Diane Afoumado, Lead Researcher, Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Diane Afoumado, Ph.D., is the lead researcher at the Registry of Holocaust Survivors at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She taught at the University of Paris X - Nanterre and was a lecturer at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales and at the Centre Elie Wiesel in Paris, France. She has also worked as an historian at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris.

She is the author of a book about the St. Louis, entitled Exil impossible. L’errance des Juifs du paquebot St. Louis (L’Harmattan, 2005). She recently published a book about antisemitic propaganda in France during the Second World War, Affiches antisémites en France sous l’Occupation (Berg International, 2008).

Naomi Alboim, Fellow & Adjunct Professor, School of Policy Studies, Queens University, Kingston, ON; former Deputy Minister, Ontario Ministry of Citizenship

Naomi Alboim is Vice Chair of the Policy Forum and adjunct professor at the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University. She is a Senior Fellow at the Maytree Foundation, a founding director of the Board of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, where she chairs its Intergovernmental Committee. Prior to this, Ms. Alboim worked at senior levels in the federal and Ontario provincial governments for 25 years, including eight years as Deputy Minister in three different portfolios. Her areas of responsibility included immigration, human rights, equity, disability, and aboriginal issues. Ms. Alboim is a recipient of Queen Elizabeth II’s Jubilee Gold Medal for Public Service and is a member of the Order of Ontario.


Gerhard Bassler, Department of History, Memorial University, NL; author of Sanctuary Denied

Gerhard Bassler is a dedicated Holocaust educator. Recently, he pioneered and taught the popular undergraduate research seminar “The Holocaust in Historical Perspective” at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. In 2004, he received an award for Outstanding Contributions to Holocaust Education in Newfoundland and Labrador (2004). Bassler is the author of Sanctuary Denied and Alfred Valdmanis and the Politics of Survival, which focus extensively on Newfoundland’s and Latvia’s connections to the Holocaust.

Frank Bialystok, Professor, Department of History, University of Toronto; Chair, Canadian Jewish Congress – Ontario Region

Frank Bialystok is a professor of Modern European and Modern Jewish History, and has taught at the Universities of York, Waterloo, and Toronto. His book, Delayed Impact: The Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community, won the Tannenbaum Prize in Canadian Jewish History and was nominated for the Governor General’s Award For Non-Fiction.

Dr. Bialystok is Chair of Canadian Jewish Congress (Ontario Region), and sits on the national executive of CJC; he is also a founding member and past chair of the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, for which he was awarded the Cavalier’s Cross of the Order of Poland, and a member of the Canadian Delegation to the International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Commemoration and Research.

Jacquie Chic, Instructor, Department of Politics and Public Administration; Holocaust Education Committee, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON

Jacquie Chic is a Ph.D. candidate at York University and an instructor at Ryerson University, where she lectures on human rights and related issues. She initiated Ryerson’s first annual Holocaust Education Week series in 1995 and continues to be a part of its planning. A lawyer by training, she served as a member of B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights legal committee in the mid 1990s. She worked for years at Parkdale Community Legal services, a community legal aid clinic in Toronto’s west end, and later as the Director of Advocacy and Legal Services at the Income Security Advocacy Centre. She currently does legal volunteer work with the Workers’ Action Centre, a non-profit community based organization serving minimum wage workers.

Carla Divinsky, Holocaust Education Coordinator, Freeman Family Foundation Holocaust Education Centre, Winnipeg

Carla Divinsky is the Holocaust Education Coordinator for the Jewish Heritage Centre, and in that capacity has organised the annual Holocaust Symposium since 2001. She also coordinates the annual student trip from Winnipeg to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. She also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Holocaust Education Centre and of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada. Born in the Netherlands during the Second World War, the Holocaust has formed an important part of her own and her family’s history.

