80 years ago today, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated. More than one million people had been sent to their deaths at this camp. From 1933 to 1945, there were six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. January 27th is now International Holocaust Remembrance Day, where Canadians and people around the world can remember these victims and reflect on this great tragedy.  

This country was far from disconnected with the Holocaust. Canada accepted 5,000 Jewish refugees between 1933 and 1945, the lowest number among other Western countries. In 1939, 907 refugees boarded a boat called the St. Louis and fled Germany, only to be denied entrance to Canada. They had to return to Europe, and 254 of these passengers later became victims of the Holocaust. Canada also liberated a camp in the Netherlands in 1945. It is crucial for Canadians to reflect on Canada’s history of antisemitism and be educated about the horrors of the Holocaust.  

The Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program is the perfect resource for anyone looking to learn more about the Holocaust and what the victims experienced, especially through The Azrieli Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs. 

The Azrieli Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program

 Established in 2005 by the Azrieli Foundation, this program collects and shares memoirs written by Holocaust survivors. These survivors, coming from all over Europe, all ended up in Canada after the war. Over 127 memoirs have been published over the past twenty years, and almost 800,000 copies have been given to Canadian students and teachers. Editors and researchers ensure that the memoirs are factually correct and will include extra elements such as maps, glossaries, and explanatory introductions to enhance the reader’s understanding. 

 David J. Azrieli, founder of the Azrieli Foundation, was a Holocaust survivor. In accordance with his philanthropic beliefs, the charity is non-partisan and not for profit. The charity has funded many institutions in the decades since it was established in 1989. By 2014, it had donated over 100 million dollars in total. The Azrieli Foundation has programs in its priority funding areas, which includes the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program. 

 In 2002, David’s memoir One Step Ahead was published. Working with his daughter, Danna Azrieli, David wrote about his search for safety as a refugee during the Holocaust. Through the emotional journey of writing his memoir, David Azrieli saw how important it was for stories like his to be preserved and widely accessible. He wanted to ensure the Holocaust’s history was never forgotten. 

 As the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program states: “The Holocaust is not just one story. Each survivor has a story. Each story deserves a life.” 

The Azrieli Holocaust Education

The Azrieli Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program has certain principles on why individual’s stories are important for Holocaust education. Each memoir is different, focusing on the specific location, political context, and fine details. Students can therefore grasp the great diversity and number of experiences in the Holocaust. By recounting each person’s normal life before the changes of war, students connect to the authors on a human level. With a memoir’s first-person perspective, students can see how the Holocaust affected individual people in a personal way. Finally, the Azrieli Foundation believes that students need to be challenged and think critically about sensitive topics such as the Holocaust. 

The program has lots of resources for bringing this education into middle school and high school classrooms and curriculum. Available in both English and French, there are education programs and activities. The programs have units with multiple lessons, utilizing Canadian survivors’ stories. The activities will narrow in on a certain survivor or theme. The website also offers tools to educators. There’s a guide for preparing to educate about the Holocaust, a graphic explaining the core content of the Holocaust, and teacher workshops. These workshops are free for school and school boards across Canada, both virtual and in-person. 

As explained in their Academic Catalogue, the program’s educational purposes reach past high school and into post-secondary schools. Scholars around the world use these memoirs while studying the individual and diverse survivor stories. The catalogue, a downloadable PDF found here, identifies which titles are best for teaching and research at this level. The categories are Wartime Writing, Women’s Stories from Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Global Migrations. 

For the highlights of the series, the catalogue had two selections. In the Hour of Fate and Danger, by Ferenc Andai, describes his experience at Bor, a forced labour camp in Serbia. He was one of the youngest prisoners kept there, and the memoir follows his liberation and journey afterwards. The other memoir is unique because it was first written in 1942. The Diary of Molly Applebaum, by Molly Applebaum, follows her hiding below ground in Poland and her life after being rescued.  

Academic conferences are organized to allow scholars to discuss testimonies of Holocaust survivors. “The Role of Auschwitz in Holocaust Narratives” will be held in Toronto in May of this year, although the deadline to submit a Call for Paper has passed. 

