A soft-spoken young man with just a trace of an accent, Steindler was accepted from the start in Montreal, though his job hasn’t always been easy. One day a woman came in with letters written by her grandparents in Germany to her father in Canada, circa 1942. Steindler helped translate most of the letters, but it’s the last one he can’t forget. “That was tough. The parents were about to be deported and they were telling their son not to forget them,” he said.

Ungar used that translation in a speech she made last November, commemorating Kristallnacht. She also decided two years ago, when the Austrian government cut funding to her museum for the Gedenkdienst program – so far nobody has explained why to her satisfaction – to keep it going herself. “The concept of it, the spirit is indispensable,” she said later. “It made me realize we’ve come a long way. And I don’t just mean this museum, I mean humanity.”