International Holocaust Remembrance Day marked in B.C. amid increase in antisemitic incidents

Looking back on his childhood, 84-year-old Janos Benisz says it's a miracle he survived to live a long life at all.

During the Second World War, when he was six, he and his mother were taken from their home in Hungary and sent to a concentration camp in Austria.

"At age six..I had the body of a three-year-old. My mother kept me alive by taking my cup and getting me what they called food. In those days they wouldn't give it to an animal," he recalled from Vancouver this week.

Benisz, who was nicknamed "kicsi," meaning little one in Hungarian, was forced to sleep on concrete floors. He soon was covered in lice and struggled to survive the inhumane conditions.

"It was the worst thing that ever happened," he said about being at the camp for nine months. "I had nightmares until I was in my mid-teens. I had a tremendous inferiority complex until age 27."

Benisz came to Canada in 1948 after the camp was liberated in1945. For the past decade he's visited schools across B.C to educate students about the Holocaust, the millions of people who died, and its far-reaching effects on families and survivors.

"There are deniers... but I'm living proof that it did take place," he said, adding that sharing his story publicly has helped him heal.

Friday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the day Russia's Soviet forces liberated one of the largest, most notorious death camps in German-occupied Europe — Auschwitz-Birkenau.

One-million Jews were murdered there, while six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

Advocates say this year, the remembrance day, established in 2005, has increased importance following a rise in anti-Semitic hate incidents over the course of the pandemic.

"We've seen mounting antisemitism, racism and xenophobia globally and in our own backyard even," said Nina Krieger, executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. "The Holocaust speaks to, really, the possible consequences of hate left unchecked."

In the spring of 2022, Jewish advocacy group B'nai Brith released its annual audit of antisemitic incidents. It found sharp increases in anti-Jewish hate crimes, including beatings, vandalism of synagogues and swastikas in schools across Canada.

The audit said British Columbia experienced a 111 per cent increase in incidents from 2020 to 2021 — from 194 to 409, including 56 cases of vandalism and 296 incidents of online abuse and hatred.

Ezra Shanken, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, said with a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors and eyewitnesses left, International Holocaust Remembrance Day is an opportunity for people to stand together against modern-day hate. 

"It's a time to honour the souls of those who were just needlessly murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust," said Shanken. "We want to create that sacred space so that people understand the gravity of the horrors that [were] perpetrated 78 years ago."

In a statement and recorded video for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, B.C. Premier David Eby said his government is committed to standing up for human rights.

"We must always speak out against antisemitism, prejudice and violence. We will never forget the atrocities of the past and we will always share these lessons with younger generations."