 The Azrieli Series of Survivor Memoirs

To see a more extensive list of all the memoirs the Azrieli Foundation has to offer, look here. It is impossible to summarize the types of memoirs as each author’s experience is so diverse. For example, Flights of Spirit is about Elly Gotz surviving the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania, and then a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp. Rami Neudorger’s introduction provides the political history for Gotz’s memoir. Many pictures are included of the people and events that Gotz references. That is only one of the many memoirs available, in English and in French.

The Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program has an Educators’ Catalogue, published in 2025. Anyone looking for more details on the resources and tools for educators teaching about the Holocaust can do so by downloading the PDF here. Aside from those resources, the catalogue includes new releases and memoirs in different formats. 

A Mother to My Mother by Malka Pischanitskaya was released in September of last year. Pischanitskaya recounts her and her mother’s escape from her town in Ukraine that had been taken over by Nazis. This January, Between the Lines: The Diary of Margit Kassai by Margit Kassai was released. Her memoir follows her surviving a Nazi occupation in Budapest and then assuming a false identity while working in children’s homes. The Azrieli Series has a few anthologies. Before All Memory is Lost: Women’s Voices from the Holocaust, by Myrna Goldenberg, includes reflections from twenty women of their experiences. There are memoir excerpts from twenty-two survivors in Ferenc Laczó’s Confronting Devastation: Memoirs of Holocaust Survivors from Hungary. In At Great Risk: Memoirs of Rescue during the Holocaust by Eva Lang, David Korn, and Fishel Philip Goldig, those three survivors recount their stories. The memoir also includes a section with the rescue stories of thirteen other Azrieli Foundation authors. 

A few of these memoirs have audiobook formats. Hear it Here First, a new series of audiobooks, launched January 26th in Toronto. While still a relatively small collection, a good number of the memoirs are voiced by their own author. These include The Hidden Package by Claire Baum, Where Courage Lives by Muguette Myers, Flights of Spirit by Elly Gotz and A Cry in Unison by Judy Cohen.  

The Azrieli Foundation: Resources for Learning 

Looking for Holocaust survivor testimonies on a smaller scale than a full-length memoir, or a comprehensive guide to the history of the Holocaust? The Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program has some very helpful resources on their website for both of those things. 

The Azrieli Series Short Films, found here, are a series of 5-10 minute videos. Each video concerns a different survival story, using a mix of animation and footage of interviews. These videos, which include George Stern: Vanished Boyhood and Marguerite Élias Quddus: In Hiding, provide a great opportunity to get to know some survivors of the Holocaust. 

Another tab on the Azrieli Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program website are for exhibits. Each exhibit is an interactive look into Holocaust stories. Education Disrupted is about the youth and children in the Holocaust who had to look for education afterwards. The exhibit is separated into four “books” for readers to click through.

In the exhibit Liberating Our Stories, readers can click on five different authors to get their story about being liberated. Four Stories from the Warsaw Ghetto describes how some Jewish survivors lived their lives in a ghetto where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered. 

Included with these exhibits was the Sustaining Memories program, which began in 2011. A team of eighteen transcribers set out to help Holocaust survivors write their memoirs. Within five years, the project had resulted in more than ninety memoirs. It then became a Writing Lives course at Langara College, where students continue to help producing memoirs. 

The last resource is called Re:Collection. While it is an educational tool that can be implemented in the classroom, it is an easy way to explore the stories of the survivors and the history of the Holocaust. There are interactive maps and timelines. Interviews, photos, memoir excerpts, and more is used to elevate the reader’s learning. 

The Azrieli Foundation has done and will continue to do amazing work for Holocaust education. For Canadians who want to hear the stories of Holocaust survivors, there is no better place to look. One single memoir can change a reader’s entire perspective. As the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program website states: “For readers, these memoirs are a powerful and moving way to connect with a real person and to learn about Holocaust history through the people who survived. By entering the past through the life of an individual, a reader’s understanding of history is forever changed.”