Frédérick Guillaume Dufour, Professor of Sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal, QC

Dr. Frédérick Guillaume Dufour is currently a professor in the Department of Sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Formerly affiliated with York University, he has conducted extensive research on the study of genocides and the Holocaust. Amongst his ground-breaking research is a study titled, Toward a Socio-Historical Theory of Persecution and an Analytical Concept of Genocide. He has lectured in Canada and in Europe about the challenges of teaching the Holocaust from the perspectives of different countries. He has also focused his research on issues relating to acceptance and exclusion of immigrants and minority groups.

Howard Duncan, Executive Head, Metropolis Project, Ottawa

Howard Duncan received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1981 from the University of Western Ontario. In his capacity as a post-doctoral fellow, he subsequently taught philosophy at the University of Ottawa and the University of Western Ontario. In 1987, Dr. Duncan entered the field of consulting in strategic planning, policy development and program evaluation. In 1989 he joined the Department of Health and Welfare in Ottawa where he worked in program evaluation, strategic planning, and policy. In 2002, he became the Executive Head of the Metropolis Project, an international network for research and policy development on migration, diversity, and immigrant integration in cities in Canada and abroad.

Jonathan Friedrichs, Killarney Secondary School, Vancouver School Board, BC

Jonathan Friedrichs currently teaches special education at Killarney Secondary School in Vancouver, B.C.  Next year he will be teaching film, drama and English.  He is also currently working towards his M.Ed. at Simon Fraser University.  He worked at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC) for two years as a research assistant from 2003-2005.  He has written several articles for the VHEC’s quarterly publication, Zachor, has trained docents for the Anne Frank exhibit, and conducted research and design for the VHEC’s Faces of Loss exhibit. In the summer of 2007 he attended the three-week Yad Vashem international teacher education program in Jerusalem.  He has recently co-created a teaching unit entitled More Than Just Games: Canada and the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Alain Goldschläger, Conference Chair; Director, Holocaust Literature Research Institute, University of Western Ontario

Alain Goldschläger studied French Literature at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and received his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. He is a Professor of French Literature at the University of Western Ontario, where he also directs the Holocaust Literature Research Institute, which contains one of the largest collections of Holocaust survivors’ published accounts. He was president of the Canadian Semiotic Association, president of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association, and National Director of the Canada-Israel Foundation for Academic Exchanges.  He is currently Ontario chair of the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada. A prolific writer and author, he has published Judaïsme et Laïcité (1988), Le Mensonge (1993), Scientific Discourse as Prejudice-carrier (1998), La Shoah: témoignage impossible? (1998), Antisémitisme après la Shoah (2002) and Le complot judéo-maçonnique (2005), set to come out in English translation in 2009. His most recent book is L’Imaginaire juif, on Jewish ethos.

Rachel Gracey, Quaker Road Public School, Welland, District School Board of Niagara, ON

Rachel B. Gracey is an intermediate teacher with the District School Board of Niagara (DSBN).  She has been teaching the Holocaust to students for many years and is in the process of finalizing a literacy and character education unit on Holocaust education, specifically for elementary-aged students.  Rachel has co-hosted the annual DSBN Intermediate Holocaust Symposium and Anti-Discrimination Day for the last four years, bringing survivors, authors, community members, teachers and students together to discuss this important topic.  In the summer of 2008, she participated in the March of the Living for Educators and toured important Holocaust sites in Germany and Poland and attended the 6th Annual International Conference on Holocaust Education in Jerusalem, Israel.

Alice Herscovitch, Executive Director, Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre

Alice Herscovitch joined the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre as Executive Director in October 2007. She is the former Director of Social Development at the Conférence régionale des élus, and was previously the Executive Director of Project Genesis, a community organization working on issues of social rights and social justice. She lectured for nine years at the McGill University School of Social Work on social policy. She has worked for over 30 years with communities and organizations to promote progressive change on issues of social justice and to sustain non-profit organizations. 

