Humberview falls silent listening to holocaust survivor's story
By Nicole Whiffen

The Humberview cafetorium is seldom a quiet place. On any given school day, the large room echoes with the anxious voices of high school students discussing weekend plans, last period's math test, and all other aspects of weekend small talk.

But one recent Friday morning was very different. Although still filled to the brim with students, the café was enveloped by a deafening silence, with the exception of one lone, and unfaltering voice. The voice was strong and demanding, telling Humberview students a story that most could only find in a nightmare.

That voice belonged to 82-year-old Dr. Eva Olsson, a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Szatmar, Hungary.

"I have been to Hell and back," Dr. Olsson told the students. She shared her life story from the beginning childhood days when life was good and there were no worries, to the dark times of Auschwitz and Bergen- Belson when every breath could have very well been her last. She continued on to talk of liberation day - the beginning of the end of the nightmare, her journey to Canada, and finally to present day, where her story has become famous in schools province-wide.

Both phenomenal and horrifying, her story was immensely powerful. It was one of the few times in my entire high school career that I can remember being so moved by what I was learning about. Dr. Olsson quickly explained that the purpose of her speech was not to simply inform students about the Holocaust, but to share with us the importance of being involved versus being a bystander.

"I asked a group of sixth graders if any of them had ever been bullied, and almost all of them put up their hands," she told the crowd. "I have been bullied too, not by a student, but by the Nazi regime. The Nazis were the ultimate bullies, and there were so many of them."

Through her message, she truly provoked students to think about her situation. What if someone had stood up the Nazis, or at least tried to? How much sooner would liberation have come, and how many of the 11 million innocent lives could have been saved?

Dr. Olsson's point to the students was straightforward - a bystander is simply a bully until they take the time to offer help to those in need. There will always be people in the world who use threatening and intimidation to make themselves feel superior. Until we each offer as much compassion as we can, the practise of bullying will continue to exist.

To quote a phrase I have heard many times from many people within my four years at The Humberview, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

As high school students, we have only experienced the brutality of the Holocaust through textbooks and lectures. The same principle of bullying and bystanding still applies and continues to hold strong today.