Sikh Canadian MP emerges as unlikely champion of Holocaust remembrance
Friday, 30/01/2015
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
OTTAWA: A man in a blue turban stood among thousands in toques, fur hats and yarmulkes in Poland on Tuesday to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Tim Uppal was there as the head of the official Canadian delegation for the Holocaust commemoration ceremony, a role in keeping with his post as Canada’s minister of state for multiculturalism.
But Uppal has championed the importance of Holocaust remembrance for much longer, an unusual role for a Sikh MP from an Edmonton area, riding with only a few hundred Jews.
“There is so much we can learn from what happened here,” he said over the phone from Krakow, Poland, ahead of his visit to the camp where an estimated 1.1. million were killed by Hitler-led Nazis during World War 2. “And you can take those lessons and apply it to the present.”
Uppal’s connection predates his time in government. His wife Kiran Bhinder is one of the only non-Jews ever to take part in a trip called March of the Living, which takes teens through Holocaust sites in Europe and on to Israel.
When he found himself with the opportunity in 2010 to bring a private member’s bill forward in the House of Commons, he was besieged with pitches. One stood out: Canada did not have a national Holocaust monument.
There had been attempts to pass similar legislation in the past. But it was Uppal’s bill that finally made it through. Construction on the monument is set to begin this year, funded by private donors and the federal government.
For Uppal, racism also hits closer to home. In September, he posted on Twitter about an incident he personally experienced at a tennis court. “A woman leaving the tennis court looked at me and my wife and said, “Are they members? Why can’t they play in the day — they don’t have jobs,” he wrote.
What he takes away from these encounters is the need for more education, he says, which comes also from more attention to history and the lessons of events like the Holocaust. “It is important that we must learn from our history,” he said. “We must know who we are.”
