Today, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies' (FSWC) Tour for Humanity program visited a Junior School in Etobicoke, working with Grades 3-5 students. FSWC Educator Elena gave 6 very successful workshops on Simon's Story. All of the kids at the school were very anxious to come on the bus and take part in the program. 

Many of the students throughout the day were familiar with Hitler and the Nazis, even if only by name, so Elena talked at length about why the Nazis were obsessed with racial purity and the idea that Germans were better than everyone else. Several students could not understand how Hitler could be so obsessed with "Aryan" qualities like blonde hair and blue eyes when he himself did not fit with that image. 

Elena also clearly defined antisemitism for each group and pointed out that Jewish people were treated like outsiders for a long time before the Holocaust, and even sometimes after. The heritage of many of the students manifested itself in the knowledge that a lot of the kids possessed about the Second World War. A lot of them had eastern European heritage (particularly Albanian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian) and consequently knew that the Nazis had targeted a lot of Slavic people as well. One student even corrected Elena when she referred to the Russian army, pointing out that it was the Soviet army at the time. Several Ukrainian students in one group took great pride in the fact that Simon Wiesenthal was from their country and wanted to know if he moved back there after the war. Elena explained that most Jewish people did not go back to their home countries permanently. Simon and his wife Cyla relocated to Vienna, the center of his Nazi hunting operations. Each workshop also included a discussion on how the students could connect the ideas of racism and intolerance as exhibited by the Nazis with bullying/smaller forms of exclusion we see around us every day. Elena had them brainstorm ideas for what kinds of projects they could start in their school in order to effect positive change.