You may be surprised to learn that Canada became home to 40,000 Holocaust survivors – one of the largest communities of survivors in the world. Canadian survivors have been involved in sharing their stories and shaping educational efforts in this country. These efforts include participating in projects to collect oral history. To date, more than 1,200 oral histories have been recorded. When including survivor voices in your lesson plans, choose voices from Canada. Students are more connected to what they are learning when they hear it from people who are fellow Canadians, perhaps even their neighbours. Furthermore, when Canadian survivors share their life stories with us they teach us about how they experienced the Holocaust and what it was like to immigrate to Canada and build new lives here. Their experiences as immigrants were not easy: they faced difficult periods of adjustment and often discrimination, while also dealing with the trauma of their wartime persecution and loss.

Include a link to In Their Own Words exhibit or the Survivor Stories module.

The Nazis carried out a second, concurrent genocide during the Holocaust. This was against the Roma and Sinti (“Gypsy” people). This event is often termed Samudaripen, meaning the murder of all, or collective murder. Another term you might encounter when reading about the Roma genocide is Porajmos, literally meaning “devouring.”

Explore testimonies from Canadian Holocaust survivors on the Museum’s In Their Own Words online resource.

Across Canada education centres and museums provide local Holocaust education opportunities. These experiences cater to your students by following provincial curriculum guidelines, engaging with local survivors, and rooting the educational experiences in the particular place. Often these centres are at the forefront of experimenting with new forms of media and cutting-edge pedagogical experiences for students. The Toronto Holocaust Museum is a state-of-the-art facility where your students can access ground-breaking technology and innovative approaches to Holocaust education. Whenever possible, include trips to your local Holocaust centre to ground your teaching in a site and benefit from the expertise and innovation taking place around the country.

Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre in Vancouver

Montreal Holocaust Museum in Montreal

Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax

Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg

Canadian War Museum in Ottawa

Freeman Family Foundation Holocaust Education Centre in Winnipeg

Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship in Ottawa

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Toronto

National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa

Unlike countries with a national curriculum, in Canada curricular requirements vary between provinces. It may surprise you to learn just how much it varies in terms of which grades mandate Holocaust education and what content about the Holocaust is required to be taught. Considering the direct references to Holocaust learning objectives in your provincial curriculum is an important element of your preparation for teaching, so you know what, if anything, your students have already learned in an educational setting, or so you can prepare them for what they will encounter later. Often, references to the Holocaust that appear in curriculum documents frame the content in a way that directly links it to Canada’s history.

Students may think the fact that the Holocaust happened a long time ago on a different continent means that it’s not relevant to them. One way that you can help students see the relevance is to integrate into your teaching key moments from Canada’s history that demonstrate the Canadian connection to the Holocaust. Some examples are the MS St Louis refugee ship that was refused entry in 1939; the internment of German-Jewish “enemy aliens” on Canadian soil; and the role of Canadian army in liberating parts of Europe, including some of the Nazi concentration camps.

When teaching about the Holocaust in Canada, it is important to be aware of where you are teaching and who you are teaching. The Holocaust did not happen in Canada, but genocide has happened here, and conversations about Residential Schools are becoming commonplace in many classrooms. This reality makes studying the Holocaust gain new significance as it develops students’ awareness of genocide as a feature of modern life that has happened many times and continues to occur. And as you get to know your students each year, awareness of their backgrounds also informs your teaching. Indigenous and Jewish students bring their family legacies with them to the classroom, and newcomers to Canada may bring firsthand experience with war and persecution. When choosing which cases of genocide to discuss in your classroom, make sure to give enough time to each case so that student discussions are well-grounded and respectful of the particularities of each situation.