The Tour for Humanity spent its last day of the school year in Brampton at a public school. The school itself is fairly new and the organizing teacher was very excited to have the bus visit, as were many of the students. Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) Educator Elena asked the teacher how she had heard about the program and she said that she saw it driving down the highway and decided to look it up!  

The fact that most of the teachers hadn’t heard of our programs before and didn’t really know what to expect going in were really blown away by our ability to connect the Holocaust with other human rights abuses in Canada. Elena worked with all of their Grades 6-7 students and taught 5 sessions of the Canadian Experience workshop.

Elena found that in general there was less knowledge about World War II and the Holocaust so she spent a lot of time on that topic. A couple students didn’t really understand why the Nazis were seen as so evil before the workshops so Elena made sure they understood how the hatred promoted by the Nazis and how the hatred expressed in words and writing quickly devolved into physical violence and murder of Jews and other people completely innocent of any crimes.