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Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 2:30pm

Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre

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Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre

The VHEC is an acclaimed teaching museum devoted to Holocaust education. Learn more at https://collections.vhec.org or send an email to [email protected]

Information about our upcoming events is available on our website:
https://www.vhec.org/upcomingevents

Teachers can find information about our school programs at: https://www.vhec.org/school-programs. Free teaching resources are available here: https://www.vhec.org/educational-resources

Researchers are welcome to visit our library and archives.

10/10/2026

In August 1936, sixteen nations played the Olympic football tournament in Berlin, Germany, amidst a country ruled by discrimination against Jews and Roma. Two years later, in 1938, Hugo Seemann, an Austrian Jew, was photographed in Shanghai, China with the first Jewish emigrant football team there. Hugo took back the sport that was taken from so many.

Two images from the same decade show the same sport and soccer players in very different circumstances.

On Tuesday, October 27, 2026, at 6 PM, our panelists will explore how Holocaust remembrance is being incorporated into modern stadiums and sporting institutions, while addressing the persistent challenges of exclusion, discrimination, and antisemitism in football. Is Holocaust education making a meaningful impact in sports? How can football continue to champion respect, inclusion, and human rights on and off the pitch?

Join us for Holocaust Education in the Modern Stadium, the final event in VHEC’s football series. This event is free, and we encourage you to RSVP: https://buff.ly/3Kmy75e

Image 1, 2, and 4: From Die Olympischen Spiele 1936 in Berlin und Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Band 1 (Hamburg-Bahrenfeld: Cigaretten-Bilderdienst, 1936). VHEC Library.
Image 3: Donated to the VHEC by Gerda Kraus, 1999.2000.014.086

10/09/2026

Meet Daniel Lörcher, one of our panelists for Holocaust Education in the Modern Stadium on October 27, 2026.

Growing up, Daniel heard Borussia Dortmund fans on the terraces chanting about building a tram from Gelsenkirchen, home of rival Schalke, to Auschwitz. Years later, he would help change that culture from the inside.

As lead chanter of The Unity, Dortmund’s largest ultras group, Daniel helped organize the first educational trip for BVB fans to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site in 2011. Two years later, he joined the club’s Fan Affairs department and went on to lead its Corporate Responsibility work. That trip grew into a program taking fans to memorial sites across Poland, including Majdanek, Belzec, and Treblinka.

Today, Daniel is Vice President of Borussia Dortmund and co-founder and director of what matters, which helps organizations develop values-based projects addressing antisemitism, racism, and other forms of discrimination.

The event will open with an introduction from a representative of the Vancouver Whitecaps FC

Join us in person at 6 PM to hear Daniel alongside fellow panelist José Antonio Guevara Bermúdez, in a discussion moderated by our Executive Director, Hannah Marazzi, and our Education & Engagement Manager, Ellie Lawson. RSVP: https://buff.ly/3Kmy75e

10/08/2026

Join us in person on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, at 7 PM for the VHEC's Annual General Meeting.

Following the formal business of the meeting, the evening will feature the presentation “Teaching the Holocaust in a Digital Age.” With the first year of mandatory Holocaust education in BC under our belt, Director of Education Lise Kirchner will reflect on the VHEC’s central role in supporting teachers and schools as they implemented the new curriculum. The presentation will highlight the teaching resource created by the VHEC for the new curriculum and the teacher training program that was delivered around the province. Lise will also discuss the evolving challenges of teaching the Holocaust to a generation shaped by digital media, and how these challenges are informing the VHEC’s approach to Holocaust education.

Everyone is welcome to attend. Members in good standing are eligible to vote.

Registration is required: https://buff.ly/cSz0Cq9

10/07/2026

Week 10: Aftermath - Bearing Witness

Artefact: Righteous Among the Nations Medal
Yad Vashem awarded this medal to Jacob and Jeltje Oversloot of the Netherlands. At great risk to their family’s safety, the couple hid Leo and Emmy Krell in their home after the Krells were ordered to report for deportation to the camps. The Krells infant son, Robert, survived in hiding with another family. After the war, the Krell family reunited and immigrated to Vancouver.

In translation, the medal’s inscription reads: “A token of gratitude from the Jewish people. Whosoever saves one life saves the universe entire.”

Loaned to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre by Jacob Oversloot. L2015.012.001
View this artefact in Fragments in Focus: https://buff.ly/8HU0pAc

10/04/2026

Reich Editors Law: October 4, 1933

On this day in 1933, the N**i regime enacted the Reich Editors Law (Schriftleitergesetz), barring anyone who was not classified as "A***n" from working as a journalist.

