Michelle Glied-Goldstein says her late father Bill Glied, a Holocaust survivor, would be “heartbroken” to see the current spate of antisemitic incidents in Toronto schools.
“It truly is gut-wrenching,” said Glied-Goldstein, who runs an organization called Carrying Testimony to share the stories of Holocaust survivors.
“I definitely feel like there is a lot more of it in the last few years and probably in the last two years in particular.”
Michelle Glied-Goldstein, left, and her father Bill Glied pose in a picture in 2016. Bill Glied, who survived Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps, died in 2017. His daughter Michelle captured his stories on video, and shares them with students in schools around Ontario to teach them about the Holocaust. (Shoy Pictures)
In Toronto, Glied-Goldstein is part of the school board’s response to this disturbing trend, and will be speaking to thousands of students in the schools where the incidents occurred, sharing her late father’s story through a presentation and a video interview with him.
But experts say what seems to be a rise of antisemitism in schools is not limited to Toronto, or the last month — and suggest a lack of education is part of the problem.
‘Not just a Toronto problem’
In Markham, Ont., Marilyn Sinclair founded Liberation75, a global organization dedicating to commemorating the liberation of concentration camps.
“This is not just a Toronto problem,” said Sinclair, who is regularly in touch with Holocaust awareness organizations across the country.
“They all tell the same stories that they have antisemitism in all of their schools. They have swastikas painted on the walls of the schools. The Nazi imagery has gone out of control within the schools.”
Ottawa Grade 12 student Talia Freedhoff wrote about experiencing antisemitism in schools. (Talia Freedhoff)
Talia Freedhoff agrees with that. The Grade 12 student in Ottawa recently wrote an article for the Canadian Jewish News about her experiences moving to a public school after attending a Jewish private school. She says she’s experienced insensitivity to the needs of Jewish students, with teachers scheduling tests or assignments on major Jewish holidays, and has heard from other Jewish students about overt antisemitism.
“I’ve heard of people who had swastikas drawn on school supplies,” said Freedhoff. “I’ve heard a lot of really bad things … like money being thrown at Jewish students because they are Jewish.”
What was the Holocaust?
During the Second World War, the German Nazi regime persecuted and murdered approximately six million Jewish people throughout Europe. Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration or extermination camps to be killed with poison gas or subjected to forced labour. Some of the camps were also used for other groups persecuted by the Nazis such as Roma, homosexuals and political opponents. You can learn more about the largest of the Nazi death camps here: Life after Auschwitz.
‘They said I should go back to the gas chamber’
Antisemitism in schools is something Winnipeg father Ron East and his son Shai know well.
Shai says the bullying for being Jewish started when he was only in Grade 7, with a tap on the back from another student.
Winnipeg teenager Shai East, left, and his father Ron. Shai says he had to endure several antisemitic attacks when he was in Grades 7 and 8. Ron East says the administration of his son’s school promised to protect him but did nothing. (CBC)
“He just told me that I was weird and freakish for being Jewish. He told me that he knows that we control the world and that we eat babies and a bunch of other lies that really hurt my feelings.”
It didn’t end there. The following year, he says, he was accosted by four boys with an antisemitic slur.
“They started calling me names. They said I should go back to the gas chamber, that I’m a k—.”
Shai’s father Ron complained to the administration. He said he was reassured but ultimately, nothing was done. Then, the pandemic started and schools went online. By the fall of 2020, Shai was off to high school.
Ron East says what happened to his son speaks to a broader problem within the school ecosystem.
“You wonder, where’s the education piece for this particular student who is there guarding at the door, watching those students? Where are the parents seeing what they’re seeing on social media, talking with their students? Where are those teachers educating them?”
Lack of education, online images to blame
Indeed, experts say a lack of education on the harms of antisemitism and the history of the Holocaust is at the root of these problems in schools.
Sinclair’s Liberation75 organization published a report last month in which they interviewed 3600 students in Grades 6 to 12. Only two-thirds of the students surveyed said the Holocaust happened and six million Jewish people were killed. Of the others:
10 per cent said the Holocaust was exaggerated or may have been fabricated.
23 per cent were unsure what to answer.
Sinclair thinks the apparent uptick in school incidents of antisemitism in the last two years is no coincidence. Over that period, students have spent more time than ever online because of the pandemic, not only learning virtually, but also going on social media platforms, video game chat sites, and so on.
“I think the temptation is to say that these students are somehow bad students or come from bad families. I don’t believe that at all. I believe that the students are online. They’re seeing Nazi imagery. They’re seeing the Nazi salutes and they’re being provocative.”
Marilyn Sinclair is the founder of the organization Liberation75. Started to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of concentration camps, the Markham, Ont.-based foundation also provides Holocaust education for schools and families. (Doug Husby/CBC)
She says that Nazi imagery is more commonly seen in the news reports too, which makes it look more “normalized” in the eyes of the children, who may not understand the context.
“When the ‘Freedom convoy’ was happening and that one Nazi flag was being flown in Ottawa? That image was shown over and over again in social media. The kids see it. They don’t know what to make of it.”
Though no one keeps statistics on antisemitic incidents in Canadian schools in particular, the latest B’Nai Brith Canada audit found an 18 per cent increase in recorded antisemitic incidents in 2020 compared to the year before.
Education for students and teachers
The solution, experts say, lies in education, for students, teachers and school administrators . Student Talia Freedhoff would like to see teachers better equipped on how to spot and respond to antisemitism they might see in class.
“I think that generally it is a lack of awareness because antisemitism is so hard to spot in comparison to a lot of other forms of hatred. And so, you know, often people just don’t know that it’s that bad.”
Holocaust educators Marilyn Sinclair and Michelle Glied-Goldstein would like to see learning about the Holocaust mandated within the curriculum, something they say is not currently the case in any province or territory.
In this 2016 photo, the late Bill Glied is seen visiting the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where he was once a prisoner. Much of Glied’s family perished in the camps, but his Canadian-born daughter Michelle continues to talk to students about his life. (Shoy Pictures)
In the meantime, Glied-Goldstein is happy to share her father’s story with as many schools as will have her, a story of how a young boy’s happy childhood was forever upended by hate.
She says she wants students to understand that the horror of the Holocaust started with exclusion, words and symbols, like the ones they’re seeing within their schools.
“We always say it starts with words, but it never ends there.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.
There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.
“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”
A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.
The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.
Use of other products has been dropping, too.
Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.
Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.
The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.
Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.
Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,
Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.
Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.
Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.
Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.
Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.
Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”
But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.
The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.
The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.
In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”
Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.
It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.
TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.
The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.
The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.
Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.
Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”
According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.
Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.
Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”
That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.
TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.
Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.
