On November 11, 2024, the Niverville Remembrance Day service is heading back to the Heritage Centre for another event that won’t soon be forgotten.
The formal service will begin at 10:00 a.m. in the ballroom followed by a light luncheon in the atrium immediately afterward.
Attendees can anticipate another moving service featuring this year’s special guest, Angela Orosz-Richt.
Hailing from Montreal, Orosz-Richt has become known as one of Auschwitz’s youngest survivors. She was born in the Nazi concentration camp in December 1944 weighing only 2.2 pounds. Her mother Vera had been subjected to painful prenatal experiments carried out by Nazi physician Josef Mengele.
Upon her birth, Orosz-Richt was too weak to cry, which meant she went completely unnoticed by Nazi guards until camp survivors were liberated one month later.
Orosz-Richt’s father didn’t escape the camp alive.
In 2015 and 2016, she testified against two former concentration camp guards at trials held in Germany. In recent years, she’s become an active speaker at the Montreal Holocaust Museum, bringing her story to thousands of students.
Unfortunately, due to unanticipated medical concerns, Orosz-Richt was unable to accept the invitation to speak at Niverville’s service in person. In lieu, The Citizen’s Brenda Sawatzky travelled to Montreal to conduct a live interview in Orosz-Richt’s home.
Attendees of the November 11 service will be the first to witness the video recording of that interview.
As in previous years, the Niverville Remembrance Day service will be an event geared for every generation.
The 3234 Manitoba Horse St. Pierre Army Cadets, along with the Girl Guides Embers, will be there to greet guests and escort the wreath layers. The beautiful voice of Melanie Bergen will transport attendees back to wartime 1939 with the song “We’ll Meet Again.”
Niverville Remembrance Day committee member Donald Stott says it was important for the committee to bring the traditional service back indoors .
Last year, for a change of pace, the service was held outdoors at the cenotaph on Main Street. It was a bitterly cold and snowy day, bringing out a small gathering in comparison to the hundreds that typically attend the service.
The Heritage Centre had conducted its own Remembrance Day service for the many seniors located in their facility.
For Stott, though, the act of remembering is something he believes the community needs to do together, under one roof, in one accord.
“We don’t want to lose anybody anywhere,” Stott says. “We want [to keep] everyone together.”
As for Stott, he is among the third generation of his family to have experienced the peace that was purchased through sacrifices made by his father, Jack Stott, who served in World War II, and his grandfather David Stott, who served in World War I.
To become complacent about war, he says, is just not an option.
“We just cannot forget,” says Stott. “All we have to do is look around the world right now. We cannot forget what we’ve gone through or we’re going to repeat it.”
