EVA OLSSON SAYS UKRAINIANS SHOW WORLD HAS ‘MORE COURAGE’ STANDING UP TO HATE
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — What would Eva Olsson say to Vladimir Putin?
“The same thing I told students years ago, who asked me what I’d say to Hitler.
“I wouldn’t waste my energy,” she said in response to the “very sad situation right now” in the Ukraine.
The Holocaust survivor — and recent Order of Canada recipient — was a guest speaker at today’s Gravenhurst Rotary Club’s meeting.
In introducing her “dear friend,” Rotarian Bonnie Dart said Olsson “has reason enough to hate, but her far reaching message is one of love for your neighbour.”
A timely message days into Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The celebrated Bracebridge public speaker (70 online presentations last year), who turned 98 last October was honoured two months later on Dec. 29 with the Order of Canada: “For relentlessly promoting tolerance and for encouraging Canadians to rise against bullying and discrimination.”
Said Dart “We have all been stunned by the horror that is currently happening in Ukraine, which makes the timing and resulting impact of Eva’s presentation all the more significant.”
Dart’s husband Bruce called her a “voice for peace in this world.”
Olsson says she is encouraged there is “more courage” today among resisters to hate than during the Second World War when her family was marched to death camps.
“My feeling, I could be wrong — it wouldn’t be the first time — is that it is better than ’44. … Today people have more courage to stand up as we can.
“Those days, people turned their heads the other way. I remember when they marched us from the ghetto where I lived to the railway station. People lined up like a Santa Claus Parade watching the way they took Jewish people out of the city. Did anybody stand up for us? From that perspective I would say it is better today than it was. Yes.
“But I’m not sure. I don’t know.
“I hope for this generation’s sake, for our grandchildren, our great grandchildren that they stand up and just don’t let things just get away and say ‘Oh, that’s not our problem, it’s just their problem.’ It’s all of our problem.
“Peace needs to be everywhere.”
On May, 15, 1944 Olsson, her Hungarian parents and five siblings were taken to the infamous Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, in Poland; and eventually to Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany. Only she and her sister, who died last year, survived.
“How do you deal with this? One day at a time,” Olsson said on Zoom in the same calm, exacting voice she’s used in repeated in moving speeches heard by two million people across country and at the UN as one of Canada’s most prolific Holocaust speakers.
“I survived for a reason. … I have responsibility to pass it on. What is the reason to share this experience with this generation of today, so that they know that hate is not some kind of a joke.
“Hate murdered 11 million people. Six million were Jews. Five million were not. One-and-a-half million children under the age of 15 were murdered. They did not know why they were unsuited for slave labour. Five of those children were my nieces: a three-and-a-half-year-old, a two-year-old, a one-year-old, a six-month and a two-month.
“And that’s why I have made this my mission to speak for all children. They have no voice.”
Olsson said “I was determined to be the person I was destined to be.”
She said after being “blessed’ to be liberated to Sweden it was “peace to us.
“That’s where I found out that there was peace and love” in the world and not just hate.
Olsson said she always “wanted to love others.”
She said she “saw on the CBC news today that already children have died in the last five days.
“Death by somebody else’s aggression.”
She said the fleeing of more than half a million Ukrainians over the weekend made her think of her own migration to Canada. She and her husband, whom she met in Sweden, had feared a Korean war. So they decided to try Canada “for six months,” landing in Halifax April 13, 1951.”
And now, she said, “I am a Canadian.
“What makes me a Canadian? Accepting the values that this country represents. That means no hate. No bullies. And better for me focus on love, acceptance.”
Olsson, the fourth daughter of six children, credits her mother, Leah Malek, for being able to speak out.
“All the honours I’ve received belong to my mom. Because the legacy she passed on … the compassion for a human life.” It’s what drives Olsson nearly a century after her birth in Hungary in 1924.
“We need to find our calling and that is to share and to give each other love. … Not hate,” said Olsson.
“Children laugh when I talk about hate in schools. It’s like a joke. But I would like to say this here — for this generation’s sake. I child is not born racist. It’s a learned experience. … You want something better for your children; you have to work at it.”
Olsson laments “It’s a very difficult time right now.
“I think of all the children they showed in the Ukraine. How did (war) that affect them? Children take with them what they learn in pre-school. It’s our responsibility. Every parent has a responsibility. … If you’re parents, guide your children. They take with them what they learn at home.
“You need to reach out to others.
“He who denies history, and there are some, will never have a future — never.”
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