humanity has infinite preciousness and dignity.”
Gabriel, who has been working to promote and raise funds for IGDCB from her Thornhill home since 2009, said this is the first time the centre has sent its clients on a March of the Living trip.
When Gabriel approached the donors about the idea to send IGDCB clients to Poland, she received “an overwhelming response.”
Thanks to their generosity, six blind Israelis will fulfil their dreams of experiencing the march, Rubenstein said.
“I remember one who told me, ‘Blind people have challenges, more than most. But when I hear a Holocaust survivor speak, and I see how they overcame their challenges, mine are incomparably minor and they give me strength, hope and courage,’” Rubenstein said.
He said he was also motivated to organize a march that would display the contrast between the way Nazis used dogs and the way the centre uses dogs.
“You think of what the Nazis did to the Jews, you think what the Nazis did to people with disabilities and you think of what the Nazis did to dogs. They took dogs and turned them into killers,” he said.
“We’re doing the opposite… we’re coming with dogs who were trained to be the gentlest, kindest, most giving creatures you could possibly imagine.”
On April 18, on Yom Hashoah, the IGDCB group will join roughly 14,000 people from all over the world in a three-kilometre march between Auschwitz and Birkenau.
“Whether you’re sighted or whether you’re visually impaired, the physical presence of being in Poland on Yom Hashoah is a very powerful statement,” Rubenstein said.
Joining the IGDCB group will be York Centre MP Mark Adler, the son of a Holocaust survivor, who will be honoured at the centre’s IGDCB annual gala called the Evening of Miracles. It’ll be held at the Eglinton Grand in Toronto on May 31 and will feature a performance by singer Nikki Yanofsky.
For more information about the March of the Living tour or the upcoming gala, contact Gabriel at 416-577-3600 or [email protected].