Random offensive statement time

[bzarcher]

So I was looking around campus in the midst of running around to deal with a) Mail server failure, b) Router failure, and c) copier failure.

Saw a poster for another series of holocaust talks, and how some people were shaking their heads and talking about getting 'too much' holocaust.

And that lead me to a somewhat chilling thought: Is it possible that people have put so much effort into the 'never again' school of thought that future generations have been totally desensitized to what the holocaust was and represents? That so much has been hammered home that people...just don't care?

Do educators perhaps need to back off a bit? Should the holocaust history be carefully husbanded in public education for times when it will give the most shock value, and make the greatest impression?

Or are my fears baseless, and we should continue a pervasive method of teaching it? (I started getting holocaust history + pictures in, I believe, 5th grade. Every year following, it came up. When did you guys start being exposed?)

Comments

[runegrey.livejournal.com]

I think you've got a good point - just because something is terrible beyond belief doesn't mean that people can't become desensitized to it. Moreso... I think a lot of people, even after all of the exposure they recieve to the Holocaust, don't really understand what it means.

A million is just a *number* to a lot of people - its very difficult for a lot of people to visualize what a million of anything actually is, simply because its such a mind bogglingly huge number. Four million is even more difficult - and I think that we tend to recieve a lot of what we know about the Holocaust in a far too abstract sort of manner.

Its too dry and analytical - there's too much talk of numbers, and unfortunately a lot of the pictures we saw coming out of the concentration camps are no worse than the average everyday news that comes out of a number of African countries. It has, now that I think of it, become too much of a 'normal thing' to a lot of people. They can mouth the rhetoric about how terrible it was, but does it have any meaning to them?

Not enough, really. I think that exposure on it to the degree that we recieve is probably done far too young, and far too often. It needs to be held back until people can understand it, and have some chance of really comprehending what happened. There are places you can go to gain a better appreciation of things that happened then - but a classroom isn't one of them, at least in my opinion.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

If not a classroom, how?

While I agree that older and at better intervals might be a good idea, the question is, how do you reach such a wide group of people consistantly? All we have is the educational system, unless we want to trust it to the TV companies. *shudder*

[runegrey.livejournal.com]

Its a rough point - and honestly, I'll admit that its a bit beyond my ken to really think of a good way to introduce such a topic in a way that makes the appropriate impact. Which is a bit of a cop-out, I know, stating that there is a problem with something without really having a good alternative.

However, if you look at places like the Holocaust Museaum in Washington DC, I can say that I gained a better appreciation of what actually happened there than any amount of dry lectures by disinterested teachers ever really taught me.

The other problem I see with the never again attitude is that it isn't applied equally. We might say 'never again' in regards to the Jews / Caucasians / People who are not really different than us, but do we really do anything to stop the mass genocidal slaughters that take place down in Africa? Its a rough point - the Holocaust was a horror, but its been a horror that has been repeated throughout history - but I'll argue that Hitler was probably the most successful and ruthlessly efficient at it. Unfortunately, I don't think even he can claim to have wiped out the most people by such a method... which is scary when you consider it.

Perhaps we shouldn't focus more on trying to grind the Holocaust into people as a terrible event, but provide polite discussion of it to older students and focus more on a stance of trying to prevent such a thing from ever happening again - by reducing the hatred and intolerance along ethnic boundaries in the world?

[joriel.livejournal.com]

I don't really remember when I first started getting exposed. I think what made a bigger impression on me was how much time we spent on the European Holocuast, and how much the one that happened here against the natives got glossed over. I didn't understand why one was so prevalent in school and one was something we got next to no information about.

I don't think there is any one way to teach a thing though, each student will react differently to the same presentation, and to the same 'shock value' idea. Some people are always going to be tired of a subject, no matter how bad or interesting, and others will always find it fascinating. It's just humans, we're all different and there is no great way to make anything be never again other than hope and trying to make our choices the best we can and teach our children the best ideals we know.

[alathaniel.livejournal.com]

I think what made a bigger impression on me was how much time we spent on the European Holocuast, and how much the one that happened here against the natives got glossed over.

Because it might give kids the idea that the Manifest Destiny was nothing more than one of the largest and longest-lasting imperialist expansions in the world? We can't teach anything unpleasant about our country in history class beyond 'slavery bad, we had to fight the civil war to get rid of it' and make people actually think.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Now, let's be fair. I got taught a lot about Manifest Destiny, the Trail of Tears, and how badly we abused the native tribes, and how 'liberating the South' was just a publicity ploy and one more weapon in a war for States Rights vs. the Federal Dominion.

Now, they had to wait until I was getting ready to go to College to do it, but I did get taught it, and taught well.

[joriel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was what it was like in grade school, so it got weire when the history suddenly changed in high school. I was pissed, I spent all that time memorizing the other version, and then they were changing it on me. *rolls eyes* My dad was a former history teacher though, and was big on raising me with the 'real' story. He gloated for ages when I believed him that it happened because school finally agreed with him. *Smirks*

But we're not the only country who rewrites it's own history, they pretty much all do, so I guess it's a lesson in learning to think and probe for yourself. I'm glad I learned it, some never do.

[alathaniel.livejournal.com]

Fifth grade sounds about vaguely right. Usually outside of history class from what I remember.

But I think you might be onto something. How many kids are playing games where they end up killing random pixel collections to advance by that point nowadays? Hit them that young with this, and by the time they've got the game vs. reality distinction straight it could very well be a 'yeah, yeah I've already seen this a dozen times' response in many cases.

