MONTREAL — The city of Côte St. Luc will honour those who spoke out and fought for Jews oppressed in the former Soviet Union, Syria and Ethiopia.
The ceremony will take place on its Human Rights Walkway on Canada Day, July 1 at 5:30 p.m., at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Park.
“This year, instead of honouring a specific person, we are honouring a group a people – essentially a movement – that succeeded in pressuring foreign governments mistreating their Jewish residents,” Mayor Anthony Housefather said. “Many of the people involved in these movements were from Côte St. Luc or the Montreal area.”
To help mark the event, the city has produced a 20-minute documentary called Human Rights Activists for Oppressed Jews in Foreign Lands. The video features interviews with MP Irwin Cotler and Stan Cytrynbaum.
In it, Cotler, a McGill University law professor and MP for Mount Royal since 1999, discusses his involvement, including serving as the legal counsel for political prisoners in the Soviet Union.
Cytrynbaum, a Montreal lawyer, provides a personal account of how he first learned about Ethiopian Jews and later helped create a movement in Canada to draw attention to their plight and advocate for their rescue.
Judy Feld Carr of Toronto is credited with rescuing more than 3,000 Jews from Syria over a 28-year period.
The video is available at CoteSaintLuc.org.
“Our mini-documentary is meant to educate young people about these events and to inspire them to join or create human rights movements of their own,” said councillor Mike Cohen, co-chair of the event with councillor Glenn Nashen. “The video is part of a growing library of videos produced in house by the city’s public affairs and communications department.”
The Human Rights Walkway was inaugurated in 2000 and is dedicated to men and women who, through their actions, have promoted and defended human rights. Until now, individuals honoured have been as diverse as Jules Deschênes, who headed the federal inquiry into Nazi war criminals; native women’s rights activist Mary Two-Axe Earley, and South African anti-apartheid campaigner Helen Suzman.
“Many of the past honorees have been people who put their lives on the line in many parts of the world,” Nashen said. “By selecting a movement of people – many of them local – we wanted to highlight the fact that anyone, anywhere can help those in need, even from the safety and comfort of our suburban homes in Canada.
“Prof. Cotler, Stan Cytrynbaum, and Judy Feld Carr – an unassuming former music teacher and grandmother of 10 who was responsible for the rescue of 3,228 Jews from Syria over 28 years – are three examples of a movement that helped rescue hundreds of thousands of people.”
For more about past honorees, visit www.CoteSaintLuc.org/en/Walkway.