Image courtesy of Global News / Library and Archives Canada
Ellin Bessner opens Zoom while finishing another call on her hot pink iPhone. She smiles and lifts up her index finger, the universal symbol for hold on a sec, as she pins a note to a corkboard. Her call ends and she apologizes, then her home phone starts ringing. She says it’s her husband’s birthday, explaining the onslaught of calls, as she checks the home phone’s caller ID. “No, they missed it,” shrugs Bessner, unperturbed, after the ringing stops abruptly. Her personality is magnetic and bigger than the border of a computer screen.
Bessner began teaching journalism at Centennial College in 2004 after a long career in media. She is Jewish and her family immigrated to Canada from Eastern Europe in 1901.
She takes it upon herself to educate her students about the Holocaust in an engaging fashion. Bessner organized Centennial’s virtual Holocaust Education Week, which took place on Monday, Nov. 9, 2020. Her work in sharing Holocaust stories takes on new urgency and importance as they lose their significance, and worse yet, their credibility.
A 50-state survey on Holocaust knowledge was administered in the United States to Millennials and Gen Z. The U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey yielded sobering results.
According to the survey, 63 percent of respondents did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered. More troubling results reveal that 11 percent of respondents believe Jews were responsible for causing the Holocaust. Forty-nine percent responded that they had seen posts about Holocaust denial or distortion on social media or online.
These statistics point to the larger issue of Holocaust education, or lack thereof. Every marginalized group has faced adversity and violence. From Indigenous people in Canada to the internment of Uyghur Muslims in China, there are countless stories of hatred and brutality. They all deserve to be heard. How can younger generations hear them and cease their fading into the annals of history?
Ellen Bessner feels part of the problem is that the Holocaust is losing its relevance. She said that educating people on the subject is up to the will of the individual teacher. That is why she does so through compelling stories. It is also part of the reason why she took up Morley Ornstein’s story.
Ornstein was a Jewish airman from Canada who enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) during WWII when he was 18 years old. His plane was shot down over Bremen, Germany. Questions still remain as to whose body is buried in Ornstein’s grave.
“It has all the features of a great story: history and grief and war and patriotism and loss,” Bessner listed.
It began with Murray Rubin and Morley S. Wolfe who attended Toronto’s Harbord Collegiate in the 1940s along with Morley Ornstein. Wolfe and Ornstein were family friends. Rubin and Wolfe contacted Bessner and asked whether she knew about Ornstein. Bessner took to Google. She found a photo of a grave at the Becklingen War Cemetery in Wietzendorf, Germany. The headstone bore Ornstein’s name and, to her surprise, a cross.
Following this discovery, Bessner contacted Martin Sugarman, the archivist for Britain’s Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women. Sugarman works with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). The CWGC supervises all Allied war graves worldwide. There are 1.7 million graves. Sugarman took up the case of Morley Ornstein’s improperly marked headstone.This comes as no surprise considering Bessner’s persuasive passion.
The process of trying to prove to the CWGC that Ornstein was Jewish began. This process was long and laborious. What eventually convinced the CWGC’s cemetery officials was a letter written by the catalyst for this story Morley S. Wolfe. The heartfelt letter details his memories of Ornstein joining the RCAF and their families speaking in Yiddish.
In September 2020, Sugarman informed Bessner that the CWGC accepted Ornstein’s case. A new headstone for Ornstein has been engraved with the Star of David. It is waiting to be sent to Germany pending pandemic restrictions.
It is no wonder that Ellin Bessner set this astounding accomplishment in motion. Her passion is palpable. Her determination to tell these stories is visible as her jewellery shakes while she gestures. Even though Ornstein’s headstone is now properly marked, her work is far from over. She is still in the process of locating the graves of Ornstein’s parents. Once she finds them, which she inevitably will, Ornstein’s story may come to a close, but Bessner will not finish telling it.
By: Nathaniel Glassman, Public Relations - Corporate Communications student