1. The Holocaust
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!” – Edmund Burke

2. Background to Holocaust
For thousands of years Jews in Europe had suffered persecution and discrimination
Blamed by Christians for the crucifixion of Jesus
Maintained separate and distinct cultural communities throughout Europe
Before Hitler came to power, the Jewish community in Germany was well established and well integrated into German society
Significant contributions to German life and culture (literature, music, art, medicine, philosophy, science, etc…)
many thousand Jewish men fought in the WWI for the German Empire!
Irrationally Hitler blamed the Jews for the failure of WWI and the subsequent economic collapse of the German economy → “The Jews are our misfortune!”

3. Holocaust Timeline
1933 – general discrimination (burning Jewish books, advocates boycotting Jewish business
1935 – The Nuremberg Laws → Official Laws specifically targeting the Jewish community
Legally defines a Jew → one Jewish grandparent
Jews are declared non-citizens – no legal rights
Forbids marriage of Jews and non-Jews
1938 – The government sanctions the destruction of Jewish property
Kristallnacht – “Night of the Shattered Glass” – marks the true beginning of outright violence against Jews in Germany
Jews are forced to where Yellow Star, their businesses and property are confiscated
1939 – Jews are forced into ghettos – most notorious was the Warsaw ghetto, established in Poland

4. The “Final Solution”
1941 – the Final Solution begins → genocide of Jews in Europe
Mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps begin
Mass murder of Jews in gas chambers
Bodies are cremated → holocaust (Greek word: Holos (whole) Kaustos (burnt)
As the German army advance through Europe, the Einsatzgruppen (elite SS death squads) would identify and execute Jews, communists and homosexuals
In total, over 6 million Jews were murdered and over 10 million people died in Nazi death camps!

5. Executions of Kiev Jews by German army mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) near Ivangorod Ukraine.

7. Selection of Jews at the ramp in Auschwitz-II (Birkenau), May/June 1944.

8. Anti-Semitism in Canada
Canada also displayed racist & anti-Semetic attitudes at the official level
In 1939 the Canadian government sends Jewish refugees on board the St. Louis back to Germany to certain death
In 1945, a senior official, when asked how many Jews Canada would bring in after the war, responded “none is too many”

9. The "St. Louis," carrying Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany

10. Japanese Internment
Japanese and Chinese Canadians have a presence in Canada going back well before 1900
Asians have suffered a long history of prejudice and discrimination
1907 – race riots in Vancouver targeted Japanese and Chinese Canadians
Japanese & Chinese Canadians were denied the right to vote or join armed forces

11. Japanese Internment
Japan became an enemy of Canada after the attack on Pearl Harbor 1941
22,000 Japanese Canadians living in B.C., 14,000 born here
War Measures Act permitted the Canadian government to seize the property of Japanese Canadians, remove them from their homes and relocate them into “internment Camps”
All their property was auctioned off to pay for the cost of their “internment”!

12. Does this sound familiar?
Japanese Canadians were…
Photographed and fingerprinted
Issued identification numbers
Required to carry their identification cards at all times
Sent to interment camps where they were forced to do labour
All resisters were sent to a “concentration camp” in Ontario where they were forced to wear “uniforms” bearing a large red circle – the emblem of Japan
Could not legally refuse to obey these regulations
During war years not one Japanese Canadian was ever charged with treason or sabotage!

13. Japanese Interment

14. Dr. David Suzuki – Former interment camp inmate

15. Genocide Post WWII
After WWII the world community vowed it would never again tolerate such a hateful treatment of humanity
Since WWII attempted genocides have occurred in:
Cambodia
Kosovo
Rwanda
Darfur