Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem
I am not a Holocaust denier. Of course, the Holocaust happened. It remains one of the most important events of the 20th century, of modern history, perhaps of human history.
But if someone never heard of the Holocaust, doesn’t know that it happened, then history doesn’t matter. The event is wiped out of history, not by denial, but by ignorance.
Some of the most populous states passed laws between 1985 and 1995, covering nearly one-third of the US population, requiring the teaching of the Holocaust in public schools. In each case, the law specified that knowledge about the Holocaust ought to be connected to human rights issues. Prejudice and discrimination must be identified with genocide, leading to an emphasis on “the personal responsibility that each citizen bears to fight racism and hatred whenever and wherever it happens” (New Jersey) and “encouraging tolerance of diversity” (Florida). As the wording of these laws demonstrates, teaching about the Holocaust is a political act. Because encouraging diversity and fighting prejudice are politically controversial, Holocaust education is a partisan political act, and always has been.
Two-thirds of millennials do not know what Auschwitz was; half cannot name one concentration camp; about 40% believe that fewer than 2 million Jews were murdered.
Two-thirds of millennials do not know what Auschwitz was; half cannot name one concentration camp; about 40% believe that fewer than 2 million Jews were murdered.
Despite such laws, ignorance about the Holocaust is widespread in America, especially among young people. The millennial generation should have been exposed to Holocaust teaching in schools, especially in those states that require it. But they know little about the Holocaust. Two-thirds of millennials do not know what Auschwitz was; half cannot name one concentration camp; about 40% believe that fewer than 2 million Jews were murdered; 20% are not sure if they have ever heard of the Holocaust.
Ignorance about the Holocaust is a worldwide problem, even in Europe where it happened. In a recent poll, one-third of Europeans said they know little or nothing about the Holocaust.
There is overwhelming popular support for more teaching about the Holocaust. The same survey that showed the gaps in knowledge also found that 93% of Americans agreed that “All students should learn about the Holocaust while at school.”
Politicians are responding. Legislatures in Kentucky and Connecticut with unanimous votes recently passed laws to require teaching about the Holocaust in public schools. In 2017, the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect got commitments from legislators in 20 states to introduce bills to mandate Holocaust education, the beginning of its effort to get all 50 states to require Holocaust education.
But there are political problems for some in the implications of Holocaust history. The focus on human rights, the disastrous consequences of racial prejudice, the victimization of other minorities including gays, the hyper-nationalism of fascism and its deadly attacks on all leftists all can lead to a critical stance against typical conservative political positions, and in particular, against current policies of the Republican Party. Absorbing the moral significance of the Holocaust might well lead students to believe that monuments to Confederate white supremacy should be taken down, that denigration of immigrants is wrong, that loud claims that America is the greatest country ever sound like “Deutschland über alles”.
Holocaust deniers, avowed Nazis, self-proclaimed antisemites, and supporters of white supremacy appear occasionally on the fringes of the Republican Party, or even among Republican congressmen. Some Republican candidates in the recent midterm elections used antisemitic images against their Jewish opponents. David Duke, former KKK leader and former Republican legislator in Louisiana, said about Trump’s 2016 election, “This is one of the most exciting nights of my life.”
American conservatives sometimes use the Holocaust to spread inappropriate partisan messages. On Holocaust Remembrance Day two weeks ago, the Harris County (Texas) Republican Party posted a Facebook message with a yellow star-shaped badge and these words: “Leftism kills. In memory of the 6 million Jews lost to Nazi hatred in the name of National Socialism. We will never forget.” The Texas Republicans explained that they were connecting the name of the National Socialist Party with “leftism”, even though the extreme right-wing Nazis killed every socialist they could get their hands on.
The use of the Holocaust to argue against restrictions on gun ownership has a long history. Wayne LaPierre, executive director of the NRA, Ben Carson when he was a Republican candidate for President, and the senior Republican in the House have all claimed that Jews were killed because they had not armed themselves.
Some people on the left also have trouble with teaching the Holocaust. Because the Israeli government and many Jews across the world have used the Holocaust as a justification for the existence of Israel, supporters of the rights of Palestinians sometimes claim that there is too much emphasis on the Holocaust.
