Today Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) hosted Grade 10 students from a local Toronto high school for a Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust workshop in the Tom & Anna Koffler Tolerance Training Centre. Immediately upon arrival one young man came up to FSWC Educator Daniella and explained that he was very interested in history and had been looking forward to this trip for a while. He told Daniella that his background was native so he felt a special connection to learning about the Holocaust because he “knows what it is like for innocent people to be persecuted because of who they are.”  Indeed this student was eager to answer virtually every question Daniella asked and often gave additional input and asked plenty of his own insightful questions. 

The entire class was a pleasure to work with - these students were actively engaged, answering Daniella's questions and asking many questions of their own. The questions began when Daniella showed propaganda images of “The Eternal Jew” and an excerpt from “The Poisonous Mushroom.” Daniella led a discussion about how antisemitism took over facets of daily life. Students couldn’t believe that children were being taught such hatred at such a young age. One student wanted to know what parents might have said if children questioned why the Jewish people were “bad” – so Daniella explained that many parents would have taught their children from birth that Jewish people were the enemy to be feared.  

Daniella also spent considerable time on the Nuremberg Laws, with an emphasis on the relationship between Aryan’s and Jewish people. Students wanted to know what would have happened to an Aryan person that converted to Judaism, led to a discussion about the concept of Judaism as a religion and how the Nazi’s solidified being Jewish as a race. 

FSWC member and Holocaust survivor Joe Gottdenker came in after lunch to provide his testimony with the class. Daniella watched the students, in particular a group of active  boys, not only listen attentively but lean forward in their chairs to really hear and appreciate every word of Joe’s powerful talk. When talking about the extreme dangers that non-Jewish families put themselves in by hiding Jewish people, Joe mentioned a story of neighbours who were hiding a Jewish family and then subsequently were found out by the authorities. The Gestapo came to the house and executed all members of both families in the front yard. The class today found this particularly horrifying, with one student even commenting out loud, “they killed them in the front yard? That’s messed up.” After this, the class really appreciated the story of the Catholic family that took Joe in as an infant and cared for him even though they knew the punishment was execution. 

At the end of the workshop Daniella discussed Holocaust denial and antisemitism today. The class really struggled with understanding how Holocaust denial was possible. One student asked for the arguments that Holocaust deniers give, so Daniella explained about Ernst Zundel and his “did 6 million really die” along with the fact that there wasn’t always physical evidence (much destroyed by the Nazis themselves as the Allied forces began to liberate Nazi occupied land) - this leads deniers to say if there isn't evidence then there's no proof it happened. This prompted many students to exclaim their outrage, with particular regards to the crematoria at Auschwitz. Daniella heard a few the following comment by a student: “but they got rid of the bodies so of course there isn’t evidence. This makes no sense.”