FREEPORT, N.S. — The Flag of Israel flew next to the Canadian flag at the entrance of the Island Consolidated School in honor of a very special guest speaker.
Nov. 5, students from Islands Consolidated School and Digby Regional High School were given the unique privilege to listen to, and engage with, holocaust survivor and world-renowned lecturer Pinchas Gutter.
Gutter, a gifted speaker and storyteller, had the young crowd enthralled and at times in tears as he shared his story of survival of one of the worst atrocities in history, the Holocaust.
For many young people, the Holocaust is just something people read about in history as direct connections to it dwindle as the years pass on.
Gutter is living history and his passionate words brought to life the words on the pages of a history book.
A sombre and heartbreaking reminder of what Gutter and other went through because of the Holocaust is included on the front cover of Pinchas Gutter's book ‘Memories In Focus.’ The cover photo includes a golden braid and a faceless girl, who is representative of his twin sister Sabina, who was murdered by the Nazis when she was 11 years old.
Gutter has a photographic memory but during his presentation, as he spoke of Sabina, he told the audience that the image of his sister's golden braid running towards his mother when they arrived at the death camp Majdanek was the last time he saw Sabina and now he has no clear memory of the face of his beloved twin sister.
Only the image of the braid remains.
This once-in-a-lifetime event for the students and community to hear Gutter’s story was made possible, in part, by Joan O’Neil, a very involved and caring teacher at Islands Consolidated. O’Neil coordinated with The Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program and the Atlantic Jewish Council to make this event happen.
Edna LeVine from the Atlantic Jewish Council and Elin Beaumont from the Azrieli Foundation were also instrumental in planning this presentation at Islands Consolidated School.
After the presentation Gutter took the time to talk with individual students and sign copies his memoirs ‘Memories In Focus,’ which was provided to each student free of cost thanks to The Azrieli Foundation.
The book was well-received by the students and many of the kids were seen reading it on the bus ride home.
The students in attendance were also able to view a beautiful and educational display of Jewish artifacts on loan from the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives arranged by Joe Bishara the Equity Consultant for TCRCE. The artifacts were from the Jewish Synagogue in Yarmouth that closed in 2006.
ABOUT PINCHAS GUTTER
The following is a biography about Pinchas Gutter that is included on the Jewish Federation of Ottawa website:
“Born into a well-established Hasidic family – who can trace their roots back 400 years in Poland – Pinchas Gutter was born in Lodz, Poland, and was 7 years old when the war broke out. He, along with his twin sister and entire family fled to what they thought was safety in Warsaw after his father had been brutally beaten by Nazis in Lodz.
Gutter and his family were incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto for three and a half years until April 1943.
During the first three weeks of the Ghetto uprising, his family’s bunker was discovered and they were deported to the death camp Majdanek.
The day the family arrived after a horrendous journey, Gutter's father, mother and twin sister were murdered by the Nazis.
Gutter was sent to a work camp where people were beaten, shot or worked to death.
He passed through several other concentration camps, including Buchenwald, and worked at loading and unloading enormous weights of iron and other slave work.
Towards the end of the war he was forced on a death march from Germany to Therenstadt in Czechoslovakia, which he barely survived.
He was liberated by the Russians on May 8, 1945, and under the auspices of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, was taken to Britain with other children for rehabilitation.”
THE HOLOCAUST:
The Holocaust was the Second World War genocide of the European Jewish population. During the Second World War, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, which was around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.
