Montreal's Jewish community remembers victims for Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day

Jewish communities mark Holocaust Remembrance Day Montreal’s Jewish community calls for understanding during Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On Sunday night, Jewish communities recognize Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, where six candles are lit at a ceremony at the Montreal Holocaust Museum, one for every million Jews killed during the Holocaust.

Amid a rising tide of anti-Semitism and conflict in the Middle East, one survivor from Montreal says now is the time for dialogue and understanding.

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

"Around us you see the names of all the concentration camps," she told CTV News. "Some I was connected to. Some I was not. All of them were families and children. This room is my pause and this light must not go out."

At the outset of the Second World War, Gropper's parents fled Poland, escaping Nazi persecution, only to be arrested by the Soviet Union army and sent to a slave labour camp in the Ural Mountains.

"I was born in a coal mine in Siberia," said Gropper. "And my mother was assured that there wasn't the remotest possibility that I would survive. She was determined to prove that a less than two-pound baby could survive."

The conditions were horrific, and many did not survive the mines.

Her family did, however, and came to Canada after the war.

"This country means a tremendous amount to me as I remember where we came from, and as I memorialize, never to forget, I am caught in today's news, and I can't help but feel upset, concerned," she said.

Since Oct. 7, Montreal police (SPVM) have reported 154 hate crimes and 55 incidents directed at the Jewish community.

At McGill University, the pro-Palestinian encampment has been peaceful for the most part, but earlier this week, video footage emerged of some demonstrators telling Jewish students to "go back to Europe."

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

"There is a difference between a noble cause, which is the Palestinian cause and what's happening and this statement that we hear," said Saada. "The Shoah is not a theory. It's not something which we talk about in a vacuum. It is 6 million people who lost their lives, and it's not the statistics and the statistics only. It is real people with real hopes, real aspirations, real pains. It was people like you and me. And these people have been eliminated just because they were Jewish."

Now in her 80s, Gropper devotes much of her time to telling her family's story, fostering understanding through her work at the Holocaust Museum.

"I want us to be able to live together," she said. "I am not interested in hate and my only tools as an educator of a lifetime, my only tool is education."