Holocaust and Hope Student Study Tour

The League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada and the Massuah Institute for Holocaust Studies are pleased to present an exciting and innovative Holocaust education program. The "Holocaust and Hope Student Study Tour", an annual two-week study tour of Israel, is currently taking place. This program was designed to give Canadian high-school students access to some of the best Holocaust education resources in the world, with the purpose of increasing awareness of the Holocaust and the relevance of its lessons to the lives of young people in Canada today. This program is open to students of all ethnic and religious backgrounds.

The League for Human Rights is a national volunteer agency dedicated to combatting racial discrimination, bigotry and antisemitism, and to promoting human rights for all Canadians. The League accomplishes its goals though legal/legislative initiatives, intercultural dialogue and educational programming. Through its unique "Holocaust and Hope" program the League has helped students and teachers from all backgrounds confront history through multi-faceted programs of lectures, on-site visits, and personal contacts. The Educators' Study Tour, which began in 1986, has influenced hundreds of teachers in their development of Holocaust education curricula in the context of anti-racist education in Canada. The Student Study Tour, initiated in 1997, has extended access to the exceptional Holocaust education resources available in Israel to students as well.

The Student Study Tour is highlighted by a 3-day visit to the Massuah Institute, a teaching and residential facility in Israel dedicated to familiarizing young people with the facts, meaning and implications of the Holocaust through a unique and in-depth program of audio-visual materials, documentary sources and survivor testimony. In addition to visits to Holocaust education centres, there will be time allotted for touring in Jerusalem, Galilee, and Israel's Mediterranean coast.

The program is open to any student over 16 years of age who is attending a Canadian high school, has completed grade 11 or 12 by the date of departure, and holds or is eligible for a valid passport. Consideration will be given to ensure representation from across Canada.

Countering Holocaust Denial Together

Over the past several years, the League's annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents has reported a shift in antisemitic hate crime and Holocaust denial activity away from Canada's urban centres towards smaller communities across the country. The evidence shows that hate mongers and Holocaust deniers are now focusing their efforts on recruiting high school students to their racist ideology in communities where there are few Jews or other religious minorities. In recent years there has been a much greater demand on the League's staff and volunteers for Holocaust education seminars, guest speakers, and anti-racism programming in these smaller, more homogeneous centres, so that Holocaust denial and white supremacist Nazi ideology do not take hold. Students in places remote from Holocaust memorial museums and major resource libraries are eager for such programming. In this day and age of declining resources we can all accomplish our goals more effectively if there is a more efficient network for sharing existing resources and information.

The Massuah Institute and B'nai Brith Canada

One of the intentions of the proposed project is to serve as a model for inter-agency co-operation in planning, implementing and supporting Holocaust education, utilizing the diverse strengths and specific expertise of existing programs and personnel. The Massuah Institute and B'nai Brith Canada will each contribute essential components of the program and can provide the necessary leadership and skills to fulfil the project's goals.

The Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust is a unique commemorative and educational facility designed to stimulate interest in the Holocaust among students and young adults from Israel and throughout the world. Massuah seeks to familiarize young people with the facts, meanings and implications of the Holocaust through in-depth seminars, audio-visual materials, literature, and personal survivor testimonies. Massuah offers a wide range of innovative educational activities and resources for students and teachers, and has provided instructional programming for over 200,000 students. Massuah is widely acknowledged as an outstanding educational facility for conferences, residential seminars and teacher training courses, and houses an extensive library of films and documents on the Holocaust that are used by educators and researchers.

Co-opting Modern Technology in the Struggle

One innovative aspect of the program will be the utilization of state-of-the-art computer technology to network students and educators. It will provide them with the means to share information and access and contribute to archives in order to counter the myths, stereotypes and lies heard in their communities, along with a network of support people to keep them from feeling alone and marginalized for taking a stand about teaching the Holocaust and speaking out against anti-Semitism. It will also be useful for developing a central database of all Holocaust education resources available to Canadians, so that teachers and students will know whom to call for assistance in order to book a speaker or design their own programs. To that end, both B'nai Brith Canada and the Massuah Instituite currently have sites on the World Wide Web, and the services of the Nizkor Project will also be made available.

The Nizkor Project is a Holocaust information archive and educational resource on the Internet to monitor and refute the falsehoods, half-truths and misinformation distributed via this and other media by racist and anti-Semitic individuals and organizations that reject established historical fact about the Holocaust. Ken McVay, awarded the Order of British Columbia and a B'nai Brith Media Human Rights Award for his tireless efforts to counter the lies of those promoting hatred on the Internet, along with a cadre of volunteers around the world, is building one of the most extensive and thorough information bases about the Holocaust and the activities of Holocaust deniers. Nizkor seeks to archive, for world-wide electronic access free of charge, materials that deal with the phenomenon and history of hate, especially Nazism and the Holocaust.

What Will We Do?

The fourth "Holocaust and Hope" Student Study Tour, scheduled for July 16-31, 2000, will spend two weeks touring Holocaust museums and education centres, along with other sites in Israel related to the promotion of inter-faith and inter-cultural understanding. Leadership will include past participants of the "Holocaust and Hope" Educators' Study Tour with counselling, travel and supervisory experience who are knowledgeable in the subject matter. The program will be highlighted by three days of accommodation at the Massuah Institute, including three full days of Massuah programming, allowing the students to consolidate and apply what they have learned in the course of the tour.

The program is highly subsidized in order to ensure equality of access, with each student chosen to participate expected to pay only $1,500 for the entire program, including air transportation, travel and accommodation in Israel, and programming. Student participants are expected to make a significant contribution to their schools and communities upon their return.

What Can You Do?

This project intends to fill a number of existing gaps in Holocaust education programming, and to increase non-Jewish understanding of the Holocaust, and commitment to behave like the "Righteous Among the Nations" in the face of current racism and anti-Semitism. Taking young non-Jewish student leaders to confront the Holocaust in order to attempt to understand that which is not understandable and to appreciate the importance of retelling the stories and of never forgetting, will go a long way towards countering future anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

For further information and/or to offer your support or assistance, please contact:

League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada
Contact: Ruth Klein, National Director of Advocacy
15 Hove Street
Toronto, Ontario M4H 3Y8
(416) 633-6224 ext. 111
rklein@bnaibrith.ca


Rochelle Wilner President	Frank Dimant Chief Executive Officer	Ruth Klein National Director	Prof. Stephen Scheinberg National Chair