By: Myriam Brenner, FSWC Education Program Coordinator

Yom HaShoah is the Jewish Memorial Day for the Shoah. It is a day to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust, as well as honour the Jewish resistance that arose as a result of these atrocities. Close to 35,000 Holocaust survivors chose Canada to begin their new lives after surviving unimaginable horrors. These survivors contributed greatly toward building a strong, diverse and more inclusive society in Canada.

One of these survivors was the late Max Eisen. Max first experienced the evil of the Holocaust as a young boy. In 1944, at age 15, while celebrating the Passover holiday with his family in their home in Moldava in the former Czechoslovakia, gendarmes forcibly removed Max and his family from their home, deporting them to the notorious Auschwitz death camp. He survived the selection process and became a slave labourer. In addition to the horrific conditions at Auschwitz, where his mother and siblings were sent to the gas chambers, Max also survived a horrific beating and a forced “death march” near the end of the war. Of his entire large family, only Max and two cousins survived the Holocaust.

Max last saw his father on July 9,1944, with only a short time in which to say goodbye. His father told him that if he survived, he must tell the world what had happened at Auschwitz. After his liberation, and facing new difficulties in Communist Czechoslovakia, in 1949, Max immigrated to Canada where he dedicated the last decades of his life to educating people about the Holocaust. As an active participant in the March of the Living and Compassion to Action educational programs, he made multiple journeys back to Auschwitz with thousands of students and adults alike. In 2016, Max released his memoir, By Chance Alone which was the 2019 Canada Reads winner. In 2021, he was appointed a member of the Order of Canada “for his contributions to Holocaust education and for his promotion of transformational dialogue on human rights, tolerance and respect."

Video Testimony from Max Eisen: Never Forget Me – Learning from Survivors

Study guide for Max Eisen’s book: https://d33213apryksis.cloudfront.net/reading-guides/RG-9781443448543.pdf.