• News
    • Business
    • Canada
    • Health
    • International
    • Israel
  • Perspectives
    • Advice
    • Big Ideas
    • CJN Podcast Network
    • Features
    • Opinions
  • Food
  • Culture
    • Arts & Entertainment
    • Books & Authors
    • Russian
    • Sports
    • Travel
  • Events
    • Contests
    • Montreal – About Town
    • Toronto – What’s New
  • Supplements
    • Spotlights
  • En Français
  • Podcasts
  • Subscribe
  • Member Centre
  • Log Out
Search
  • Subscribe
  • Member Centre (eCJN)
  • Log Out
  • Newsletter
  • FaceBook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
CJN - Canada’s largest Jewish newspaper
February 26, 2021 - 14 Adar 5781
CJN - Canada’s largest Jewish newspaper
  • News
    • The race to be the leader of the Conservative Party

      Q & A with Ari Greenwald: Responding to a pandemic

      Israel declares complete coronavirus lockdown on eve of Passover

      Gantz says forming a unity government may take more time

      Students learn computer programming RHA FACEBOOK PHOTO

      Online classes up and running in Vancouver

      AllBusinessCanadaHealthInternationalIsrael
  • Perspectives
    • A Long-Awaited Return, feat. Jody Avirgan

      To our readers: Everything has its season. It is time

      Listen: The CJN Podcast Network, Signing Off

      Healthy Aging: Your next doctor appointment will likely be virtual

      Shinewald: Making this awful moment more tolerable

      AllAdviceBig IdeasCJN Podcast NetworkFeaturesOpinions
  • Food
    • Delicious desserts for Passover

      Festive food for small seders

      Passover meals for the whole day

      Passover taco Tuesday

      Family Seder recipes

  • Culture
    • How philosophy and theology can be in dialogue together

      Socalled is trying to make the best of his downtime

      Veteran singer returns with ‘toxic’ single

      Stories explore relationships between family, friends

      Jewish movies you should stream while self-isolating

      AllArts & EntertainmentBooks & AuthorsRussianSportsTravel
  • Events
    • CJN VIP

      How’d you like to be a VIP? Giveaway

      Giveaway: The Song of Names advance screenings contest (CLOSED)

      CJN-Prize-new-Entry Ad 2019

      The CJN Prize 2019 (Closed)

      Come celebrate the launch of the CJN Podcast Network

      Jewish Music Week Contest (Closed)

      AllContestsMontreal – About TownToronto – What’s New
  • Supplements
    • Passover Greetings

      Focus-on-Ed-2020

      Focus on Education

      Celebrations-MS-20

      Celebrations

      Hanukkah Greetings

      Celebrations

      AllSpotlights
  • En Français
    • À la mémoire d’un ardent ambassadeur de la culture sépharade, Solly Levy Z.’L.’

      “La haine des Juifs n’a jamais eu de limite”

      Le dossier du Dr. Marcus Fraenkel: la réponse de la CIVS

      Israéliens et Palestiniens luttent ensemble contre le coronavirus

      La lutte contre le coronavirus au Centre médical Sheba de Ramat Gan

  • Podcasts
  • Subscribe
  • Member Centre
  • Log Out
Home News International UN to host March of the Living exhibit
  • News
  • International

UN to host March of the Living exhibit

By
Paul Lungen, Staff Reporter
-
January 20, 2014
4627
0
Rena Schondorf, left, with two students from Montreal

“I never had a chance to say goodbye to my mother. We didn’t know we had to say goodbye… And I am an old woman today and I never made peace with the fact that I never had that last hug and kiss.

“I am only asking you to work for a world where nobody will ever have to live memories like mine ever again. Please heal the world.”

For 25 years, teenagers have been travelling to Europe on the International March of the Living (MOL), visiting once vibrant Jewish communities and the Nazi death camps where millions were murdered.

Survivors have joined the March in recent years, among them Judy Weissenberg Cohen, a native of Hungary who never said goodbye to her mother.

Weissenberg Cohen last saw her mother at the selection process alongside the train tracks in Birkenau in May 1944. The sharing of her memories and the admonition to create a world where memories like hers cannot happen again have been incorporated as part of the theme of an exhibit that will be hosted at the United Nations beginning on Jan. 28.

Titled When You Listen to a Witness, You Become a Witness, the exhibit features images taken over the lifespan of the International March of the Living, poems and prose by young participants, testimony by survivors and an interactive component in which visitors will be asked to record their own commitments to make the world a better place.

Those pledges will be input onto ­iPads and transcribed onto plaques that will be posted on the MOL website and planted in the grounds at Birkenau, along with thousands of other plaques of visitors to the death camp.

“The centre point of the exhibit is the contrast between the death marches of 70 years ago and the March of the Living march today,” said Eli Rubenstein, national director of MOL Canada and one of the creators of the exhibit. Some survivors who participated in the MOL actually experienced the death marches of 1945.

 One of the best-known is the one from Auschwitz-Birkenau. As Red Army forces approached from the east, the Nazis evacuated the camp. Those prisoners able to walk were force-marched west to other camps. Many died en route. The exhibit is scheduled to open on Jan. 28, one day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the annual day of commemoration established by the United Nations that coincides with the day in 1945 that Auschwitz was liberated.

The exhibit was created by a panel of MOL executives and includes a substantial Canadian contribution. In addition to Weissenberg Cohen, other Canadian survivors featured in the exhibition include Nate Leipciger, Bill Glied, Mayer and Rena Schondorf, Max Iland and Anita Ekstein.

Images snapped by five Canadian photographers are included, while the poems and prose of Canadian teenagers feature prominently as well.

The images and the written words highlight just how emotional and difficult it can be for survivors to relive their painful experiences, Rubenstein said. For many survivors, it means visiting the scene of so much pain and heartache. For the students, “for the first time in their lives they’re coming across ultimate evil.”

Since its inception, March of the Living has brought more than 200,000 students to Europe, along with thousands of survivors. “The survivors tell their stories in the very places where the tragedies unfolded, and the students listen,” Rubenstein said.

Many of the students return to their homes dedicated to community service, he added. 

The exhibit will run through the end of February.

 

Paul Lungen, Staff Reporter

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

A Long-Awaited Return, feat. Jody Avirgan

A message to our readers with an update:

À la mémoire d’un ardent ambassadeur de la culture sépharade, Solly Levy Z.’L.’

Subscribe to the CJNSubscribe
RSS FeedView
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Subscribe / Member Centre (eCJN)
  • eCJN Archives
  • Supplements
  • Media Kit
  • Advertising Terms
  • Premiums

PODCAST TRAILER: These Are a Few of My Favourite Jews

75th Anniversary - Liberation of Auschwitz

Ezer Mizion's 2019 Night Shuk

  • Canada
  • Israel
  • International
  • Opinions
  • Food
  • Culture
  • En Français
  • CJN Podcast Network
The award-winning Canadian Jewish News (CJN) is Canada’s largest, weekly Jewish newspaper with an audited circulation of nearly 32,000 and read by more than 100,000 people each week.
© 2021 Canadian Jewish News
  • Comments Policy
  • Community Links
  • Contact Us
  • Media Kit
  • Privacy Policy
  • Subscribe
  • Admin
 Tweet
 Share
 WhatsApp
 Copy
 E-mail
 Tweet
 Share
 WhatsApp
 Copy
 E-mail
 Tweet
 Share
 LinkedIn
 WhatsApp
 Copy
 E-mail