‘Alarming’ anti-Semitic incidents at Stratford school inspires student trips to Anne Frank House exhibit
An international exhibit about Holocaust victim Anne Frank currently on display at a Perth County museum will be visited by every student from Stratford Intermediate school following reports of anti-Semitic incidents earlier this year.
The exhibit, on loan from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, uses Anne’s famous diary to educate visitors about how Jewish people were persecuted by the Nazis leading up to and during the Second World War. After a successful run in Stratford in 2015, the exhibit has been sponsored for a second run by Carrie and Jeremy Wreford, the co-owners of Bradshaws, a department store in downtown Stratford.
Carrie said Wednesday “alarming” reports of anti-Semitic incidents at the school where her son studies prompted her to ask the museum if it could make the exhibit accessible to students.
“In response to increasing anti-Semitism across the country, as well as in Stratford, we realized the importance of exposing children in our community to Holocaust education that they might not have otherwise been able to experience,” she said. “We knew that the current Anne Frank House exhibit at The Stratford Perth Museum would be a great opportunity for our community’s kids to learn from, and we knew the team at the Stratford Perth Museum would be great partners in this endeavour.”
Specific details about the incidents at the school remained vague on Wednesday, but Avon Maitland District school board superintendent Laura Marotta said via email that school staff have been working closely with students to address incidents that took place “earlier this year.”
“In response to these incidents, the support of (school board) resources has been sought out, as well as community outreach, to further educate the school community on how to build an inclusive learning environment for all,” she said. “The school team has worked in partnership with our human rights and equity administrator to share teaching and learning resources with staff and students.”
At the museum, general manager John Kastner said Carrie’s request to find a way to bring all of the school’s students through the exhibit over the next two weeks has since generated a lot of community support.
Stratford Transit has agreed to shuttle students to the museum at a fraction of the cost of a school bus. Both the Stratford Optimist Club and the local branch of the Royal Canadian Legion have agreed to pitch in funds to cover the remaining cost. The museum’s summer student and volunteer guides are leading tours beginning this week.
“The exhibit is titled A History for Today, and that is most certainly the case,” Kastner said. “We see the same behavior and language today that was prevalent in pre-war Europe, and it’s even more unsettling to see it out in the open and in many cases go unchallenged. While this exhibit chronicles the events leading up to and including the Holocaust, the message is incredibly relevant.”
Anti-Jewish hate crimes have recently been on the rise in Canada, according to experts. B’nai Brith – the Jewish human rights organization – reported during last year’s federal election more anti-Semitic assaults in May of 2021 than in all of 2020, 2019 and 2018 combined.
Carrie, who grew up in a Jewish family in Toronto, where she attended a private Hebrew school as a young student, said her concerns about anti-Semitism stretch beyond Stratford.
“This is a problem that’s happening everywhere in small cities like Stratford because these children are not exposed to other cultures in many cases,” she said, adding she’s heard from friends in Toronto who have received letters from their children’s schools about anti-Semitic incidents .
The community’s effort to bring local students through the Anne Frank exhibit has been “heartening,” Carrie said.
“What I want these kids to understand is, it doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish or not, you can be at the receiving end of hate no matter what your background is. My hope for them is that they can maybe share this story and the empathy in their hearts will grow.”