Côte St. Luc honours Holocaust heroine

By Joel Goldenberg

Côte St. Luc’s annual Canada Day celebration last week served several purposes — just plain fun for people of all ages, swearing in many new Canadian citizens and acknowledging a heroine who went above and beyond during the Holocaust.

The latest name to be added to Côte St. Luc’s unique Human Rights Walkway at Trudeau Park was 100-year-old Miep Gies, who helped hide famous diarist Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis for two years in Holland. Previous honourees included anti-apartheid heroine Helen Suzman, Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafter René Cassin, former Hampstead resident and rights pioneer John Humphrey and Quebec Court of Appeal Chief Justice Jules Deschênes, among others.

As part of the ceremony, councillor Ruth Kovac’s mother Ilse Zilversmit — who attended school with Anne’s Frank’s older sister Margot — read Côte St. Luc’s plaque honouring Gies. An audio recording featuring Gies’ reflections on that time was played.

“When you listen to what she said [on the recording], that the past always lives with you, that is what we are trying to do in Côte St. Luc every year,” Mayor Anthony Housefather said. “When we put a stone on our Human Rights Walkway, we thank someone who has spent their life fighting for human rights.
“When you look at the people we have honoured in the past, there are some who have done amazingly great things at a high level, like Raoul Wallenberg, who saved tens of thousands of Jews in Hungary,” he added. “But there are also people like Miep Gies, who saved one or two people, but put their life on the line to stand up for what they believe in. All of us have read the diary of Anne Frank and we know what it meant to have someone like Miep Gies try to rescue them from the appalling cruelty and brutality of the Nazis during the Second World War.
“The lesson that we learn, and what we want to convey to our children, is that anyone, even a clerk in [Anne Frank’s father] Otto Frank’s store, if you are brave enough and you believe enough in human rights, can make an incredible difference to the world.”

D’Arcy McGee MNA Lawrence Bergman, also at the ceremony, praised Côte St. Luc’s Human Rights Walkway, said much can be said about Gies and her aid to the Frank family.
“She, in effect, extended their lives, allowed them to live longer,” he pointed out. “Did she have to do this and risk her life? No. But she chose to act for the benefit of her fellow human beings.”

Also at Côte St. Luc’s Canada Day event, citizenship judge Barbara Seal, suffering from a severe bout of laryngitis and thus assisted by Sandra Wilson, swore in 33 people from 15 different countries, including Russia, Romania, the Ukraine, Congo and many others. There was also entertainment from the JazzKidz band, which played O Canada at the end of the citizenship/Human Rights Walkway ceremony.