Bridgewood P.S. was Tour for Humanity's Cornwall stop (Cornwall Standard-Freedholder)

It is a lesson we must never forget and it’s a lesson that is still relevant today.

Students at Bridgewood Public School had the opportunity to learn all about the Holocaust on Tuesday as the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies brought its Tour for Humanity to the school.

“The holocaust is our main area of focus,” said education associate Elena Kingsbury. “We also connect the idea of human rights to issues relevant to Canadian history.”

Kingsbury said the tour talks about Indigenous history and slavery in Canada and some details about Japanese internment camps. Kingsbury said on Tuesday, because she was talking to a younger group of students, she used the story of Simon Wiesenthal’s life to teach students bad things happen in the world.

“Simon lived through the Holocaust,” she said. “But that experience can make you inspired to try to change the world in a positive way.”

Kingsbury said she liked to connect that to bullying with the younger students because it is a topic they’re familiar with and have been learning how to deal with.

“The bystander effect is a topic that applies whether it is in bullying or something on a bigger scale like the Holocaust,” she said. “We cater the message to our audience and we never want to overwhelm or confuse anybody. So we address those issues in an age-appropriate way.”

Kingsbury said they bring to tour to students from Grade 3 through high school, but the typical age is about 13 to 14 years old.

“We also work with adults,” she said. “We have tolerance training for police, and we work with a lot of educators.”

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