Stephen High, Professor, Canada Research Chair in Public History, Concordia, QC

Steven High is the Canada Research Chair in Public History at Concordia University in Montreal. He is co-director of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling and is the principal investigator in a five-year oral history project called Life Stories Montreal, which works with Montrealers displaced by war, genocide and other human-rights violations. One of the project’s key partners is the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre. The project is focusing its attention on the Rwandan, Cambodian, Haitian and Montreal Jewish communities. Steven High has won several awards for his research including the Albert Corey Prize for the best book in Canada-US relations, the John Porter Prize for the best book in Canadian sociology, as well as the Raymond Klibansky Prize for the best book published in the Humanities.

Jack Jedwab, Executive Director, Association for Canadian Studies

Jack Jedwab is the Executive Director of the Association for Canadian Studies, serving in this position since 1998. He previously served as Executive Director of the Quebec Branch of the Canadian Jewish Congress (1994-1998). Mr. Jedwab has a B.A. from McGill University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Canadian History from Concordia University. He was a doctoral fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada from 1982-1985. Between 1983 and 2007 he lectured at McGill University in the Quebec Studies Program, the sociology and political science departments and most recently at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. He is the founding editor of the publication Canadian Diversity and the new Canadian Journal for Social Research. Dr. Jedwab has authored books, and scholarly journals on issues of immigration, multiculturalism, human rights and official language minorities, and is an extensive contributor to the national media.

Madeleine Levy, Program Chair, Holocaust Education and Remembrance, United Nations Association in Canada, Hamilton Branch; Hamilton, ON

Madeleine Levy is a recognized leader in Holocaust Education and Commemoration in Hamilton, Ontario. She serves as Program Chair for several organizations for Holocaust Education and Remembrance including the U.N. Association in Canada, Hamilton Branch, Hamilton’s Asper Foundation Human Rights and Holocaust Studies Program for High School Students, and the Hamilton Jewish Federation’s Holocaust Education Committee. She has developed innovative programs and commemorations for International Holocaust Remembrance Day and Holocaust Education Week in the City of Hamilton. Presently, Madeleine and her husband Monte are funding the creation of a Virtual Museum dedicated to the Holocaust and the Resistance.

Neil Marr, Head, History Department, Bayview Secondary School, Richmond Hill, ON

After a successful career in the business world, Neil A. Marr turned to teaching in 2002 and is currently the Head of History at Bayview Secondary School in Richmond Hill. He has taught issues related to the Holocaust in courses ranging from the applied to the enriched level, and has a particular interest in Weimar and Nazi Germany.

Paul Marsden, Senior Military Archivist, Government Records, Library and Archives Canada

Paul Marsden joined the National Archives in 1988 after working four years as a research assistant on official histories of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and the Department of Finance.  In the twenty years since then he has worked principally in the archival appraisal and management of official military and intelligence records.  In 2002, he was named the first NATO Archivist, holding the post in Brussels for three years. He has published articles related to both to history and archives and served as the English editor of the Canadian Historical Association’s Historical Pamphlet Series.

Marie McAndrew, Canada Research Chair in Education and Ethnic Relations, Université de Montréal; member, advisory committee, Bouchard Taylor Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences

Marie McAndrew is a professor at the Université de Montréal. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Education and specializes in the education of minorities and intercultural education. She has worked extensively in research, policy development and evaluation, and was an advisor to the deputy-minister’s cabinet of the Quebec Ministère des Communautés culturelles et de l’Immigration. From 1993 to 2004, Dr. McAndrew also co-ordinated the Research Group on Ethnicity and Adaptation to Pluralism in Education (Groupe de recherche sur l’ethnicité et l’adaptation au pluralisme en éducation - GREAPE). Since 2003, she has been the Chair for Ethnic Relations and in 2006 she was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada Senior Research Chair on Education and Ethnic Relations. In 2005, she received the Prix québécois de la citoyenneté Jacques-Couture pour le rapprochement interculturel in recognition of her research and development of public policies better adapted to pluralism.

