Vancouver Jewish Federation denounces Nazi symbols at Ottawa protest

The president of the Vancouver Jewish Federation says Holocaust education is critical amid Nazi symbols at the Ottawa vaccine mandate protest.

After social media feeds were flooded with images of people displaying swastika flags and symbols at the Ottawa protest, many are outraged.

Ezra Shanken, the president of the Vancouver Jewish Federation says the misuse of the Holocaust symbols is an insult to the immense loss of life.

“It’s such a wide swath of offensive behavior because you’re not just talking about the victims of the Holocaust, you’re talking about the soldiers too and basically saying we don’t care about that. And the loss of life doesn’t matter, what really matters is that I can’t get into a restaurant.”

The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War Two. Between 1941 and 1945 six million Jews were brutally murdered.

Many protesters have taken to social media and public demonstrations to compare COVID-19 restrictions to those imposed on Jews in Nazi Germany.

Shanken says comparing pandemic restrictions to the Holocaust invalidates protesters’ arguments and is also a major disrespect to the millions that were killed.

“When you start evoking Holocaust references the whole validity of the argument that you’re trying to make is gone. Because you’re you’re now saying something that’s so off the wall. How do I sit down with somebody like this? How do I sit down with somebody who thinks they’re going through the Holocaust right now?”

“Do they understand that one and a half million children were exterminated in the Holocaust? Gypsies, Roma, gay, disabled, elderly were slaughtered on an industrial scale.”

Once you start saying the Holocaust is in communities like ours, I can’t talk crazy like that, that’s nuts and offensive.”

Shanken says the use of symbols is being used as “the wedge to tear us apart.”

Although in many places, promoting Nazi propaganda and Nazism are arrestable offenses, Canada does not have anti-Nazism laws, meaning Ottawa protesters displaying the symbols will not be arrested.

This month, a Dutch tourist was detained and fined in Poland after making a Nazi salute at the former Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

She was charged with promoting Nazism.

On Saturday, Washington, D.C. police arrested and charged a man for vandalizing Union Station with swastika symbols.

Kyla Lee, a criminal defense lawyer says although Canada has laws that protect freedom of speech and prohibit hate speech, flying confederate or swastika flags does not violate the criminal code.

“I know that there are laws that are being proposed that try to capture more broad conduct to try and prevent incidents like this because it is harmful to people psychologically and emotionally to see symbols like that,” Lee says.

She says the reason Canada does not have such strict laws prohibiting displaying certain messages is that it has not been a rampant national issue.

“For a long time Nazism and fascism in Canada and alt-right stuff was often a fringe movement that had difficulty organizing, but what we’ve seen especially with this protest, as we move to more of a digital borderless society is that people like this have an easier time finding each other and they have an easier time organizing,” she explains.

Lee says although there is a push for the feds to consider tougher laws that prohibit Nazism, there continues to be pushback from those who say it impedes freedom of expression.

“I think with an understanding of a limitation on a charter right, that involves not flying symbols that are hateful, that are connected with white supremacy, that is connected to genocide is a reasonable limitation.”

As for Shanken, he says he hopes people further their education of the Holocaust to prevent the misuse of Holocaust symbols and comparisons.

– with files from Michael Williams