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TORONTO: Too Many Holocausts

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  • TORONTO: Too Many Holocausts

    TOO MANY HOLOCAUSTS
    By Brett Clarkson

    Toronto Sun
    http://www.torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2 008/06/03/5754851-sun.html
    June 3 2008
    Canada

    School trustees face the conflicting wrath of many in bid to limit
    genocide course

    Tears flowed, shouting matches erupted and a chorus of boos rang out
    after a Toronto District School Board committee voted last night to
    go ahead with a controversial Grade 11 course on genocide.

    The packed meeting at the school board's headquarters on Yonge St.,
    at Sheppard Ave., saw a delegation of Ukrainian Canadians pleading
    with the board to include the 1932-33 Soviet-engineered famine that
    killed millions of Ukrainians included in the course.

    Turkish Canadians also protested the inclusion of the 1915 Armenian
    genocide in the curriculum. Armenian Canadians, on the other hand,
    lobbied the board to keep the slaughter of 1.5 million of their
    ancestors -- at the hands of the ruling Ottoman Empire -- in the
    course.

    The three-member committee voted in favour of director of education
    Gerry Connelly's recommendations to base the course specifically around
    the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

    But the decision isn't final.

    The recommendations will go to a vote of the full board of trustees
    within three weeks, Connelly said.

    She added the course's intent isn't to deem certain genocides more
    worthy of study than others, but to use the three cases as examples.

    "It's not a survey course of all the genocides," Connelly said. "The
    intent is to take these as an example and use them in order to help
    students become more critical thinkers and to understand the impact
    of crimes against humanity and to actually go out and be advocates
    to ensure this never happens again."

    'I WAS INSULTED'

    Members of the Ukrainian community said they were "insulted" by
    the decision.

    "I was insulted; our community was insulted," said Markian Shwec,
    president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

    Armenian Canadians expressed relief the board didn't heed the
    Turkish-Canadians demand to expunge the Armenian genocide from
    ther course. Outside the meeting, Turkish Canadians who dispute
    the Armenian claims that they suffered a genocide, argued with the
    Armenian Canadians.
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