Montreal's Jewish community honors its victims on Holocaust Remembrance Day

On Sunday night, the Jewish community will recognize Yom HaShoach, Holocaust Remembrance Day, where six candles will be lit in a ceremony at the Montreal Holocaust Museum, one for every million Jews killed during the Holocaust.

Yom HaShoah means Evening of the Sun.

A Montreal survivor says now is the time for dialogue and understanding amid rising anti-Semitism and conflict in the Middle East.

Rachel Kruger Gropper said she was filled with a sense of loss and decision as she stood beneath the eternal flame at the museum.

“All around us you see the names of all the concentration camps,” he told CTV News. “Some I connected with. Some I didn't. They were all families and children. This room is my break and this light must not go out.”

At the beginning of World War II, Gropper's parents fled Poland to escape Nazi persecution, but were captured by the Soviet Union and sent to a slave labor camp in the Ural Mountains.

“I was born in a coal mine in Siberia,” Gropper said. “And my mother convinced me that it was impossible for me to survive. He was determined to prove that a baby weighing less than two pounds could survive.'

Conditions were dire and many survived the mines.

However, his family came to Canada after the war.

“This country is very important to me because I remember where we came from, I remember, I never forget, I get caught up in today's news, I don't feel bad, I don't worry,” he said.

Since October 7, the Montreal Police Department (SPVM) has reported 154 hate crimes and 55 incidents against the Jewish community.

A pro-Palestinian camp at McGill University has been mostly peaceful, but footage emerged earlier this week of some demonstrators telling Jewish students to “go back to Europe.”

For Jacques Saada, president of the Holocaust Museum, the slogan shows a lack of understanding and compassion.

“There is a difference between the Palestinian cause and what is happening and this statement that we heard,” Saada said. “The Shoah is not a theory. It's not something we talk about in a vacuum. It killed 6 million people, it's not just statistics and statistics. It's real people with real hopes, real aspirations. These were people like you and me, who were destroyed just because they were Jewish.

Now in his 80s, Gropper spends much of his time promoting understanding and telling his family's story through his work at the Holocaust Museum.

“I want us to live together,” he said. “As an educator throughout my life, hate is not my only tool, my only tool is knowledge.”