Michael McGowan, Director, Holocaust Centre, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB

Michael McGowan received his Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa.  He is an Associate Professor of Human Rights, Director of the Human Rights Programme and Director of the Atlantic Human Rights Centre at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB.  His research focuses on religious freedom, human-rights education and Holocaust education. He has published numerous books and articles on law and human rights and delivered workshops and conference papers on these topics throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and Africa. In January 2005, he was invited to become a Visiting Research Fellow in Human Rights at Roehampton University, London, England. He has recently concluded research on survivors of the Holocaust living in Atlantic Canada. He is presently conducting new research relating to the contributions of German Jewish internees during the Second World War to Canadian society. He serves as a member of the Atlantic Province Education Committee for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and is one of four vice-presidents of the International Human Rights Education Consortium based at Utica College, Utica, N.Y.

Richard Menkis, Associate Professor, Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies, University of British Columbia

Richard Menkis is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Toronto, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He is the founding editor of the journal Canadian Jewish Studies, and divisional co-editor for the Encyclopaedia Judaica. He is a co-editor of The Canadian Jewish Studies Reader (2004), which won a Canadian Jewish Book Award. His recent publications include a CD-ROM, Canada Responds to the Holocaust, which he co-authored with Ronnie Tessler; he is also the author of 'But you can't see the Fear that People Lived Through': Canadian Jewish Chaplains and Canadian Encounters with Dutch Survivors, in the American Jewish Archives Journal. He is currently working with Harold Troper on an exhibition for the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre on “Canada and the Nazi Olympics,” to be displayed in 2009-2010.

Frieda Miller, Executive Director, Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre

Frieda Miller is the Executive Director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC). After moving to Vancouver in 1991, she was an instructor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University and a Faculty Associate in Teacher Education at the University of British Columbia before becoming the Education Coordinator at the VHEC when it opened in 1994. She has developed many Holocaust resources that have been widely used across the country, including an online project for the Virtual Museum of Canada, such as Open Hearts – Closed Doors: The War Orphans Project. She has co-curated several exhibits including Vancouver’s Schindler Jews (2006) and In Defiance: Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust (2008). She is the recipient of several grants and performance awards, such as the B.C. End Racism Award for educational programming. As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Frieda Miller’s commitment to Holocaust education is deeply rooted in her family’s history.

Scott Miller, Director, Curatorial Affairs, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC; co-author of “Refuge Denied”
 
Scott Miller is the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he has worked since 1989. Prior to the opening of the Museum to the public in 1993, Scott was a research historian for the Museum’s Wexner Learning Center, a multimedia information center. In 1993, he became the Academic and University Programs Coordinator for the Museum’s Research Institute, and in 2001 he was appointed Director of the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. He has also taught Jewish History for the Jewish Studies Program at American University. With Randolph Braham, he co-edited The Nazis’ Last Victims: The Holocaust in Hungary (Wayne State University Press: 1998), and co-authored with Sarah Ogilvie Refuge Denied – The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust (University of Wisconsin Press: 2006).

John Myers, Pre-Service Teacher Instructor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

John Myers has taught every level from grade three through adult in four provinces and three countries. He has worked in several teacher education programs, including Niagara University, Auckland College of Education, the University of New Brunswick, and the University of British Columbia. He has been a curriculum instructor at OISE since the fall of 1994, and has written nearly a hundred articles and book chapters in a variety of areas. He was a leader in pioneering and developing courses in multicultural, social, and immigration history at the high-school level in the mid -1970s. This interest has spanned his entire academic career and forms part of his ongoing work in connecting social, emotional, and academic learning.

Myra Novogrodsky, Former Coordinator, Equity Studies Centre, Toronto District School Board; Chair, Facing History and Ourselves Canada Advisory Board

Myra Novogrodsky recently retired after nine years as a Course Director at the Faculty of Education, York University. She holds a B.A. from Brandeis University and a B. Ed. and M. Ed. from the University of Toronto. She was employed by the Toronto District School Board for 28 years, and is the author of over 20 articles and co-author of Claiming an Education: Feminism and Canadian Schools.  For 28 years she has worked with Facing History and Ourselves. She is now an International Fellow of Facing History and has trained teachers across Canada in its content and methodology.  Her article Teaching the Holocaust in a Multiracial, Multicultural Urban Environment was published in 2000 in the anthology The Holocaust’s Ghost. 

