Tour for Humanity was at an elementary school in North York today. Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Educator Elena taught 4 workshops in total, 3 Global Experience workshops for Grades 11 and 12 Law students and 1 Canadian Experience for a group of Grade 10 history students. Elena spent extra time discussing the aftermath of the Holocaust and the creation of the United Nations in the wake of World War II at the Law teacher's request and Elena asked the students to think about why the UN seems ineffective when it comes to preventing and responding to genocide when we talked about Rwanda.  

All of the groups were great and Elena was pleased to see the number of questions asked by the students. One interesting question came from the first group of the day where one student wanted to know how Muslims were seen by the Nazis. Elena explained that the Nazis saw all people of other races as inferior but Muslims did not play a big role in the ideology of the Nazis because there were very few Muslims in Germany at the time. Elena pointed to the Jewish people, Roma and Slavs as the three ethnicities most targeted during the Holocaust but pointed out that Jews (and to a lesser extent the Roma) were the ones targeted with actual genocide. Another noteworthy moment from the day came when one young man brought up the Indian Act (broad set of laws introduced in 1876, including residential schools) and wanted to know if other parts of the Indian Act fit with the concept of genocide.  Elena said that many parts of the Act would seem to fit with the idea of cultural genocide including the practice of taking "Indian" status away if an Indigenous person served in the army or went to university. Another policy Elena mentioned was the fact that Aboriginal women who married non-Indigenous men were stripped of their "Indian" Status, as were any children descended from that relationship.