Holocaust survivor Max Eisen speaks about acts of hate
Max Eisen speaks about his experience in Auschwitz and talks about current acts of hate at Centennial College’s Holocaust Education Week’s event.
Max Eisen speaks about his experience in Auschwitz and talks about current acts of hate at Centennial College’s Holocaust Education Week’s event.
Max Eisen stood at the podium delivering a talk about surviving the Holocaust. There were screens to either side of him showing photos of his life before, during, and after living at Auschwitz II-Birkenau during the last year of the Second World War. Eisen paused the slideshow at a picture of a poster of him that was vandalised in 2018, beside a synagogue in Toronto.
For Holocaust Education Week, Canada Reads 2019 winner Max Eisen, 90, brought his message of fighting hatred to Centennial College students Tuesday in Toronto. Toronto Observer reporters are there to bring you live coverage of the event.
For Elizabeth Olive, remembrances of war are sometimes few and far between. “My grandfather was a prisoner of war,” she said, noting his experience in Asia during the Second World War. “He died many years before I was born – I never met him – but I learned of his story through my mum and I knew that I needed to follow that up.”
Imagine, “A school girl without a school, without the fun and excitement of school. A child without games, without friends, without fun, without birds, without nature, without fruits, without sweets. With just a little powdered milk, in short, a child, without a childhood. A wartime child.”
These lines are from the diary of Zlata Filipovic, describing her life as a 10-year-old girl living in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.