Manitoba eyes expanding Holocaust education

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This article was published 16/11/2023 (688 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba Education is in early talks about making lessons about the Holocaust mandatory.

The subject — ensuring all Grade 12 graduates are knowledgeable about the systematic murder of millions of Jews during the Second World War — came up during meetings between provincial officials and a national envoy this week.

Deborah Lyons said the NDP government expressed “great interest” in bolstering existing curriculum during her inaugural visit to Winnipeg as Canada’s new Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.

Lyons told the Free Press that Manitoba’s education minister requested they work together to get solid syllabus proposals in place.

“We need to do more to make sure we have Holocaust education in the schools, but even further to that, that (students) have a better understanding of contemporary antisemitism and how it is affecting the fabric of our Canadian society,” she said, referencing the rapid spread of hateful messaging and negative stereotypes via social media.

The seasoned diplomat was appointed to the special post last month, in the wake of Hamas’s large-scale attacks against Israel on Oct. 7.

Lyons has since begun a cross-country tour to discuss ongoing prejudice against Jewish Canadians, as reports of targeted attacks spike amid the Israel-Hamas war, and homegrown initiatives to counter it.

Ontario and B.C. have both recently announced new and expanded Holocaust education will be compulsory in the respective provinces, beginning in 2025.

The former’s updated Grade 10 history course will explicitly link the historical event to extreme political ideologies, including fascism, and discuss the contemporary impacts of rising antisemitism, according to a government news release.

Manitoba is undertaking a review of local resources to strengthen them and “see how we can best meet the needs of students and teachers as it pertains to Holocaust education,” Education Minister Nello Altomare said in a statement Wednesday.

Gustavo Zentner of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg warned about the recent rise in antisemitic graffiti and other hate-related incidents, and the potential for these behaviours to propagate and lead to wider discrimination against other faith-based groups.

“We want to focus on safety and security. We need people, we need students and their families to feel that they’re not being targeted — and the best way to support that is through education,” said the president of the umbrella group for Jewish-serving organizations in the city.

Zentner said he has been collaborating with leaders from public schools and universities to create a forum to share training on how to spot blatant and subtle hate speech, and address both in classroom and campus settings.

Earlier this week, the special envoy met with community leaders, superintendents, police officers, university administrators, students and politicians including Premier Wab Kinew. Manitoba MPs Ben Carr and Marty Morantz, both of whom are Jewish, took part in the discussions on tackling antisemitism.

Teachers must be equipped to promote critical thinking and fact-checking while managing “difficult and tense conversations,” said Carr, a former principal who represents Winnipeg South Centre, which has the largest Jewish population on the Prairies.

Lyons said the goal of her visit was to listen to Jewish Winnipeggers’ experiences and better understand the path forward “to find a way out of this period that is so, so intense, so difficult, so painful.”

“I would’ve thought that Canadians would have been wrapping their arms around their Jewish (neighbours). I would’ve expected more of an outpouring because of the incredible pain and suffering that came out of that horrific event on Oct. 7,” she said.

The special envoy suggested confusion and anger about what’s happening in the Middle East and its complicated history is being “rechannelled into antisemitism.”

As far as Lyons is concerned, Israel has a right to defend itself and the Canadian government “has always supported a two-state solution.”

Roughly 1,400 Israelis — the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians — are believed to have been killed during Hamas’s surprise attack on a Jewish holiday. The Israeli government’s retaliatory attacks are estimated to have killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, including upwards of 4,000 children, to date.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca