Today marked the end of our first northern tour this year, and our first visit to the Sudbury area.  The school is located in a small community about 40km north of Sudbury. Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) Educator Daniella worked with all students in Grades 3-5 over five Simon's Story workshops.   This workshop is aimed at junior audiences, with the goal to introduce elementary school students to the Holocaust in an age-appropriate manner. Students learn techniques to deal with injustice and ideas for creating positive change. Stereotypes, racism and prejudice are defined and discussed in an age-appropriate manner.

The classes were quite memorable, particularly a Grade 4 class who had recently read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - they were quite knowledgeable about the Holocaust. Teaching the younger grades is always refreshing because their childish innocence comes through in their questions and comments. As Daniella was telling the students about Simon Wiesenthal's experience during the war, one boy expressed concern that Hitler targeted the Jewish people, “Even though they are just like us.”  Daniella explained that he was absolutely right and she asked the class if they would choose to play with one person over another and received a resounding chorus of, “No!” from the class. 

The Grade 3 students were also very animated and offered up plenty of suggestions of ways they could be heroes in their own community. They were particularly interested in Simon Wiesenthal's life as a Nazi hunter. It took a bit of time for Daniella to explain to them that he did not “hunt” Nazis using violence but focused on justice, working through legal, democratic means that included trials and police. Being so young (about 8 years old), this seemed difficult for the class to understand so Daniella related it to bullying and explained that Simon would have been the type of person to tell a teacher when he knew bullying was happening instead of trying to fight back physically. This explanation satisfied the class. 

It was a wonderful day at the school, multiple teachers and administrators came in to see the bus and sit in on workshops during the course of the day. At the end, our contact teacher thanked us very warmly for coming and said that the visit was already making a positive impact on the school. 

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) Educator Elena traveled to a local private school in Toronto, where she taught FSWC’s Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust workshop to the Grade 10 History students. It was a very enjoyable day for Elena because the students asked very thoughtful questions. They were incredibly knowledgeable and were currently working on their term papers so many of the students brought up interesting themes relating to their own research topics. One young man told Elena he was Jewish and wanted to know more about the idea of "resistance" to the Nazis. They had all watched a movie about the White Rose group so Elena talked about other examples of resistance within Germany and outside of it. She told them about Herbert Baum, a Jewish-communist activist and the group of resistors he led on a mission to blow up a Nazi exhibit decrying "degenerate" art. Elena also talked about the activities of Jewish resistors during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and about uprisings at Auschwitz II and Sobibor concentration camps. 

Another interesting theme Elena discussed was related to the Nazi use of propaganda posters. One of their assignments had been to make their own propaganda posters (Elena spent a few minutes admiring them and talking to the students about them after the workshop) so they all had a good understanding of how the posters could be used to manipulate people. Elena gave them some more background on Joseph Goebbels and talked about how fear was really at the root of how the Nazis controlled people in the sense that they obsessed over Germany's supposed enemies and presented all of their activities as defending Germany.