Today the Tour for Humanity was at a secondary school in London, Ontario. It was a blizzard outside but the students were excellent throughout the 4 workshops that Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) Educator Elena presented. Elena was working with senior students, three of the groups participated in Global Perspectives and the last of the day took part in the Canadian Experience workshop.

Elena is continuously impressed by the knowledge many students possess about the Holocaust. She received a few questions she has never heard from students before. One student wanted to know how Switzerland treated its Jewish population and whether Swiss Jews were victims during the Holocaust. Elena told the student that Switzerland was technically neutral and did not deport their Jewish population, but also pointed out that Switzerland had a very small Jewish population and did not welcome a lot of Jewish refugees who were fleeing from Germany and other surrounding countries.

There were also some great conversations around the nature of genocide. One student wanted to know whether the use of internment camps against Japanese Canadians counted as a form of genocide. Without diminishing the significance of this human rights abuse, Elena reminded students about the “intent to destroy” as part of the definition of genocide. Another student wanted to know if there were people murdered in the camps and Elena said that not to her knowledge. This was a policy of containment based on virulent racism and fear, but not an attempt to wipe out the Japanese people of Canada. Even so, the isolation and imprisonment of the men, women, and children did make them very vulnerable and given what we know about the isolation of Jewish people during the Holocaust, internment camps could have potentially become genocidal under different circumstances.