Anne Frank diary reading causes stir in Vancouver

This is something the entertainment industry needs to be sensitive about. However, Brousseau is an excellent choice; she is an Indigenous performer, a member of a group of people that have also been marginalized and persecuted.

There is only good that can come from this reading project. It is a unique chance to reach a captive generation of teens and pre-teens, in a way that they might actually relate to, through media. Why not take every opportunity possible to educate our youth about anti-Semitism? Because unbelievably, anti-Semitism exists today, near to us– in the younger population, as well as the old. I know this firsthand. 

When my teen was in middle school, they were the target of antisemitic bullying. The school did nothing, and after consulting with the Holocaust Education Center, we offered to host a presentation for the entire middle school with a Survivor, believing that education might get to the source of the problem. The school declined, as in so many words, they didn’t want the bully to feel singled out. They intimated that they did not feel that the other students could relate to the stories, as they wouldn’t learn about World War Two for another couple of years. We chose to withdraw our child from that school.

Maybe this ordeal would have been less of an issue had the student body and administration been educated and sensitized to anti-Semitism. And that is why Holocaust education, at any time, is imperative. 

Brousseau’s readings of the Frank diary might have imparted the lessons of the Shoah to a new generation. Sadly, it was a golden opportunity, taken away by people with no common sense