Springfield Collegiate Institute

For immediate release: March 8, 2019

Springfield students to visit Holocaust sites

Trip to Europe also includes Canadian cemetery in the Netherlands

Thirty students from Springfield Collegiate Institute in Oakbank, Man., will travel to Europe later this month to visit three sites where Jews were murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust.

At each of the Concentration camps, five of the students will take a moment to remember a Holocaust victim, reading aloud a memorial that will include the name of the dead person and some details of his or her life.

The students will also visit other Second World War sites, including the Groesbeek Canadian War cemetery in the Netherlands. At this site the other half of the students will each read aloud a memorial for a Canadian soldier at their graveside, similar to the memorial for the Holocaust victims.  Students will also meet the Dutch group Faces to Graves (www.facestograves.nl) who are responsible for honouring the sacrifice of Canadian soldiers who are buried at the Groesbeek Canadian War cemetery.

The trip was planned in the late fall of 2017 and comes as increasing public attention has focused on the need for greater education of Canadian students about the Holocaust.

“It is really important that we make this trip to ensure that the Holocaust is not forgotten” said Katelyn Furgala, a Grade 12 student from Springfield who will be on the trip.

Canadian history teachers James Osler and James Chagnon said the trip will be an opportunity for students to connect in a personal way with the loss of human life caused by the Holocaust and the war.

“This trip will forever cement in the minds of the students who are going that hatred, taken to the extreme, has devastating results on humanity,” Osler said.

“Every graveside we visit, every concentration camp we tour in memoriam is a reminder that people, real people, sacrificed everything for what they believed in, not for the reward they expected to get.  This is why our students are researching both fallen Canadian soldiers and victims of the Holocaust before their trip,” Chagnon said.

Both teachers led a trip to Europe inApril 2017 for students to see First and Second World War sites connected to Canadian participation in both wars. That trip culminated in the students attending the ceremony marki