“We were living in peace when war was declared in 1939. I was evacuated with my school to a small town in the south-east of France, not far from Paris. »
Muguette Myers vividly remembers the year of her eighth birthday. On the phone, she evokes with disconcerting precision her memories of the beginning of the war, but also of the long run that she then began with her family.
Established in Montreal for more than 70 years, Mme Myers is a Holocaust survivor. She now tells her story to school groups at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. The institution is preparing to move from its current location in the Côte-des-Neiges district to establish itself on Saint-Laurent Boulevard, in the heart of the city, starting in 2025. Excavation work for the new installations will begin during the summer.
“Honestly, it’s been a dream for several years, we don’t have enough space to do everything we want at the museum,” explains the establishment’s communications director, Sarah Fogg. “We don’t have enough space for school groups, we don’t have a place for temporary exhibitions and, with the new museum, we’ll be able to do everything. »
Classrooms, exhibition halls and an auditorium will be part of the new facilities. The total cost of the move is expected to approach $100 million. The governments of Quebec and Canada have pledged to fund the project to the tune of $20 million each, while the City of Montreal is contributing $1.5 million. The rest comes from private funds.
The different things that lead to genocide can still happen today, in other societies around us, and even in Quebec.
The KPMB Architects + Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker team was chosen to create the facilities following an international architectural competition.
The museum’s new location, on Saint-Laurent Boulevard near Sherbrooke Street, was not chosen at random. “If we study the immigration history of Jewish communities, especially communities of survivors [de l’Holocauste]that’s where the first groups settled,” explains Ms.me Fogg.
Youth education
One of the vocations of the museum is education about the history of the Holocaust, especially among the youngest. It currently welcomes 20,000 visitors a year, half of whom come from school groups. In the new infrastructures, the institution is aiming for 100,000 visitors annually.
This prospect delights Sivane Hirsch, professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières. “By going to better understand the phenomenon of genocide, and the Holocaust in particular in this case, we learn a lot about racism, about populism”, affirms the one who studies the taking into account of ethnocultural and religious diversity at the ‘school. “Having a museum and not just learning about it from books means that we understand this reality differently. »
And the knowledge of young people on this subject is more superficial than one might think. A 2019 Azrieli Foundation poll reports nearly a quarter of Canadians aged 18-34 have never heard of the Holocaust, and more than half are unable to name a single side Nazi.
“There are young people who are very well informed, and we must help them find the right sources, to fully understand the issues,” she nevertheless underlines with hope. “But it is certain that at school, we do not make enough room either for the Holocaust or for other genocides. »
Polarization even in Quebec
Mme Hirsch believes the new museum will reach more people, in a contemporary context where anti-Semitism has not gone away. “The different things that lead to genocide can still happen today, in other societies around us, and even in Quebec,” she says. Even if Quebec is not a society where there is more racism than elsewhere, there is racism and social polarization here too. »
According to Statistics Canada, hate crimes reported to the police and targeting the Jewish religion increased by 47% in 2021. The director of communications of the museum, Sarah Fogg, for her part, notes a significant polarization on social media.
“While managing the museum’s accounts, I see hateful comments every day,” she laments. “We need more education about the Holocaust, because that’s how we see the dangers of anti-Semitism, and it helps us build better citizens. »
Take nothing for granted
Holocaust survivor Muguette Myers, meanwhile, plans to continue lecturing to children when the museum moves into its new location. For her, it is essential. She believes that no society is safe from a genocidal drift.
“When I arrived in Canada with my mother, I asked her: ‘Mom, it can’t happen here, what happened in Europe?’ She replied: “You should never say that, because Germany was the most civilized country in all of Europe. All the great composers, the great writers, the great philosophers were German. And look what happened.” »
To the young people who will attend her conference in the new museum from 2025, she intends to quote these words of the Jewish author Elie Wiesel. They still seem relevant to him, more than 77 years after the closure of the last concentration camp in Europe: “Silence encourages the executioner, never the victim. »