Kathy Kacer shares Holocaust stories with Cape Breton students
Nicole MacLennan | CBC News | Posted: November 13, 2014 4:29 PM | Last Updated: November 13, 2014
Kathy Kacer's parents were both survivors of the Holocaust
An award-winning author from Toronto is in Cape Breton today to speak with school children about the Holocaust.
Kathy Kacer's parents were both survivors of the Holocaust. Her mother hid during the war and her father survived the concentration camps.
She's sharing their stories with students in Sydney and Sydney Mines for Nova Scotia Holocaust Education Week.
Kacer says her parents spoke to her as a child about their experiences and she thinks it’s important to keep those memories alive for the next generation.
“I was one of those kids that just wanted to hear more and more and more. I grew up fascinated by the history and passionate about the history. For me as a young child it started almost as an adventure. It became a horrible adventure, but it started as something that was really just so intriguing in terms of how they were trying to stay alive, what they were doing to save themselves and their family members and their friends," she said.
"There was great heroism in the stories that they told."
Her books have been published all over the world and she speaks internationally to children about the Holocaust.
Kacer says it’s a difficult topic to broach with children and she’s very aware of the need to be sensitive to their age and stage of development.
“I think that my parents had some kind of innate sensitivity about how much to tell me at each stage of my development, which enabled me to hear the stories without being terrified of the stories. I always think that my goal as a storyteller is to engage young readers in history not to frighten them away from history. So I begin with a story, a remarkable story of survival and then I weave the elements of history in and out of that story that I’m telling.”
For example, in her book Hiding Edith, Kacer tells the story of young girl who hid during the Holocaust. As an 11-year-old Edith Schwalb Gelbard moved to a village in France, changed her name and religion and pretended to be an orphan. There were other children hidden in the community and everyone worked together to keep the secret.
“I knew that young readers would love that story of a young girl in hiding and then talking about others who helped hide her, I thought that was a really important message to drive home as well.”
While her books for younger readers focus on adventure, her books for older children and students introduce more information about what happened during the Holocaust.
“Of course it’s important to talk about what went on in the concentration camps, it is important to talk about the death camps and how Jews were being murdered in those places, but you need to be at a certain stage of your development before you’re able to read and understand that and not be terrorized by it. It has to unfold gently and over time.”
Kacer will also speak on Friday at the Temple Sons of Israel in Sydney. She’ll be part of the “Remember the Past, Work for Peace” seminar from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.