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Lauren Sobot, a student in Psyc 441, chose to create a podcast as her final assignment. You can access the episodes below. The episodes should be listened to in order, beginning with Episode 1.
Abigail Companion
To Whom it May Concern,
My name is Abigail Companion and I am a fourth-year student at St. Francis Xavier University. During the past semester I was enrolled in a course titled “Advanced Social Psychology of the Holocaust”. This course opened my eyes to many current issues and flaws within Canada’s education system. I have always been a student who was interested in History, especially the Holocaust and the residential schools. As a young child, I would take books out from the library to try and learn more about what exactly the Holocaust was and more importantly, WHY it happened. In terms of residential schools in Canada, I was completely unaware of what happened until grade 11. The only reason I found this information out is because I am an Indigenous woman and at a band meeting, they mentioned what had happened. After this meeting, I quickly went home to find out more. Again, the only reason I was gaining more information was because I personally was doing the searching, with zero aid from my education institution.
Read MoreThis morning the weather forecast did not call for rain. Nonetheless, on the way to Treblinka it began to rain. The weather dovetailed with the content of the day at every turn - it was as though the weather was providing a soundtrack. When we were listening to intense stories, the rain and wind would pick up. When we were having a moment of wandering around and contemplating, the sun and the butterflies came out. As we left a forest, it gently began to rain and the tall trees were swaying together, in a very mournful way. I am, of course, anthropomorphizing the trees, the wind and the rain in a way that draws a stark contrast to how the Germans dehumanized the Jewish people.
Read MoreImagine for a moment that you were living during a time of war. You, and the rest of your community, have been forced to live in an area far too small for your numbers. You have heard rumours that the overcrowding is not an issue because your enemies plan to murder you very soon. Imagine also that you have been placed in charge of your entire community, and it is your job to arrange housing assignments, work assignments, and to do your best with maintaining some semblance of order and normalcy in a completely upside down world. Imagine that one day your overlords come to you and say that if you can convince your community to turn over all of its children, the rest of the adults can continue to live. What would you do? In numbers, you are being asked to sacrifice roughly 10,000 - 15,000 children in order to save upwards of 70,000 adults. Except, the adults you’ll be saving are the parents of those children.
Read MoreWe visited a number of places today, including the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which sits prominently in the center of Berlin, very close to the Reichstag (German Parliament). Nearby we also visited the monument for the persecuted homosexuals as well as the monument for the Roma and Sinti. The day began, however, with a visit to a memorial about the T4 - Euthanasia program. This is an excellent place to start because it represents the Nazis’ first foray into organized, industrialized murder. For me, it is also meaningful as it represents how atrocities can be far reaching and show up in areas we may least expect. The T4 program, so named only because of the address of the building where it started, applied negative eugenics in an attempt to “purify” the German people by removing those who were considered less desirable. This largely meant individuals with mental and physical disabilities as well as individuals considered to be asocial (unwilling to conform to societal norms and expectations).
Read MoreToday I am in Berlin. We visited the monument to the murdered homosexuals under the Nazi regime. The monument has a small glass window that you look through in order to view a video of same sex couples kissing - showing the simple act of love that could warrant being murdered by the Nazis - and, importantly, is still enough to bring on violence today.
Read MoreDay 3: Berlin
We arrived in Berlin very early this morning - around 9am. People were on a variety of flights, so we hung out at the airport Starbucks for a while until everyone had gathered. We then got onto our bus and did a brief tour of some areas relevant to Jewish life in Berlin before and during the war.
Read MoreOn day 2 of the Leaders of Change program by the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem, we had a panel of Holocaust survivors come to speak with the group before our departure for Europe. Although I had heard two of these survivors speak before, and had read their books, everything that they had to share with us was “new to me.” They tailored their comments specifically to our group - a group of educators - and spoke about the importance of Holocaust Education, their experiences talking to young people (and sometimes their challenges in doing that work), and they spoke to us about what we would see on our trip - as well as what we would not see.
Read MoreOn July 1 I took the train from Belleville, Ontario to Toronto. I wasn’t headed to the city for Canada celebrations, instead, I was headed to Toronto to begin participating in the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem’s Leaders of Change program. The program is designed to take Canadian educators on a journey to learn about how to teach today’s high school and university students about the Holocaust. The trip began with a two day seminar in Toronto where we covered topics like the history of antisemitism and the impossible choices faced by people during the Holocaust. On the second day of the seminar we met with three Holocaust Survivors (more on that in another post) and then later that afternoon we flew to Berlin to begin the “immersive” portion of the trip.
Read MoreIf you knew today, that somewhere in the world people were being unjustly incarcerated, tortured and killed because of who they are and who they love, what would you do?
Would you save a life?
If you do something, no matter how small, it is greater than doing nothing.
So what will you do?
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