Holocaust Remembrance

Panels from the exhibit Auschwitz: the Eva Brewster Story on display at the Galt Museum & Archives.

In 2007, the Galt curated an exhibit of the experiences of Eva Brewster. The exhibit received the Alberta Museums Association’s 2007 Programming: Exhibits Award. In recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was held on January 27, we want to share some of the text that accompanied that exhibit.

“It was Hitler’s birthday. His birthday present — 1000 young Jews herded into cattle cars, bound for the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Among them were 21-year-old Eva Brewster and her mother. They were to be two of only seven from that transport who survived the Second World War.

“Were they the lucky ones? Two years of starvation, hard labour, beatings, serious illness and degradation followed as around them almost 1.5 million people were killed by Nazi hands.

“25 years after the war Eva Brewster settled in southern Alberta. She dedicated her life to exposing the horrors of the Holocaust [Shoah] so that such genocide would never happen again.”

The exhibit was well attended at the Galt, and was later displayed by the Moose Jaw Museum, the Red Deer Museum, and the Esplanade in Medicine Hat. The exhibit was made possible with the support and assistance of the international Holocaust museum community, southern Alberta’s Jewish and Holocaust survivor community, and the family of Eva Brewster. The exhibit focused on Eva Brewster’s holocaust survival experience as well as her lasting resolve to speak out against genocide and similar atrocities in the world.