The German Propaganda Ministry took control of the profession through its Reich Press Chamber. This gave the ministry authority over the Reich Association of the German Press, the guild that had previously decided who could enter the field. The association then kept lists of approved "racially pure" journalists and editors. Jews, and anyone married to a Jewish person, were barred from the profession.

To continue working, journalists and editors now had to register with the Reich Press Chamber. Registration came with an expectation of compliance, those in the field were required to follow directives issued the Propaganda Ministry, giving the regime direct influence over what could and could not be published.

This law placed the press firmly under state control and marked one of the earliest steps in excluding Jews from professional life in N**i Germany.

This image, courtesy of The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, illustrates the antisemitic press permitted to circulate freely under the Reich Editors Law.

Image: National Museum of American Jewish History, via United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Photograph Number 02629.

To learn more: https://buff.ly/IHNbHBL

09/30/2026

Week 9: Aftermath - Loss and Liberation

Artefact: Children Playing after Liberation
Ted Aplin was a squad leader in the Canadian Royal Air Force. After liberation, he was stationed near the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Many of the camp prisoners remained interned at Bergen-Belsen long after liberation. Ted became interested in the welfare of the camp victims. During the summer of 1945, he organized Sunday picnics for the children.

Photograph attributed to RCAF photographer Bernard Louis Yale.

Donated to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre by Stanley Winfield. 93.08.0222
View this artefact in Fragments in Focus: https://buff.ly/5el32Zy

09/28/2026

Educators in Grades 6 to 12: free classroom resource sets for Fragments in Focus: The History of the Holocaust are available to order not, in English and French.

Each set includes a Teacher's Guide, 30 Student Activity Booklets with 19 inquiry-based activities, and 30 Historical Theme Text Booklets written at a Grade 8 reading level. Aligned with the BC social studies curriculum and supported by the Ministry of Education, the materials guide students through more than 160 primary sources, including artefacts, photographs, documents, and testimony from survivors and witnesses in British Columbia.

Sets are free, with a $30 delivery fee. Schools may request 2 sets, and districts up to 20.

Order a set: https://buff.ly/4lBidCu

09/25/2026

How did a sugar cube from Duisburg-Großenbaum, Germany, end up in Vancouver?

Sugar cubes weren't meant to last. Yet this one survived decades, crossed continents, and became part of the VHEC's collection.

Still preserved in its original wrapper from the Werksgasthaus (factory restaurant) of Hahnsche Werke AG (Hahn Works Joint-Stock Company), this tiny object is part of the Oberlander family fonds. The fonds contains documents of a large network of extended family members including the Hahn family, the Jewish founders and owners of the Hahnsche Werke industrial enterprise in Germany before it was seized during the N**i era.

Alongside letters, photographs, and family papers, this everyday object offers a tangible connection to a family's life before it was irrevocably changed by the Holocaust.

The wrapper reads: "Werksgasthaus - Hahnsche Werke Actiengesellschaft -Duisburg- Großenbaum" (Factory restaurant of Hahn Works Joint-Stock Company, Duisburg-Großenbaum, Germany").

Explore the object: https://buff.ly/bkcAvlq

09/24/2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our High Holidays Cemetery Service on Sunday, September 20, 2026, in the chapel at Schara Tzedeck Cemetery.

If you missed the service or would like to watch it again, the recording is linked below.

Watch the recording: https://buff.ly/7jipHDL

Pictured: Talia Mastai, VHEC Associate Managing Director, and keynote speaker Mattea Simkin.

Presented by the VHEC, Schara Tzedeck Cemetery, and the Leo Lowy Endowment Fund.

09/23/2026

Week 8: The Holocaust - N**i Camps

Artefact: Child's Shoe
This child’s shoe was retrieved from the barracks at Auschwitz II-Birkenau after the Second World War. The child’s name and identity are unknown. Young children deported to Auschwitz were among the first to be selected for the gas chambers. An estimated 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered by the N**is and their collaborators during the Holocaust– 220,000 children died in Auschwitz alone.

Donated to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre by Yacov Handeli. 1997.009.001
View this artefact in Fragments in Focus: https://buff.ly/BvRWhfp

Address

Vancouver, BC

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 2:30pm

Telephone

+16042640499

Website

http://www.vhec.org/

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