Godess knows I agree with the 'never again' attitude when it comes to this. But at the same time ... if something that doesn't have a direct, tangible impact on your life gets hyped too much you eventually stop caring about it.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I honestly wonder if it's something that should be taught, but not taught in detail until older. It's just too much for a 12 year old to grasp, I suspect, without direct physical contact.

@set me = Offensive

[grandmoff.livejournal.com]

I don't know how people -can't- be desensitized to it. To me, the holocaust isn't this terrible tragedy that happened during a terrible time in the World's history, it's a reason for one ethnic group to rub the rest of the world's noses in their tragedy and demand things because they were once persecuted.

Just like slavery.

I'm sorry these things happened to these people, not because they are jewish or black, but because they are people. I'd be a lore MORE sorry if it were treated like a tragedy and a lesson instead of a hammer and a cash cow.

Furthermore, I'm sick of getting treated like I owe other ethnic groups something simply because I happen to be from a christian background and caucasian. Unless I hit my head and missed a few hours, I'm pretty sure I've never owned a slave or reduced someone to ashes in an oven. Nor have my parents or grandparents, or great grandparents. Beyond that, I don't know. I could be related to Vlad the Impaler and not know it, but I'm pretty sure the last few generations have been clean. If we're going to be giving benifts and throwing some bigtime blame around, I think it ought to be done equally. I'd like to be able to go into a local college and get my 'Was Once Fed to Lions' Scholarship, and hold rallies decrying sports as a barbaric way to remind my people of their painful and tragic past.

It's rediculous. Man has been committing atrocities against man since the very beginning (Cain and Able if you are Christianity inclined), these two just get more publicity. When they start getting treated like the tragedies they are, and stop getting used as bargaining tools and social bludgeons, perhaps their impact and lessons will be meaningful again.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

I can agree to some of this, because I think we make some of the same points, particularly that it's being mistreated and misused. And all of this is good points to be raised, and not as offensive as it could be.

So, all in all, fair enough.

[dasubergeek.livejournal.com]

I just had a long discussion with my wife about this topic. We saw poster advertising Yom Hashoah talks and remembrances (it's in April, they were just old posters).

When I was a kid, the hadachim l'shoah, the Holocaust survivors, were everywhere. I grew up in a place where Jews were so numerous that public schools closed for the High Holidays.

Every Jew I knew had a parent, or a grandparent, or an aunt, or an uncle, who fled Europe during the war.

Most people hear things like, "She never could throw anything away, she lived through the Depression." We always heard things like, "You should be grateful for what you have, your grandfather fled from Poland with six dollars in his pocket," or, "If only my father, alav hasholem¹, were here to see you accepted to college!"

It was so real to us. I sat in friends' homes and heard stories of friends and family disappearing, never to be heard from again, of people hiding in haystacks and barns and digging pits in the ground to avoid detection.

The word "shoah" is not a word that can be uttered without some kind of emotional surge. The names Auschwitz, Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Mittelbau, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, etc., cause chills to run up my spine. I had a chance to visit Auschwitz on a weekend trip while I was in Switzerland and I couldn't do it. Too many people in my family and my friends' families died in the showers.

But nowadays, kids aren't that close. So many of the survivors have died, so many kids are one more generation removed from that horror. They don't hear it firsthand now, they hear it as what happened to their grandparents' parents. And so they aren't as sensitive to it.


¹ Alav hasholem, fem. Aleha hasholem: May his soul rest in peace, cf. It. buon'anima.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

My grand-aunt still shows her grand and great-grandchildren the tatoo on her arm. Shows it to all the kids in the family she can see. Every year she gets weaker, and the skin more and more like parchment, and I realize she won't be here much longer.

But I also think you (and I, to a lesser extent), got the better education, because we saw it, touched it, and had it explained to us by those deepest affected, not some bored blonde talking in front of a classroom. I think the problem isn't even that kids aren't close, it's that the teaching has gotten mechanical rather than emotional.

[degraine.livejournal.com]

Cut 'n' pasted from Lateline's archive, 17/5.

'Alec Campbell's death last night ended the last tangible connection to a battle on a distant shore 87 years ago.'

(His granddaughter, Jo Hardy) 'I can remember saying to him, "How amazing that you're the last Gallipoli veteran", and he said just like that, "It's not amazing at all, it's entirely logical - I was one of the youngest"'

I don't think it's really mattered to Australia that we had so few (and now, none) direct links to Gallipoli. It's graven onto our collective subconscious.
Some other things, however, are not...

[(Anonymous)]

In speaking to survivors of the Holocaust, in reading and viewing testimony, I've heard the same message time and again.

We will never understand what they experienced. Photographs, even testimony cannot fully do justice to the horrors of the Holocaust. What is most important, is that we understand that what happened was unacceptable. We must look to the causes, and seek to prevent such things from ever happening again.

Sadly, what we have seen at the end of the "Never Again" century, are countless examples of "Again and Again."

Survivors bear witness, and there are many foundations looking to preserve their testimony for future generations. It falls to us to determine what will be done with that legacy. Will we learn from the lessons of the past, from their experiences, and finally say "Never Again," and mean it? I hope so.

Tolerance education is important. It needs to begin early. We need to understand (in as much as we can)our own capacity for cruelty and intolerance, so that we can rise above it. Yes, Holocaust education is part of that, as well as a variety of other genocides and genocidal events. Should it be strictly historical? No, sadly there are still places in the world where terms like "ethnic cleansing" get bandied about all too frequently.