Today, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) Educator Daniella traveled to Hamilton to provide 3 Digital Hate workshops to Grades 4-8 students at an elementary school in the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board. This visit was a follow up to our Tour for Humanity visit in December. Feedback from staff was that they wanted to extend and expand the learning for students, so FSWC educators are returning to the school for a series of workshops. Elena conducted a Roots of Hate and Intolerance workshop to Grades 7 and 8 students last week, and over the course of the next month we will be returning to conduct additional Leadership 101, Heroes and Women’s Rights workshops at the school.

Today’s workshops were very successful. Due to the topic, students had plenty to contribute and share. The first group of students, Grades 4-6, shared stories of cyberbullying that they had experienced. FSWC Educator Daniella discussed digital oversharing and came up with things that students could do going forward to protect themselves from cyberbullying.

Tour for Humanity spent the first of two days at a Toronto independent school for boys from Grades 3-12. FSWC Educator Elena taught 3 workshops throughout the day, all of them the Global Perspectives on Genocide workshop. Elena also hosted several school administrators throughout the day and she provided an overview of the Tour for Humanity program and the Holocaust video during the lunch period.  

All of the workshops went very well and as always, the students were a pleasure to work with due in part to their extensive knowledge of the Holocaust. One of the highlights of the day was the last group who were Grade 10 students currently studying the period of "appeasement" with the annexation of Austria followed by Czechoslovakia. Most of the students contributed to the discussion and when Elena brought up the presence of antisemitism throughout Europe, she was impressed by one student who brought up the antisemitic tract, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Elena gave the group a little background on the document and its promotion of the "global conspiracy" antisemitic fantasy.  Another  student asked about the treatment of black people under the Nazis so Elena described some of the atrocities committed against black men in Europe and the racial theories propagated by the Nazi regime. One student wanted to know where they could learn more about the treatment of black people under the Nazis and so Elena recommended a few books and also the novel Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan. Elena also had a lot of meaningful discussions around the concept of Genocide - one of the questions in the first workshop was whether or not the crusades would be considered a genocide. Elena didn't have an easy answer to that and pointed out how difficult it was to identify events that far in the past as a clear genocide.