Why is it not taught in schools that among the murdered 6 million Jews, 2 million were rounded up and shot in daylight? (1950s, facts)
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The average person thinks oh there was a gas chamber and they gassed in what was a shower and it was bad Hitler was evil totalitarian he was psycho That’s all true but they narrowly wrap that up as Holocaust and it stops there.
A lot of ignored chapters and misinformation …
First off …, the shootings of Jews in Ukraine and Lithuania were done by local nationalists who used propaganda that all Jews were responsible for Soviet policies. Babi Yar and Riga massacres and Vilnius ones preceded Pearl Harbor and the Wannsee conference and the reason they Nazis even searched for gas methods of genocide was to keep the events of murder more contained so more could die faster without disruption from collaborators chickening out over the smell and intimacy of dead people because unlike Babi Yar, not every city and town has a forest with a ravine to throw 33,000 corpses at a time
The killing squads in Ukraine and Latvia and Lithuania were all from volunteers of local willing participants with or without Hitler
The Romania Antonescu willingly murdered Jews and hanged them like meat packs in a market …. Hundreds of thousands of them
Polish locals rounded up all the Jews in their town and burned them
Alive in a barn
A Jewish shop keeper in L’vov my grandma knew, kind man, was forced head down in a toilet and the toilet was flushed in his face with feces in it till he drowned
Switzerland angrily reached out to Hitler on own that they are frustrated that Jews are refugee status trying to get into Switzerland can they like stamp J on their visas so they know who not to take?
In Poland AFTER Hitler was dead, the Kielce Pogrom involved 40 Jews shot dead in a building , tortured even by the police who were called for help and they were relieved when after a delayed showing up, security came to help … but they came to kill more of the Jews not to help
Jews were hated beyond Hitler, hated for existing, hated blindly
Where exactly is this to be taught?
Rest assured, I am not disputing its importance. But as has been noted, schools have a great deal of curricula to cover. Take my high school. I graduated in the 1980s, but I checked the website and the graduation requirements are not all that different today than they were then. 24 units (1 semester = 1/2 unit) are required: 4 English, 4 Mathematics, 3 Science, 3 Social Science, 2 World Language, 1 Physical Education, 1 Fine Arts, 6 Electives. The only place this topic might plausibly be included is in the Social Science requirements, which entails 1 unit of American History and 1/2 unit of Civics.
All right, American History. That begins with the early European settlements along the eastern seaboard and up through colonial times, followed by nearly another 250 years since the nascent state was formed. And this has to be covered in 36 weeks. Further... where does the extermination on the Eastern Front go? That's not American History, and it's obvious not Civics. It would have to be in one of the Western Civilization electives, but then they're even more expansive in scope.
History is colossal. The best high school can do is give an overview. This will stimulate some to dig deeper, albeit only in those certain specific sub-topics that interest them. One could easily fill up an entire year of classroom instruction with importance matter from virtually any decade out of the last few centuries. But high school education has nowhere near that luxury.
Also, I think we have to understand the politics of most of the post-war era. As Dylan sang in 1964... The Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now, too
Have God on their side
Textbooks/curricula which explicitly laid out that the Jews were mostly killed by a) our current allies (the [West] Germans), and b) our then-allies (the USSR), were going to be less popular than those that just gave a perfunctory summation of the genocide and didn't overly dwell on the 'who' and the 'how'. More broadly, it has been emotionally easier for most people in the West to just blame 'the Nazis' (ie, those who were vanquished and all but eliminated in 1945) for the Holocaust, rather than deal with the more complicated and problematic (politically, socially, practically, etc.) reality.
Finally, specific instruction on the creative ways in which Jews were cruelly slaughtered would have triggered all sorts of overt and latent anti-Semitism from among parents. It's the same reason that biology courses tend to go light on evolution - headache avoidance. School boards and teachers have to pick their battles.
OP, I've always been puzzled about that. WHY were they hated, and why was the hate so widespread?
Then I remembered it had something to do with the Bible, Christianity, Jesus. They were blamed for Jesus' death, even though it was the Romans who were out to get charismatic leaders like him, whom they viewed as a challenge to their authority.
So strange. And the Church fed the hatred, from what I understand.
It's horrible what humans have done in the name of religion. All most religion seems to do, is divide humanity further, and serve as an excuse for hatred.
Before Christianity took root in Rome, their most popular entertainment included such public entertainment as raping a slave woman to death with a giraffe and the concessions at the colloseum included 7 year old sex slaves.
So, if you're going to start tallying a ledger and only count the bad you need to show some objective balance and include the good as well.
The Holocaust is, in fact, taught in both US History and World History as well as AP European History.
The root of your question goes to how much detail can be included in the first two as they are basically survey courses, especially now that the College Board has decreed that no more than 20% of content is based in Europe for AP World. That curriculum filters down from AP to regular ed World History.
The last US History book I used before I retired in 2015 covered the Japanese incarceration by the US more than the rest of WW II combined, about 1/2 to 2/3 of the unit.
You can blame university academics for that since they're the ones who formulate the recommendations to textbook companies as to what should be included.
