Today, the Tour for Humanity finished up the week in Windsor, Ontario where Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) Educator Elena taught 4 workshops on the Canadian Experience to Grades 7 and 8 students. The Canadian Experience program introduces students to a variety of difficult topics in Canadian history including slavery, the Indian Residential Schools System, the voyage of the SS St. Louis and the systemic internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Following a review of the past, current issues including cyber bullying and modern-day examples of intolerance are examined and discussed.  

The students throughout the day were very attentive. Elena talked a lot about the Nazi's rise to power and the evolution from boycotts and legal discrimination through to the Nuremberg laws and the violence we typically associate with the Holocaust. A lot of students had trouble understanding why people supported the Nazis in the first place, asking meaningful questions to try to build their knowledge. There were also quite a few questions about the Nazis and their beliefs about the Aryan race.  

Few of the students from this school knew anything about residential schools as well, so this was a topic that provided a source of meaningful conversation. One student made a poignant comment, questioning how the people running the schools could think they were being good Christians while treating the students so terribly.