The new Holocaust memorial unveiled this week by Canada’s Trudeau government fails to mention what the Holocaust was about.
There is no mention of Jews being the target of Adolf Hiter’s infamous “final solution.” No one in the Liberal government or the bureaucracy that supports it apparently even noticed the grievous oversight.
Ontario Conservative Member of Parliament David Sweet raised the issue during the House of Common’s regular question period on Wednesday. He asked whether the prime minister had any plans to rectify this “profoundly obvious omission.”
The question took the government by surprise as Heritage Minister Melanie Joly — the minister responsible for the project — momentarily looked like she didn’t understand the language of the question.
Sweet reiterated his concern: “If we are going to stamp out hatred towards Jews, it is important to get history right.”
Later in the day, Joly explained that the plaque on the memorial had been hurriedly removed for a rewrite. The dedication would be amended and “replaced with language that reflects the horrors experienced by the Jewish people.”
While calling the Holocaust “one of the darkest chapters in history,” the plaque had merely referenced the “millions of men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust” while citing Canada as being a welcoming sanctuary for survivors of the horror.
It does not mention the historical fact that Canada, like most Western countries in the 1930s, did not open its arms to Jewish refugees when they tried to flee Nazi Germany.
It is the second time that Trudeau or his government has demonstrated a reluctance to acknowledge the overwhelming significance of the Jewish people to the Holocaust. In January 2016, Trudeau was commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Week in Canada and he neglected to mention the six million Jews the week was remembering.