The Simon Fraser University Department of History invites you to attend the second lecture in our 2020-2021 Annual Public Lecture Series, Witnesses to History. Due to COVID-19, this year's lectures will take place entirely online, via the Zoom platform. A link to the Zoom webinar will be distributed by email to all registered attendees at 2PM on November 5th.

Only registered attendees with a valid email address will receive the Zoom webinar link.

“Time didn’t really mean anything to me. Time meant only to survive that one day. I can’t explain. It’s not like I knew that next month I’m going away, there’s no such thing as next month. It was to survive this one day from starvation, from freezing, from being sold, from being caught, from being killed on the street.” - Mariette Rozen Doduck

Mariette Rozen Doduck was born in Brussels, Belgium, in May 1935, the youngest of eleven children. After Belgium fell to the Germans in 1940, she was hidden in many places, including an orphanage, a convent, and in Christian homes. She survived the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews but her family was shattered: her mother, three brothers, and countless extended family members – aunts, uncles, cousins across Europe – were killed. Mariette emigrated to Canada in 1947 with three surviving siblings, where she experienced continued (if less overt) antisemitism, and was placed on her own with a foster family in Vancouver. Because she was not used to having a “normal life,” she ran away twelve times during her first year there. Gradually she accepted her new family and community and attended Maple Grove, Point Grey, and Magee High Schools and the University of British Columbia, where she met her husband, Sidney Doduck. She went on to become actively and deeply involved in her community through numerous organizations and programs, including outreach work with at-risk youth in the Vancouver area, the co-founding of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, and her participation in its powerful high school symposium program as a survivor speaker.

In conversation with Lauren Faulkner Rossi (SFU Department of History), Mariette talks about her childhood in hiding and in silence, what it means to survive a trauma like the Holocaust, the struggles she faced as a young immigrant in Vancouver, the challenge of working with a child’s memories, and the emotional journey of researching and writing her memoirs.

Speaker Bios

Mariette Rozen Doduck was born in Brussels, Belgium, in May 1935, the youngest of eleven children. After Belgium fell to the Germans in 1940, she was hidden in many places, including an orphanage, a convent, and in Christian homes. She survived the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews but her family was shattered: her mother, three brothers, and countless extended family members – aunts, uncles, cousins across Europe – were killed. Mariette emigrated to Canada in 1947 with three surviving siblings, where she experienced continued (if less overt) antisemitism, and was placed on her own with a foster family in Vancouver. Because she was not used to having a “normal life,” she ran away twelve times during her first year there. Gradually she accepted her new family and community and attended Maple Grove, Point Grey, and Magee High Schools and the University of British Columbia, where she met her husband, Sidney Doduck. She went on to become actively and deeply involved in her community through numerous organizations and programs, including outreach work with at-risk youth in the Vancouver area and the co-founding of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. She also has held jobs singing, modelling, building homes, and writing event publicity. She has two living daughters (and one passed away), seven grandchildren, and three great-granddaughters (and counting!).

Lauren Faulkner Rossi is a limited term Assistant Professor of History at Simon Fraser University. She completed her Ph.D. at Brown University in Rhode Island, and from 2009 until 2014 was an assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.Her first book, Wehrmacht Priests (2015), explores the motivations of German Catholic priests and seminarians who were conscripted into the military during the Second World War. In 2017 she co-edited Lessons and Legacies XII: New Directions in Holocaust Research and Education with Wendy Lower. She is currently working on revising the 4th edition of Martin Kitchen's History of Modern Germany (forthcoming, 2022) and assisting a Holocaust child survivor to write her memoirs.

Organized in partnership with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.