On Friday, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) hosted Grades 7and 8 students in a workshop on Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust.  The students travelled to Toronto from the small town of Acton, Ontario. FSWC Educator Elena, who led the workshop, found students generally quite knowledgeable about the Holocaust as everyone had read the novel Hana's Suitcase and several students had watched The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.  

Elena spent a long time talking about transportation to the camps because the "cattle car" activity where all of the students crowd into a scaled-down rectangle that represents the size of the train cars Jewish people were forced into while being deported to concentration camps, sparked a lot of questions. This is consistently an extremely effective exercise, particularly when working with middle school children. They start out laughing and silly because they are all crammed into such a small space and they aren't used to being so close to one another. Although many students start off laughing, they are quickly very uncomfortable. They really start thinking about how "dehumanizing" this aspect of the Holocaust was. This was proven with Friday’s group by a young woman who wanted to know how long the longest train ride for Jewish prisoners was as soon as they were allowed to sit down again. There was complete silence when Elena told the group that the longest transport was 18 days and that every single person on that train was dead when it arrived at its destination. Another student wanted to know if other types of prisoners were transported with Jews or were they brought to the camps separately. 

After lunch Holocaust Survivor Andy Reti delivered a very powerful testimony about his experiences as a young child during the Holocaust. At the end of his presentation, he had the students stand up and join him in pledging to never allow something like the Holocaust to happen again. Overall it was a great day and the students impressed Elena with their level of interest and attention for the whole workshop.

In addition to the workshop, Tour for Humanity and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Educator Daniella finished up the week at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Elementary School in Windsor, Ontario.  I’ve included a map below to show Windsor in relation to Toronto.  There were six workshops for Grades 7 and 8 students, all of which participated in the Canadian Experience workshop.  In the Canadian Experience workshop students learn about a variety of difficult topics in Canadian history including slavery, the Indian Residential Schools System, the voyage of the SS St. Louis and the systemic internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Following a review of the past, current issues including cyber bullying and modern-day examples of intolerance are examined and discussed.

The first class (and teacher) really set the tone for the day. Grade 7 teacher, Dean Haddad, has studied the Holocaust extensively, even completing a 3-week course at Yad Vashem last summer. As such his class has been talking about the Holocaust for a few weeks so the class was very knowledgeable. They were able to explain the story of the SS St. Louis with incredible accuracy and participated very well in other components of the workshop as well.

Coincidentally the Tour for Humanity visit on Friday coincided with Holocaust survivor Bill Glied speaking to the students in the afternoon. He was able to sit in on the final workshop of the day).