Today the Tour for Humanity was back on the road at the Orillia campus of Georgian College. This is our 3rd visit to the college in 2 years and, as always, we were greeted very warmly by the organizer from the school. We were working with college students in several different programs/classes: a Human Rights class taught to Police Foundations students, Developmental Services students and those enrolled in the Early Childhood Education. Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) Educator Elena taught the Global Perspectives on Genocide workshop to each group and many teachers from the college also came and sat in throughout the day. One of the great things about the college environment is the fact that a lot of people are more willing to ask questions (perhaps less fear about judgement from their friends and professors). This led to a few questions about Hitler and those persistent conspiracy theories around his death. We also had a question about why people still talk about the Rothschilds which led Elena to speak about the economic history of Jews in Europe and common antisemitic tropes around this topic. Elena explained the fact that many kingdoms in Europe barred Jews from virtually all professions except for trade in petty goods and financial services for the ruling class including tax collection and money lending until the early 1800s. The fact that certain Jewish families were able to gain status and wealth through these channels has always drawn a lot of antisemitic attention and accusations of financial conspiracy, again arguably due to antisemitism. Nobody takes notice of all the different banking giants with German/Swiss names. 

Another interesting comment from the day came in the 3rd workshop. After watching the video on genocide one young woman shared some personal knowledge about the residential school system. She explained how injustice towards Indigenous peoples is current and present still today, not just in black and white images/video. Her boyfriend is Indigenous and his mother was forced to go to a residential school just a short time ago (in the late 70s) and has scars on her back to this day from the beatings she received there. Elena thanked her for sharing that info with all of us and we talked about the last residential school to close in 1996.