The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada is proud to present well-known Holocaust survivor, Pinchas Gutter as our keynote speaker for the 2023 Holocaust and Human Rights Symposium.  The symposium will be virtual and is open to all, though recommended for students in grades 8 through 12.  Pinchas' memoir is available for free to educators from the Azrieli Foundation Survivor Memoirs programs.

Pinchas Gutter is one of the pioneers of an innovative project called Dimensions in Testimony, in which a life-sized interactive biography  (hologram) will be wheeled into classrooms, lecture halls and museums. The idea is that the audience asks questions and pre-recorded statements from the video Gutter will respond – much as if talking to the real person. Gutter has also been the subject of a number of films by directors such as Fern Levitt, Eli Rubenstein, Stephen D. Smith and Zvike Nevo.

Pinchas has been the subject of three films: The Void, Political, Polish Jew: The Story of Pinchas Gutter, and The Last Goodbye. The latter is  virtual reality experience that allows viewers to travel to the Majdanek concentration camp with Pinchas as he tells them about his early experiences there. The film premiered to high acclaim at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and took home the VR-Documentary Jury Prize at the 2018 Lumiere Awards. In 2019, Pinchas himself dubbed the Virtual Reality film into five new languages with the intent of bringing the film to global audiences in 2020.

To register, please send an email to jewishheritage@jhcwc.org