March 25, 2012
To Rhonda Spivak, Editor of The Winnipeg Jewish Review
I would like to applaud Dr. Catherine Chatterley for her courageous and corrective essay in response to the Dachau exhibit, which has been promoted as a kind of "interfaith experience," focusing on the fact that victims of Dachau were "of many faiths" and so deflecting from the larger truth that only Jews were victims of the Holocaust. Her forthright denial of this claim—"The Holocaust was not an Interfaith Experience"—is as refreshing as it is rare in the current climate of cowardly conciliation. Dr. Chatterley is honest and unapologetic in her defense of the uniqueness of the Holocaust and brilliant in her accurate encapsulation of its history. Her essay clearly reveals her commitment to truth, her deep compassion, profound knowledge, and her dedication to education on—and so to the elimination of—antisemitism. We should all be grateful to Dr. Catherine Chatterley for sharing her keen insight and understanding in this essay and for the important work she is doing as an educator and as the director of The Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism.
Penny Jones Square, Winnipeg