Today’s group was a small but engaged group of Grade 12 students from a High School in Toronto. Students were finishing Elie Wiesel’s Night, so they had an excellent background from this memoir. Holocaust survivor Andy Reti was a great fit to speak to this group as the class has been investigating Holocaust history from the perspective of personal experience and memoirs. His and his mother’s story give an excellent counterpoint to Elie Wiesel’s brutal experience in Auschwitz. It is important to remind students that despite the fact that there are many survivors and survivor accounts, each is unique. From child survivors to ghetto survivors to hidden children to labour camp survivors to concentration camp survivors, there is no singular experience of the Holocaust—and today’s workshop and presentation did a great job of highlighting this.

The school year may me winding down, but FSWC's classroom is booked virtually every day in December with students from all over the GTA participating in our workshops.