Every fall for the past 10 years, a high school teacher from the Eastern Townships in Quebec has ordered 100 copies of the same memoir to teach to his students: W Hour, by Arthur Ney. The book, published by the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program, is the gripping story of a Jewish boy who hides in a Catholic orphanage during World War II. And every year, that teacher receives the books at no cost.
It’s a story Marc-Olivier Cloutier, the program’s Manager of Education Initiatives, likes to share with the teachers he trains across the country.
The Memoirs Program, which turned 20 in 2025, was inspired by David Azrieli’s personal story of survival and launched by his daughter Naomi, Chair of the Foundation. She wanted to provide other Canadian Holocaust survivors with a platform to publish their stories.
“We received 50 submissions initially,” Program Director Jody Spiegel recalls. “From little notes taken while in hiding, to full memoirs written after their spouse passed away or their children were adults, as survivors aged, they began thinking, ‘Maybe I should write this down.’”
The publishing program has since blossomed into a collection of more than 130 memoirs, and the Foundation has distributed more than one million books to schools and educators across Canada. Many of the memoirs are available in both French and English, and all are thoroughly fact-checked, professionally edited and introduced by a historian who gives the story critical context.
Cloutier and his team have also trained tens of thousands of educators across the country on how to teach their students about the Holocaust, both at an age-appropriate level and through a trauma-informed lens. “You don’t want to cause more trauma,” he explains. “Things you might not even think of—food scarcity or homelessness—could be triggering for a student who’s experienced them.”
As each memoir is published, the team develops related educational resources, including lesson plans, digital elements for web-based learning and shorter excerpts, so teachers can bring them into the classroom as part of the curriculum. No other organization publishes Holocaust memoirs and educational resources to this level and breadth, making the program essential to the next generation’s understanding of the Holocaust.
“Our role is to keep the voices of our survivors, who had the courage to write their stories, part of the conversation,” Spiegel says. “It’s to ensure teachers feel confident bringing Holocaust education into the classroom and to create that human connection through the words of our authors.”
