Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) was pleased to welcome the third group of students from a public school in Keswick today. Today’s students came in for a Roots of Hate and Intolerance workshop. The group today had done some prior work on the Holocaust and came prepared with questions. 

FSWC Educator Daniella spent a considerable amount of time discussing the harsh conditions to which Jewish people were subjected during the Holocaust, both on the train journeys and in the camps themselves. Most of the students were familiar with Auschwitz, but did not know that there were many different types of camps. The transit camp structure really seemed to fascinate them, and Daniella took that opportunity to bring it back to the initial definition of the word Holocaust and how systematic and bureaucratic it all was.  Daniella also spent some time looking at the side-by-side comparison maps of Europe’s Jewish population before the war and after, which led to questions about Scandinavia so Daniella told them about Denmark saving its Jewish population. 

The workshop then transitioned to Canada’s past injustices, with particular reference to Residential Schools. One student mentioned that his cousin currently lived in a reserve, so he was able to give some insight into the living conditions faced by Aboriginal Canadians in 2018. The class got into a very lively (and sometimes heated) discussion on racism in Canada today. Daniella showed them a statistic that some Canadians admitted to being “somewhat racist” – so Daniella asked the class if it was possible to be “somewhat racist”. There were very interesting points on both sides, but Daniella steered the debate to the general consensus that being “somewhat racist” was still “racist.”

FSWC Director of Education Melissa spent the morning with an engaged group of York Region District School Board teachers. Melissa was invited to give the Equity Essentials program to a group of teachers for a professional development session at Richmond Hill High School today. At the end of the presentation, one of the teachers recounted his personal journey through the Killing Fields of Cambodia and how life-changing that experience had been.

Tour for Humanity finished up the week in Sudbury at the same school we began the week with. The school is a girls' Catholic school and has students from Grades 7-12 and since FSWC Educator Elena saw their middle school students on Monday, Elena spent Friday working with their senior students. Elena taught 3 workshops, two of Global Perspectives on Genocide and one Canadian Experience. Elena definitely noticed that these students were far more comfortable sharing their thoughts and opinions as compared with most high schools, perhaps a function of the single gender environment. With one group Elena had an interesting conversation that began with the question: "Were the Ku Klux Klan inspired by the Nazis?" Elena talked about the origins of the KKK in the deep South of the US in the immediate aftermath of slavery being abolished (emancipation proclamation). They used terrorism to try to reinforce the racial hierarchy when slavery was no longer legal, so they actually predate the Nazis. Even so, the KKK and other white supremacy groups promote antisemitism and have adopted Nazi symbology in the decades since the Second World War and the majority of hate groups in North America consistently promote hatred of both Jews and Blacks. Most students had very little background in Jewish history/culture so Elena took the opportunity to tell them about Jewish Heritage Month and some broad strokes on Jewish history (ancient Israel, diaspora, pre World War II). Elena told the students that hatred and violence has been a constant theme in human history, and the story of the Jewish people is a story of resilience in the face of these kinds of attitudes.