To answer a question about the WW II Japanese occupation of China, it is covered in World to a small extent. Some schools will offer a Modern Asia History elective that covers it in more detail.
Exactly. Most schools have two years of U.S. History and one year of world history/world cultures from 9-12 grade. One leading World History textbook starts with Chapter 1 Toward Civilization (Prehistory-3000 B.C.) and ends with Chapter 22 The World Today. Chapter 17 is titled World War II and Its Aftermath. If a teacher covered every chapter how much time could be spent on the Holocaust and the Japanese occupation of China?
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarianRavenwood
I think it's more important for students to learn the overall story of the Holocaust--the motivations that caused the leaders to do what they did, and more importantly the human factors that caused so many people to follow along and join in. IMO, it's less important for students to be able to describe how many victims died by gunshot vs gas, and whether Babi Yar happened before or after Vilnius.
But I think one challenge educators have is that school is still only 12 years, and there is so much more that students have to learn in that time---just the topic of history alone has so much more to cover than existed a generation ago. When I was a HS student, world history basically ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union--and time was so constrained, we barely had time to cover the Korean War. Now educators have to cover two Iraq wars, 9/11 and Afghanistan, and more.
It is absolutely true that for too long, our education has been too Eurocentric. Why is the Nazi Holocaust more worthwhile to cover than the Armenian genocide? Do you think it is less important that students are unable to accurately place the Gikondo massacre before the Nyarubuye massacre, or correctly size them within the scale of the overall Rwandan genocide? How much time do you think should be spent studying the ethnic cleansing of Myanmar?
Perhaps more importantly, are you equally outraged about the deficiencies in our education of US History? Should textbooks itemize every forced march of Native Americans, or would it be okay to just cover a couple of them--perhaps just that of the Nez Perce and the Navajo? Should students be able to quantify how many First Nations succumbed to European diseases versus how many starved to death? If you believe it important to know the myriad ways in which Nazis killed their victims, presumably you also think American students should know the myriad ways in which we killed Native Americans--not just starvation and disease, we also executed thousands who collapsed during these forced marches (including pregnant women and the elderly), executed whole villages for fun, and committed forced sterilization on half of the Native American population. And should students need to rank each US state in descending order according to the when our states finally stopped operating 'residential schools' and forced sterilization practices? Since Hitler's idea for the concentration camps came from Native American reservations, surely students need to have a thorough understanding of our own crimes before we can understand the Nazis.
I read a lot of history growing up in the 1960s/early 70s and never heard the phrase, The Holocaust. The first time I heard it was when it was popularized in the United States by the NBC mini-series Holocaust (1978). I was very familiar with WWII and Hitler's killing of 6 million Jews. I think today's students are much more familiar with what happened during the Holocaust because they are exposed to many more books, videos, and pictures of what happened during that period. Today's students are reading books about the Holocaust usually starting in 6th grade English/language arts class. By the time I graduated from high school in 1973, my education about the Holocaust was limited to what I read in a history textbook and my history teacher's lecture.
If anyone wonders what my motive is in the following, it's just an expansion upon my earlier comment that the ones telling the story get to control the narrative.
From my perspective, just about every group that has suffered persecution in their past, believes that the plight of "their people" deserves greater emphasis.(primarily because that is the group they themselves identify with).
When I was receiving my secondary education in the 1970s, there was a big push to emphasize the positive roles that Blacks had played in US history. Evidently that had been an area neglected in the past. And educators were making up for that oversight. Did I mention that certain people identifying as "traditionalists" were annoyed over the loss of coverage for items important to them, in order to make room for the new material?
It was also somewhat of a shock to me, that I didn't discover until 10-15 years after my formal education was complete, that "manifest destiny" was not all rainbows and unicorns. Had the stories of Euro-American betrayal, treaty violation, and other abuse of the American natives been intentionally left out of the curriculum, or was I, in my later years, simply getting better at uncovering objective sources? I'm not sure that I've completely answered that question, even to this day.
I think one of the biggest changes I've seen in how accounts of the holocaust are taught is that back in my school days the texts presented it in terms of just one more of the many justifications why Hitler deserved to be stopped. Whereas these past few decades the emphasis seems to have shifted more to the suffering of the victims.
There will always be some struggle, some moral or ethical dilemma involved in determining which events get emphasis in the the history we are willing to "own". I believe the important thing is to not allow any one group to dominate the narrative. In so going, I believe the amount of holocaust history currently taught at the basic level, is sufficient.
Last edited by Always Needmore; 09-24-2022 at 01:10 PM..
Exactly. Most schools have two years of U.S. History and one year of world history/world cultures from 9-12 grade. One leading World History textbook starts with Chapter 1 Toward Civilization (Prehistory-3000 B.C.) and ends with Chapter 22 The World Today. Chapter 17 is titled World War II and Its Aftermath. If a teacher covered every chapter how much time could be spent on the Holocaust and the Japanese occupation of China?