Sometimes leftists are criticized, because they can be linked with other people who would like to see less attention paid to the Holocaust. For example, the two women who just became the first Muslim women elected to Congress, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, are often accused by Republicans of being antisemitic, because of their criticisms of Israeli policy. Their comments do sometimes veer towards condemnations of Jews as a group, and Omar just had to apologize for some of her tweets. But their criticisms of Israel are echoed by many Jews. I find such conservative attacks misleading, but I am one of those Jews who is critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians.
Nevertheless there are some on the left who do not wish to push more Holocaust education, because more sympathy for Jews can lead to support for Israeli occupation policies and discrimination against Palestinians.
But the facts of the Holocaust are clear and they lead inexorably to important moral and political conclusions, which can be discomforting to ideologues of the right and left. Antisemitism has always been based on false ideologies, and it leads to discrimination and eventually murder, like all ethnic hatreds. Extreme nationalism is the twin of ethnic hatred, and leads to war. It is always important to juxtapose the authority of governments or leaders with basic moral precepts, to question authority.
Holocaust education is necessary. The Holocaust is one of the most significant events of our recent global past and was an important determinant of the contemporary European and Middle Eastern world. Its moral implications, lessons if you will, have universal significance. Learning about the Holocaust makes everyone uncomfortable. That is why we must keep teaching it.
Steve Hochstadt
Taking Back Our Lives
Gary 100 says
I believe all geneside should be taught in history class. Perhaps there could be a one ort two day unite on the reality and causes of mass murder. – Gary
Paul Haeder says
What does this mean, Steve:
Sometimes leftists are criticized, because they can be linked with other people who would like to see less attention paid to the Holocaust. For example, the two women who just became the first Muslim women elected to Congress, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, are often accused by Republicans of being antisemitic, because of their criticisms of Israeli policy. Their comments do sometimes veer towards condemnations of Jews as a group, and Omar just had to apologize for some of her tweets. But their criticisms of Israel are echoed by many Jews. I find such conservative attacks misleading, but I am one of those Jews who is critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians.
Look, I have fought the illegitimacy of the project to kill the world by neocons and slick people like Kissinger or Abrams. We have a terrible history of leaders — many Jewish — proclaiming the right to wage genocide, torture, land theft, rape, and cultural cleansing in many countries. Do our youth and adults need schooling on all the crap that has happened after the Holocaust, now in Venezuela, where youth may end up killing in the name of Capitalism? That’s a lot of history, attributed to a cabal of Jews and Anglos, all white, who want to be masters of the world militarily and economically.
Abrams? His hands have been involved in so much death and destruction:
Some say history repeats itself. Mark Twain said history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. The January 25 appointment of convicted perjurer Elliott Abrams as the new US Special Envoy on Venezuela is evidence that history just goes on and on and on with ironic cruelty and relentless injustice. That would be especially true if you happen to have the world’s largest proven oil reserve, as Venezuela does.
Adding Elliott Abrams to this team does little to provide hope for the Venezuelan people. Contrary to Pompeo’s assertion, Abrams has never demonstrated “passion for the rights and liberties of all peoples,” least of all Palestinians. But Abrams’s demonstrated capacity for supporting subversion, torture, and mass killing does indeed make him “a perfect fit and a valuable and timely addition.” After all, Abrams represents the continuity of 40 years of genocidal US global policies. And he participated in many of them, as reported with devastating detail on Democracy NOW as well as the terror timeline in The Intercept, but not so much in mainstream media.
https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/02/career-war-criminal-elliott-abrams-to-lead-us-on-venezuela/
We talk a lot about Pence’s right wing Christian background. About the dirty deeds of Catholics and their priests. But what about Elliot? His religious background, upbringing, and the rotten schools he attended? Is it antisemitic to bring up his early years, which might explain his world view? Abrams, like many Jews, despises Palestinians. Is that not relevant?
Am I in trouble for making the connection from his bio from Wikipedia and maybe Abrams’ worldview? Or the worldview of Stephen Miller and his Judaism and how Miller is one major architect in Trump’s House? Who knows —
Wikipedia:
Elliott Abrams was born into a Jewish family in New York in 1948. His father was an immigration lawyer. Abrams attended the Little Red School House in New York City, a private high school whose students at the time included the children of many of the city’s notable left-wing activists and artists.[9] Abrams’ parents were Democrats.
