Here
is an interesting article I found relating to Kristen and Sarah’s presentation
and Vukov’s article “Performing the Immigrant Nation at Pier 21: Politics and
counter politics in the Memorializing of Canadian Immigration”. The article provides a detailed background
behind the creation of the monument.
Libeskind
memorial to Jews rejected in Halifax unveiled
Sculpture commemorates ship of
refugees turned away on eve of WW II
The Wheel of Conscience was created by the Polish-born American architect
Daniel Libeskind to commemorate the St. Louis. (CBC)A memorial
to the hundreds of Jews aboard the MS St. Louis who were turned away from
Canada on the eve of the Second World War was unveiled in Halifax Thursday.
In May 1939, almost 1,000 European Jews fled Nazi Germany for Cuba,
which had issued them visas. After sailing for a week, the ocean liner pulled
into Havana harbour. After waiting for several days, the 937 passengers learned
Cuba had changed its mind, and the ship was told to leave.
The captain sailed along the eastern seaboard, asking the United States
and Canada to let the ship land, but both said no. The ship was forced to
return to Europe, and about 250 of the people on board eventually died in
concentration camps.
The Halifax monument, called The Wheel of Conscience, was created
by the celebrated American architect Daniel Libeskind and unveiled at Pier 21,
Canada's national immigration museum.
Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said Pier 21 was
chosen as the site of the monument because that is where the St. Louis would
likely have landed had Canada allowed it to do so. The ship was within two days
of Halifax Harbour when Ottawa refused to grant the Jewish refugees entry.
"The St. Louis is not a moment frozen in historical time but is
rather a part of the continuum of human experience and must be owned by all of
us if its memory is to have any value today," he said.
Libeskind is the son of Holocaust survivors. He was born in Poland in
1946 and immigrated to Israel in 1957 and then to the U.S. two years later. He
became a U.S. citizen in 1965.
Libeskind said his father passed through Pier 21 on his way to the U.S.
He said he wanted to tell the story of the St. Louis in a way that would recall
the ill-fated passengers and affect people today.
"I thought, how does that image of that ship that people have in
their heads — how does it fracture, fragment and disappear from reality because
of the callousness of the machinery which drives not only bureaucracy or the
ship but the machinery of forgetting?" he said.
"I thought, what are those elements that drive the tragedy?"
Libeskind said the gears that moved the ill-fated St. Louis — both
literally and metaphorically — are represented in his work. The large steel
sculpture looks like clockwork, with a gear labeled "Hatred" turning
the increasingly larger gears of "Racism," "Xenophobia" and
"Anti-Semitism." The faces of the visitors and an image of the St.
Louis are dimly mixed in its machinations.
"You realize that you are not just in a static situation,"
Libeskind said. "We are in a living world, and part of that living world
is that those structures of hatred, of bias, of anti-Semitism are all around
us. How do we stop them? How do we create a better world?"
Libeskind, who designed the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto among many
other buildings, is married to a Canadian and has lived in Canada. He said the
country is a fitting home for his piece. He said he wanted it to help people
understand that it is their decisions in the present that will make a better
future.
'Greatest crime of human
history'
Jason Kenney, the minister for immigration, citizenship and
multiculturalism, called Thursday a day of commemoration and celebration.
"Had Canada taken a stand, had it been true to its best and highest
values, had it opened its doors of refuge to those passengers fleeing the
violent anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime, it is probable that ... they would
have walked down the gangplank right here," he said.
"How many other Daniel Libeskinds, how many other brilliant
artists, creators, builders, entrepreneurs, how many human beings did we close
the door to during the greatest crime of human history? We will never
know."
He said it was important that the students who would pass through the
museum's St. Louis exhibit learned about Canada's own history of racism and
hatred as expressed by the rejection of the St. Louis.
After the war, Canada became the third largest refuge for Jews, after
Israel and the U.S.
Jon Goldberg of the Atlantic Jewish Council says it is important to
remember the St. Louis and the lessons Canada has learned from it.
"We have gone from darkness to light as a country, and it makes me
proud as a Canadian," he said.
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