ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In 2025, the Azrieli Foundation's landmark Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program (HSMP) celebrated its twentieth year in existence. To mark the occasion, the journal Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes brought together six scholars, along with HSMP managing editor Arielle Berger, for a robust conversation that reflects on the educational, cultural, and moral legacy of the program.
In this episode, Jonathan Slater sits down with two of those scholars, Carson Phillips and Sara R. Horowitz, for a discussion about their deep involvement with the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program over the years, and how the HSMP captures the dynamic interplay between survivor testimony, translation practices, Holocaust education, and public memory in the Canadian context.
OUR GUEST
Sara R. Horowitz is a professor of comparative literature and Jewish studies at York University and an esteemed scholar of the Holocaust. She has been a professor in the Division of Humanities and Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics at York University since 2002, and is a former director of the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University. Sara Horowitz’s research focuses on Holocaust literature, women survivors, Jewish American fiction, and Israeli cinema. She is the author of the award-winning Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction (SUNY Press, 1997), among many other books and articles. She was chief editor for the Azrieli Holocaust Memoirs Series, Series I and II (Azrieli Foundation-Centre for Jewish Studies 2007, 2009), which won an Independent Publisher Book Award and Freedom Fighter Category Gold Medal. She sits on the Academic Advisory Committee at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Carson Phillips is the manager of academic initiatives at the Azrieli Foundation and a member of the teaching faculty at Gratz College. He is the former managing director of the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto, Canada, and has served as an advisor and consultant on numerous projects including the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) Advisory Council for dealing with sensitive materials (The Evidence Room exhibition 2017) and the National Holocaust Monument for Canada (2015). At the Neuberger, he oversaw a number of innovative educational initiatives including the development of Holocaust education programming for English Language Learners (ELL). Phllips earned his PhD from York University.
RECOMMENDED READING
"Twenty Years of Publishing Survivor Narratives: Scholars Reflect on the Educational and Cultural Impact of the Azrieli Foundation's Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program," Arielle Berger, Doris Bergen, Cheryl Fury, Sara R. Horowitz, Carson Phillips, Sherry Simon, and Zoë Waxman, Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes
EPISODE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Host: Jonathan Slater
Producer/Editor: Theadora Draper
Music: J.K. Bradley
Executive Producers: Joshua Tapper and David S. Koffman
Tête-à-tête: Conversations in Canadian Jewish Studies is made possible by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Aid to Scholarly Journals program and the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies and J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry, both at York University.