Today, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center's (FSWC) Education Department hosted a great group of 50 high school students for a Roots of Hate and Intolerance workshop a group of Catholic secondary school students from Brampton. This school has been involved with FSWC for many years, in fact the school has added FSWC workshops to their Grade 10 English curriculum. Six classes of students come to the center for 3 days of workshops every fall and every spring when they are studying Elie Wiesel’s book Night in their classes. 

Today’s workshop began with an overview of Simon Wiesenthal’s story, and then lead into the Holocaust. FSWC Educator Daniella began with a quick overview and then went into the history of antisemitism and the rise of Nazism. The students were quite moved by the cattle car activity, and Daniella tried to paint a picture for them of how terrible the conditions truly were. It was evident by their responses that they were really taking in the material. One young man summed up his, and his peers, thoughts when he said, “Oh man, that would be brutal” – which Daniella thought summed it up pretty well.

Following lunch, the group was joined by a special guest. Batel Mamo is part of the Shin-shinim program so she is spending this entire year living with different families in Canada. She spoke to the group about the program, her experiences and a bit about her life back in Israel. Today being Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) and yesterday Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers) Daniella also asked her to explain a little bit about the significance of these days. Daniella related it back to Remembrance Day and Canada Day for the group to give a frame of reference.  

After Batel left, Daniella began to focus the discussion on hate in Canada, both from an historical context and a modern perspective. The modern examples of hate crimes really resonated with the students and they even offered ways that these statistics could be countered.