MONTREAL — The Montreal Jewish community last week commemorated the murder of their six million brethren in the Holocaust with a call to transmit the memory for the generations to come.

Holocaust survivor Eva Kuper, centre, kindles the fifth yahrzeit candle at the annual Holocaust community commemoration, along with Debbie Shizgal-Stark and Zoey Stark representing the second and third generations.

“My family survived. If not, I would not be here,” said Hanna Eliashiv, who along with her mother, survivor Pesi Lebovic Zelikovic, and daughter, Tamar Eliashiv, kindled the last of six red yahrzeit candles before an audience of 1,200 at Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem (TBDJ) synagogue.

For the first time at such a ceremony, Eliashiv’s videotaped comments and those of others – appearing on several large video screens in the hall – came not only from survivors, but from representatives of the second and third generations, as trios representing them lit each candle.

Other survivors lighting candles were Ted Bolgar, Marguerite Elias Quddus, Alex Prizant, Teddy Kutscher, and Eva Kuper.

As part of the annual commitment to pass on the legacy in perpetuity, survivor Liana Fischer pledged to “entrust the legacy of the Shoah to you, the second generation, and thereafter, to all generations.”

In turn, Annie Myara, representing the second generation, and Steven Sonnenstein the third, gave their survivor parents and children their own promise to remember.

During the ceremony, co-chaired by the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre’s (MHMC) Julia Reitman and Marcel Tenenbaum, the duty to remember and carry forward the memory was reiterated again and again.

At the event attended by community leaders, diplomats, politicians (including Finance Minister Raymond Bachand and Liberal cabinet member Lawrence Bergman) and two visiting Israeli Knesset members from the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus, Israeli Consul General Yoram Elron, referred to Durban II, the recent UN anti-racism conference in Geneva, as a place where “the guest of honour is a Holocaust denier.”

Alluding to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Elron said, “Let us be reminded about what one man’s populist xenophobia allowed.”

It is 70 years since Kristallnacht, he continued, but unlike 1939, “the Jewish people are no longer defenceless.” They have a strong and vital state of their own “built from the ashes of the Shoah.”

Event co-chairs Reitman, who is also president of the Holocaust centre, and Tenenbaum, as well as remembrance committee chair Michael Kutz expressed similar themes.

As survivors continue to pass on, “we must carry on,” Reitman said, referring to other genocides in such countries as Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur as events that must not and cannot be ignored.

“The excuse that the world did not know is no longer possible,” she said.

The 90-minute ceremony interspersed remarks and the candlelightings with Holocaust-relevant readings and performances by the Bialik High School Choir under Lorna Smith of such songs as Ani Ma’amin and Chana Senesh’s Eli, Eli.

At the front of the sanctuary, Nathalie Constantine translated every utterance, song and poem in English, French, Hebrew or Yiddish into sign language for the hearing impaired.

The event also included a recitation of names by Jérémie Tapiero, Mark Spatzner and Samara Goldstein; the recitation of tehillim (psalms) by Rabbi Asher 200

Jacobsen of Congregation Chevra Kadisha B’nai Jacob, and a memorial prayer by Cantor Moishe Shur of Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation.

Kaddish was led by TBDJ’s Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz after the guest who was supposed to do so, survivor and community leader Thomas Hecht, injured himself in the sanctuary just prior to the ceremony.

The following morning, representatives of B’nai Brith Canada’s Quebec region and Vanier College students assembled on the steps of Montreal City Hall to publicly read the names of Holocaust victims, “to illustrate the horrible results of hate-motivated ideology and to help ensure that such beliefs and principles find no fertile ground here in Canada.”

Mayor Gerald Tremblay attended the reading along with community leaders.