Grade 7 students at Our Lady of Mount Carmel learned a harsh lesson this week about what the human race is capable of.
Holocaust survivor Bill Glied spoke to the students about his time in the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau concentration camps during World War II. Glied said it's sometimes difficult to tell his story to children so young but he tries to relate it to them as he was just 13 years old when he first went to the concentration camp.
"I was their age so I feel some relations to the kids and I can relate and try to talk to them as a 13 and half year old kid instead of an old grown up person," said 87-year-old Glied.
Glied said his main objective when he talks to people of any age is to encourage them not to be bystanders when they see something going on around them.
"All of us are upset about what's happened in Syria the last couple of days and I feel that we have a duty and responsibility as human beings to be involved, to do whatever we can to save human lives because all of us are human beings," said Glied.
Grade 7 teacher Dean Haddad says the students learned about the Holocaust during their class and it is a rare opportunity for these students to hear about it first hand.
"It's really important for kids to understand tolerance and to understand what's going on in the world today as well as what happened 80 years ago. It's an important lesson that we can learn from and hopefully they can use what they learned from what happened in the war to now today, in bullying in schools or just in the world today," said Haddad.
Glied came to Canada in 1947 and says this country has been very good to him. He says when he speaks to students he encourages them to do good things in their every day lives in hopes that it spreads throughout the country and around the world.
"First of all they should realize that they are Canadians and how important it is to be a Canadian and to value this particular country to a great extent and then to be involved in daily situations here to try to do a good thing here in the city," said Glied.
