Holocaust Education Month Launch
Honorary Chair - Stephen Victor K.C., Ph.D. (h.c.)
Registration required by Nov 1st, to Register click here
For additional information: info@chesatottawa.ca
Program Overview
The Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship (CHES) is the premier hub for Holocaust education in Ottawa with programs that focus on community engagement, remembrance, and outreach to schools.
CHES is proud to host the opening event for Holocaust Education Month 2024 on November 7th at 7:00 pm with the screening of the film, Sabotage. The launch coincides with the annual commemoration of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, the violent turning point in state-sponsored attacks on the Jews of Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
CHES is honored to support the Israeli film industry at this difficult time. Sabotage is an outstanding and sensitive Holocaust film. The guest speaker at the screening will be Noa Aharoni, the award-winning Israeli filmmaker who wrote and directed Sabotage. She will also participate in a panel discussion with Ariela Heiman, a daughter of Anna Heilman and a representative of Library and Archives Canada.
Sabotage is a story of courage, sisterhood, love, and resistance that began in Auschwitz and continued in Ottawa. It chronicles the actions of Estucia Wajcblum and the Jewish women’s underground resistance group at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Anna Wajcblum Heilman, Estucia’s sister, was a member of that resistance group which smuggled gun powder to the Jewish men of the Sonderkommando. During the Auschwitz uprising on October 7th, 1944, the men used the gun powder to blow up Crematorium IV. Through the eyes of Anna, Sabotage relates both the day-to-day routine of the camp but also the many little moments of camaraderie and friendship shaped between young women despite harsh circumstances.
On January 6th, 1945, a few weeks before Auschwitz was liberated, Estucia, Rosa Robota, Alla Gartner, and Regina Safirztan were publicly hanged, having been accused of the crime of sabotaging the Nazi war machine.
Sabotage is based on a diary that teenaged Anna Wajcblum wrote in Auschwitz. Now housed at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, the diary became a book entitled Never Far Away, and won a City of Ottawa Book Award in 2002.
Anna Wajcblum Heilman emigrated to Ottawa with her husband and two daughters in 1960. She was a well-respected social worker and supervisor at the Children’s Aid Society and lived in Ottawa until her death on Yom HaShoah in 2011. Anna was an advocate for Holocaust education and participated in the March of the Living in 1994.
“Anna’s narration, as she recounts her love for her sister and the courage of the young women with the stunning animation by Avi A. Katz, are profoundly moving,” said Janet Kaiman, a neighbour and friend of Anna and a member of the CHES Event Committee.
Noa Aharoni, film director: Graduated from Sapir College in 1994 in Television and Cinema. She won the Best Documentary Film Award (Forum of Documentary Creators, Israel) and was nominated for the Ophir Award for Best Documentary.
Noa is a director of both feature films and documentaries. In her opinion, the combination of both mediums in Sabotage is the secret that will bring the viewer to the emotional place she looks for in her films.
“When I ask myself what attracted me to making Sabotage, my answer is unequivocal. The female perspective on the Holocaust, or if you will, the heroism of women in the Holocaust,” said Noa.