I read a lot of history growing up in the 1960s/early 70s and never heard the phrase, The Holocaust. The first time I heard it was when it was popularized in the United States by the NBC mini-series Holocaust (1978). I was very familiar with WWII and Hitler's killing of 6 million Jews. I think today's students are much more familiar with what happened during the Holocaust because they are exposed to many more books, videos, and pictures of what happened during that period. Today's students are reading books about the Holocaust usually starting in 6th grade English/language arts class. By the time I graduated from high school in 1973, my education about the Holocaust was limited to what I read in a history textbook and my history teacher's lecture.
Just about the time you graduated from high school my local PBS station started regularly airing the 26 part documentary The World at War. I know they gave an entire episode to the Holocaust. I don't remember such a single focus on Japan in the hour about what they were doing before attacking Pearl Harbor.
From watching historical fiction I had the essence of something bad had happened and with only roughly 30 years since the war there were plenty of veterans still around. But that British produced documentary series would have been my first source
Before Christianity took root in Rome, their most popular entertainment included such public entertainment as raping a slave woman to death with a giraffe and the concessions at the colloseum included 7 year old sex slaves.
So, if you're going to start tallying a ledger and only count the bad you need to show some objective balance and include the good as well.
WTH has that got to do with the Jews? The Romans were the ones perpetrating those atrocities, certainly not the Jews. If anything, they were likely some of the slave women and sex slaves, as they were likely to have been kidnapped in the provinces or simply taken as "booty".
If anyone wonders what my motive is in the following, it's just an expansion upon my earlier comment that the ones telling the story get to control the narrative.
From my perspective, just about every group that has suffered persecution in their past, believes that the plight of "their people" deserves greater emphasis.(primarily because that is the group they themselves identify with).
When I was receiving my secondary education in the 1970s, there was a big push to emphasize the positive roles that Blacks had played in US history. Evidently that had been an area neglected in the past. And educators were making up for that oversight. Did I mention that certain people identifying as "traditionalists" were annoyed over the loss of coverage for items important to them, in order to make room for the new material?
It was also somewhat of a shock to me, that I didn't discover until 10-15 years after my formal education was complete, that "manifest destiny" was not all rainbows and unicorns. Had the stories of Euro-American betrayal, treaty violation, and other abuse of the American natives been intentionally left out of the curriculum, or was I, in my later years, simply getting better at uncovering objective sources? I'm not sure that I've completely answered that question, even to this day.
I think one of the biggest changes I've seen in how accounts of the holocaust are taught is that back in my school days the texts presented it in terms of just one more of the many justifications why Hitler deserved to be stopped. Whereas these past few decades the emphasis seems to have shifted more to the suffering of the victims.
There will always be some struggle, some moral or ethical dilemma involved in determining which events get emphasis in the the history we are willing to "own". I believe the important thing is to not allow any one group to dominate the narrative. In so going, I believe the amount of holocaust history currently taught at the basic level, is sufficient.
Oh, I'm quite sure you do. BTW, there wasn't any "moral or ethical dilemma" involved on the part of Hitler or the Nazis in their carefully planned and executed (pun not intended) extermination of 6 million Jews and 5 million Roma, homosexuals, disabled people, and people of other ethnicities. They knew exactly what they were doing and WHY. They did not believe those 11 million, especially the Jews, were worthy to live in their ideal Aryan world. The Jews had NO culpability, nor did the other 5 million. They were killed simply because they existed. Some may have died because they disagreed with the Nazis and fought back by words or even deeds, but most died because of their religion or ethnic heritage. It's as simple as that.
And no, the Jews do not "dominate" the narrative of the history we are willing to "own". They are simply telling the truth about what happened, were eyewitnesses to the horror, and still bear the numerical brands of their experiences.
Schools seem quite selective of what is taught and what isn't. The holocaust is at least recognized, how many in school ever heard of the holodomor perpetrated by Stalin in which millions of Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death? I've often wondered if that was because the US allied itself with Stalin in WW II or is there some other reason?
History class can't cover everything. I never got any European history in school at all, and no Holocaust lessons with US history, either. Maybe the reason the Holocaust is taught these days, is because of the US involvement in WWII. The US wasn't involved in or with Russia in the 30's, so it's not viewed as relevant to US history. A more realistic question would be; why isn't the holodomor taught in college Russian history courses.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 09-25-2022 at 10:37 AM..
Schools seem quite selective of what is taught and what isn't. The holocaust is at least recognized, how many in school ever heard of the holodomor perpetrated by Stalin in which millions of Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death? I've often wondered if that was because the US allied itself with Stalin in WW II or is there some other reason?
I completely disagree with this. In my experience in over a dozen school districts, teachers were able to teach whatever they wanted within a U.S. History or World History class. I've seen a history teacher spend a good bit of time on works of art in a world history class. I've seen high school history teachers go into a lot of detail about the history of the Soviet Union in a world history class. I thought it would've been more appropriate for a college course on the history of the Soviet Union. I've seen a teacher show over 50-60 movies in a history class. What didn't get covered because students were watching Saving Private Ryan and The Longest Day?
I taught about the history of television and music in the 1950s in a U.S. History class. Nobody was saying that the history of television in the 1950s should or shouldn't be taught in a U.S. History class.
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