Meeting

Right. I had a meeting this afternoon at the Jewish Community Centre in Vancouver. Jewish Community Citadel would be more like it.

The first line of staff you meet are über Jewish. They are related to Maureen Lipman, to Miriam Margolyes. They look Jewish and speak in comedy Jewish tones. But they seem not to know where, inside the citadel, the museum is. Then they said we might try the third floor.
Don't forget the additional confusion of the third floor actually being the second floor. They didn't say that, but I wish they would.

We are in a small room. Very small. A Latin American woman is doing some research on one of the exhibits, pictures of people exterminated in the Holocaust. The pictures personalise the experience. And it's true. Just looking at these ordinary family photos is horrifying, because these ordinary people, not faceless people, not strange, alien people with shaved heads and emaciated bodies, make it real. Ordinary people taken from their homes, who will be put in a big airless room and then the doors will be shut and not a single chink of light will break through. The ordinary people will experience intense, visceral fear, utter hopelessness, animal panic, horror and then suffering, they will die.

The Latin American woman has a strong accent. Very strong. She has no inflection. And she has a speech impediment. Beneath it all her English is good, but she is almost impossible to follow.

Later, after bagels and cream cheese we look around the small gift shop. Calendars in Hebrew catch my attention, but they cost $18 and the Jewish year is already a third done.

Then we go into the basement to see the Holocaust Learning Centre. There is an amazing interactive exhibit. Panels with pictures and information, video of the Nürnberg trials. Then a courtroom setup. The children 'try' one of the defendants, Julius Streicher. Apparently 50% of them find him not guilty but are horrified by his crimes.

The first of the information panels has letters about 8 inches high. A word draws me to it, 'Vengence'. I can't let it go. 'Vengence'. I nudge someone and ask if that is American spelling of the word 'vengeance'. Yes. But I keep looking. I get home and look it up. It isn't.
They were talking of packing up the exhibit and sending it on elsewhere. I'll have to phone them tomorrow.