Carson Phillips, Educator, Holocaust Centre of Toronto

Carson Phillips, an educator at the Holocaust Centre of Toronto, is a Ph.D. candidate at York University in the Humanities division. In 2005 he graduated from York University with an M.A. in Humanities. In 2004 and 2006 he received the Berek and Regina Gertner Bursary in Holocaust Studies from the Centre for Jewish Studies at York University. He holds a graduate diploma in Holocaust and Genocide Education from the University of Toronto, and a B.A. from Memorial University of Newfoundland. He has interned at the Auschwitz Jewish Centre in Oswiecim, Poland, and studied at the International School for Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem, Israel, and at the Holocaust Education Foundation Institute of Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

Iannis Roder, Coordinator of Teacher Training at the Mémorial de la Shoah; French Ministry of Education

Iannis Roder is an associate professor of history and a specialist in the history of the Holocaust. He is responsible for training teachers for the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris. Roder is the author and editor of several books on antisemitism and dysfunction in French schools, as well as historical and educational brochures on the history of the Holocaust for teachers. His most recent collaboration is The Dictionary of the Holocaust (Larousse).

Keith Samuelson, former Global Education Coordinator, Prince of Wales Collegiate, St John’s, NL

Keith Samuelson has over thirty years’ experience as a teacher, administrator, and curriculum consultant. In 2000, he attended the Holocaust and Hope Educators’ Tour of Germany, Poland and Israel, sponsored by the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada. In 2004 he initiated the Asper Foundation's Human Rights and Holocaust Studies Program in his home province, Newfoundland, and received a certificate of recognition from them for his efforts. In 2004 he received The Prime Minister's Award for Teaching Excellence in recognition of his integration of Holocaust Studies into global issues across the curriculum, and in 2005 he received an award for Outstanding Contribution to Human Rights Education in Canada.

Leora Schaefer, Program Director, Facing History and Ourselves Canada

Leora Schaefer is the director of Facing History and Ourselves Canada. She works with public and Catholic school boards across Ontario as well as Jewish day schools in the Greater Toronto Area. She oversees and facilitates summer seminars for educators across Ontario as well as workshops on teaching practices and pedagogy. She has written study guides to accompany films, most recently for a new documentary on the life of Hannah Senesh. Leora has been a member of adjunct summer faculty at several institutes of higher learning and has presented at conferences throughout North America.

Rick Stapleton, Archivist Librarian, Virtual Museum of the Holocaust and the Resistance, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON

Rick Stapleton has been Archivist Librarian at the Division of Archives and Research Collections at McMaster University Library since November, 2007.  Prior to that, he was Senior Archivist at the Archives of Ontario in Toronto, and has also held archivist positions at the University of Toronto and the United Church of Canada.

Harold Troper, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Harold Troper is a professor in the Department of Theory and Policy Studies at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Teaching at the University of Toronto where he teaches the history of immigration and ethnic relations in Canada. His scholarship has been recognized with numerous honours and awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the American Jewish Book Award, the Canadian Historical Association Prize for best book in Canadian history, and the Joseph Tanenbaum Book Award, which he won twice.

Professor Troper is widely published. He is the author of many scholarly articles and award-winning books, including Immigrants: A Portrait of the Urban Experience and None Is Too Many, which he co-authored with Professor Irving Abella. He has a new book that will be published shortly by the University of Toronto Press titled The Pivotal Decade: Identity, Politics and the Canadian Jewish Community in the 1960s.  Currently Professor Troper, in partnership with Professor Richard Menkis of the University of British Columbia, is researching the subject of Canadian and Canadian Jewish community engagement with the 1936 Berlin (“Nazi”) Olympics. This research is being conducted under the auspices the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.