A collaboration between Facing History and Ourselves and the Azrieli Foundation's Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program, first posted on Azrieli Memoirs' Blog page.

Words referencing mass atrocities of the past, such as fascist, racist, Nazi, genocide and Holocaust, carry deep historical meaning, yet these words are often misused in reference to contemporary events. Using these words too casually not only diminishes the meaning of the words themselves, but also diminishes the events that the words represent.   In this blog post, we look to remember the meaning of the term genocide and the conditions that drove a lawyer named Raphael Lemkin to coin this term to describe a horrific crime — a crime that prior to 1944 lacked a name and legal repercussions.

The following post is a collaboration between Facing History and Ourselves and the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program.

Remembrance Day is an opportunity for all Canadians to consider who we choose to remember and the lessons we can learn from people with first-hand experience of war. We invite our students to think deeply about the immeasurable costs of war, to weigh the sacrifices made for freedom and to honour the memory of Canadian soldiers. We bring testimony from soldiers and their loved ones into the classroom to deepen our students’ intellectual and emotional connections to those who fought and those who died. This Remembrance Day, bring a story about liberation — its necessity and its impact — to your students. Meet Claire Baum and learn her story.