Province announces mandatory Holocaust education

WINNIPEG — Grades 6, 9 and 11 students will receive explicit instruction about the Holocaust and learn about Jewish cultural traditions and contributions to Manitoba in the fall.

The province announced a formal partnership with the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada Thursday — Yom HaShoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“We have in our archive a letter that was sent 50 years ago to the provincial government asking for mandated curriculum,” said Belle Jarniewski, executive director of the centre.

Jarniewski, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, said she is thrilled about the changes and the centre’s role in organizing a May 13 conference to brief teachers on them.

Manitoba Education has been reviewing social studies curriculum in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel that have led to more than 18 months of bloodshed in the region.

Kelly Hiebert, a high school history teacher from Winnipeg, was tapped to oversee the initiative that will eventually include age-appropriate lessons for students of all ages.

While existing curriculum documents acknowledge concepts such as propaganda and antisemitism, they focus generally on the Second World War and Canada’s role in it.

Hiebert has been tasked with creating more clear and explicit directions for teachers so all Grade 12 graduates are well-versed in the Nazi regime’s genocide of Jews between 1941 and 1945.

“It is so important for students to not only learn about the history, but what that means today for our current context and all the complexities of the world that we’re living in,” Education Minister Tracy Schmidt told reporters at the legislature after question period.

The Manitoba Legislative Assembly observed a moment of silence earlier in the afternoon to honour the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust.

Numerous MLAs and visitors in the gallery — including Hiebert and Jarniewski — donned yellow Star of David lapel pins.

Nazis forced Jews to wear similar patches in Germany and other occupied nations during the Second World War to segregate and systematically sort them into ghettos and concentration camps.

Jarniewski said it’s important the curriculum has extensive resources on the genocide, as well as information about modern-day Judaism and how it is thriving in local communities.

That’s why her organization chose to organize an upcoming professional-development session for teachers at Congregation Shaarey Zedek, a bustling and state-of-the-art synagogue, she said.

Registration is open to teachers who deliver Grade 6-12 instruction to learn more about the imminent curriculum changes.

Jarniewski said she wants participants to learn about the history of antisemitism in Canada and how it has continued and “mutated.”

Online radicalization and trauma-informed teaching are among the topics that will be discussed during breakout sessions. Substitute-teacher coverage is being made available to participants.

» Winnipeg Free Press