MONTREAL — The Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre (MHMC) recently launched a “legacy campaign” to secure the museum’s future and preserve the memory of the six million for generations to come.
Called the Legacy Society, the initiative plans to establish a $20-million endowment fund in perpetuity to further the work of the centre.
Activities of the centre include commemorating the Holocaust and Holocaust resistance, honouring family, furthering human rights and fighting against hate, discrimination, intolerance and anti-Semitism through educational outreach, said centre president Julia Reitman at the campaign’s launch on June 9.
Each year more than 12,000 people visit the Holocaust centre and its museum, which has over 7,000 artifacts, and thousands of Quebecers of all ages are exposed to the Holocaust through educational initiatives, the Holocaust Education Series and other endeavours.
“We need to bring the Holocaust home to Montrealers so they realize that survivors are their neighbours,” Reitman said.
The endowment fund will partially be created by Holocaust survivors themselves, officials announced, through bequests, or “deferred gifts.”
But while the campaign is also welcoming the support of members of the “second generation” (the children of Holocaust survivors), the Jewish community and community at large, centre executive director Alice Herscovitch said that a sense of urgency is attached to the campaign as the inexorable effects of time dwindle the survivor generation.
“It is an important step to be able to reach survivors,” she said.
More than 9,000 survivors settled in Montreal after the war, Herscovitch said. According to Federation CJA demographer Charles Shahar, the numbers of survivors were about 6,800 by 2001 and are 4,000 now. By 2011, the projected survivor population will be 3,300.
The MHMC’s endowment fund is an outgrowth of the Legacy Project that was established by the Jewish Community Foundation (JCF) of Montreal in 2002 and allowed deferred gifts such as bequests or insurance policies to be earmarked for specific federation agencies.
But the Holocaust centre was not among those bodies that worked “in partnership” with the JCF, Herscovitch said, as it is doing now in creating its own endowment fund.
According to Larry Nachshen, who is chairing the campaign, the fund will “secure the museum’s future.”
Herscovitch said while the term “campaign” has been employed, no individual approaches or overtures will be made. Those considering making a voluntary “planned gift” can approach the centre and meet with a centre representative on an individual and confidential basis. Herscovitch said that it’s up to the donor to decide whether to keep the planned gift confidential or to have it acknowledged in some way.
Gifts can be specifically designated for education; the museum; remembrance; the “witness to history” project of recorded survivor testimonies, of which there are now more than 500; outreach work or other areas.
George Hellman, director of planned giving at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., said at the launch that creating an endowment fund is the “best way to secure an institution’s future.” The Washington museum has raised more than $56 million since 2002 through planned giving..
“Our donors take this commitment very seriously,” Hellman said. “They learn that leaving a planned gift gives peace of mind. It is critical to the success of a legacy society.”
Herscovitch said that the decision by MHMC officials last winter to establish the Legacy Society grew out of the perception that the future of the centre and the furthering the Holocaust legacy for future generations will not depend solely on community funding or ad hoc contributions to its foundation, which fund immediate needs but do little to guarantee the future. Federation CJA funds less than half of the MHMC’s $800,000 budget, the rest coming from individual donors, some government funding and the occasional bequest.
But the centre, this year reaching the milestone age of 30, is also facing the need in the near future to renew itself and as the Legacy Society’s flyer says, “transform memory into action [and] ensure the perpetuity of our commitment and our promise.”
More information is available by calling 514-345-2605