Jewish and interfaith leaders gathered Sunday afternoon at the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa to condemn a recent act of vandalism and to stand united against hate. The monument, which honours the six million Jewish people killed in the Holocaust, was defaced last week with red paint and the words “Feed Me.” “I’m here to pray with my brothers and sisters but I’m also here to show that we want concretely to build these bridges that will allow for peace,” said Yvan Mathieu, auxiliary bishop with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Ottawa. The gathering comes amid a rise in antisemitism across Canada. According to a global task force against antisemitism, a report shows incidents have jumped more than 170 per cent in Canada since 2020. “My father was a survivor of the Holocaust. His mother, father and sister were murdered during the Holocaust. It was particularly, personally a very painful hate crime,” said National Holocaust Committee co-chair Lawrence Greenspon. “There is a rise of anti-Semitism. And this hate crime is just the tip of the iceberg as we look ahead.” Floralove Katz, the daughter of holocaust survivor, said the vandalism brought great pain to her community. “To vandalize a Holocaust monument is to trample on the memories of the assaults, the brutality the kidnappings the torture the scientific experiments of six million Jews and 12 million who survived but were kept in deep camps for five years after the war,” Katz said. The Ottawa Police Service hate and bias crime unit continues to investigate the incident.
