Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day

 On January 27, 2023,  Sonia Lazar of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, put on a powerful and moving performance to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. She played on a violin from the Violins of Hope collection.

Violins of Hope is a collection of instruments that belonged to child victims of the Holocaust. Donated and lovingly restored, these violins connect people through music and tell the stories of their original owners.This collection was founded by luthier Amnon Weinstein and his son Avshi.

As part of this program, Shelley Faintuch, a former Director of Community Relations for the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg for 20 years, who is well known in the city for her work providing education about the consequences of hate, spoke to the audience.

In this episode of "Community Hour", a portion of the program at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights was recorded, and also Shelley Faintuch spoke to U-Multicultural TV reporter, Yuliia Kovalenko, extensively about the importance of marking this day.

For some background, Sonia Lazar has been a member of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s first violin section since 2016. She was born in Moscow, Russia, and spent her early childhood years in Israel, on a kibbutz. She started taking violin lessons at age eight, when her family moved to Calgary. Her passion for violin and orchestral performance has taken her to perform in New Zealand, Spain and Portugal, and in 2012, she was a Concert Master at the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall, New York. Lazar received a Bachelor of Music degree from Lynn University in Florida, and went on to receive a Master of Music degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.

Shelley Faintuch, who was a child of Holocaust survivors, was a gold medalist in Honours French at the University of Winnipeg. She completed graduate and post graduate work in linguistics at Laval University where she also taught, published and coordinated English as a Second Language programs. Sensing growing anti-semitism, Shelley moved to Toronto, then to Vancouver where her son, Zev, was born. Family means everything to Shelley, so she returned to Winnipeg to raise her son near her parents. As the Director of Community Relations for the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg for over 20 years, Shelley represented the Jewish community to the private and public sectors and provided education about the holocaust and the terrible consequence of hate..She speaks English, French, and Hebrew. Shelley loves theatre, cinema, music and dance.