Canada's Struggle with Holocaust Memorialization: The War Museum Controversy, Ethnic Identity Politics, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Abstract

The attempt to create a national Holocaust memorial in Canada has been beset by a variety of challenges arising from shifts in public perception of the Holocaust and its significance. This article provides a brief history of this protracted process, beginning with the 1997–98 controversy over inclusion of a Holocaust gallery in a renovated War Museum and the promise that some kind of stand-alone Holocaust memorial would be built elsewhere, through the years of negotiations over the content of a new Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), which was initially conceived as a Holocaust museum. A key focus of this study is the lobbying effort by some Ukrainian Canadian leaders and their allies to remove the stand-alone Holocaust gallery from the CMHR. Despite these protests, the CMHR finally opened in September 2014 with the Holocaust gallery the government had originally promised in 1998.