Abrams received his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College in 1969, a master’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics in 1970, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1973. He practiced law in New York in the summers for his father, and then at Breed, Abbott and Morgan from 1973 to 1975 and with Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand from 1979 to 1981
Linda Sutton says
The inevitable result of the dumbing down of the history curriculum over the last 2 decades. Chalk it up to the so-called “standards” and to administrators who cannot stand up for teachers who try to teach REAL history. My last one took me aside one day and told me I was NOT allowed to tell students that any of our presidents LIED us into wars. This was about a Howard Zinn piece being used to teach OPINIONS — something that WAS in the state dictated “standards,” but one that a parent took issue with (for a student who NEVER did any of her work, I might add).
linda krausen says
T he Holocaust is one excrutiating example of soulless cruelty and mass murder which should be examined and taught with all we can learn about how to avoid these brutish soulless acts of man aainst man, but as a Jew who has always had the Holocaust present in our teachings, have always felt that in America we
should teach as examples of this same horror- the exterminatioin of the Native Americans upon whose land the cruel inhumane superiority ridden Europeans stumbled looking for treasure. And so should the capture and ruthless, inhumane ensalvement and souless treatment of black Africans by Europeans trafficking in in human work bodies for money ,be taught. And with them, we should teach the many historical examples of dehumanization and brutish treatment of countless other peoples by dominant other peoples as examples of how easy it is for the human psyche to be convinced othat mass cruelty towards another group is the answer to social problems, and an easy path to glory for the prepetrators.
Mathew Neville says
The Holocaust the “only” historical event that is not allowed to be thoroughly investigated & has to be accepted as factual under threat of jail in many countries.
The Nose Knows says
As a historian, I take mild issue with the linkage of historical events to current political fashion. A political agenda, especially ab initio, isn’t necessary to understand the Holocaust from a historical perspective. The cultural and political motivations of its perpetrators and, yes, those that just “went along” manifest themselves very quickly and apparently. If one comes to their own conclusions about fascism (and Nazis) they will be more deeply held than if that’s the starting point. This is not studying for the AP History exam, it’s real life.
Luis L. says
There is are a couple of old quotes that I’m probably going to mangle. One is that those who forget history are bound to repeat it. And the other is, history is written by the winners. I went to school in the 50’s and 60’s. We were still taught about the holocaust and about the dangers of totalitarian governments. When the losing side of WWII recouped, an effort began to re-write that history by sowing doubt about its very occurrence. This effort to re-write history is still underway not only regarding the Holocaust but in other dark moments in our own past here in the US. The Native American history is almost non-existent, slavery is made to look as something desirable, labor unions are totally ignored, as well as other struggles we have gone through to make American a better place.
Cynthia Maher says
I don’t think that they should ever stop teaching about the Holocaust. However, as Mr. Haeder pointed out, the study of genocide should include the various atrocities from all over the world beginning with Christopher Columbus and now Trump killing babies at the border.
Paul Haeder says
The world is now more than the canon of Western Civilization, of the old world, and we need not look any further to see a world under a new historical and creatively written microscope ”Memory of Fire by Eduardo Galeano.
Do Americans know the story of the A bombs on Japan as deliberate mass killings. The some 20 million killed by the US and it´s proxies over the last 60 years!
I am for all despicable acts tied to empire and expansion and land theft and genocide to be taught in any culture or classroom. Genocide of Armenian! Japanese rape of Chinese!
Never forget, never again, as we have the same old white guys, Jew and Christian, dictating to the world who shall day, and who is the good, the bad and the ugly.
Hmm, Israel! Interesting how that society works, yet we get very little truth in mainstream education and media.
In the world of Joseph Stalin, induced famine was the prime weapon of choice, though mass execution and exile helped him dispose of tens of millions he viewed as “enemies of the people”.
To Henry Kissinger, the world, particularly Indochina, was very much a small chess game. Civilians were mere pawns ripe for sacrifice through hi-tech weaponry, including biological and chemical warfare, to enforce his worldview at any cost. Millions lost their lives to his cerebral game board.
To Pol Pot, struggle was little more than purification, erasing through starvation, overwork and execution a quarter of his people whose sole crime was to see life through a prism that collided with his own – no matter how soft their view or backward his sight.
In Rwanda up to half a million women were sexually assaulted, mutilated or murdered, along with an equal number of male Tutsis, as enemy agents of the Hutu state – machetes and rape induced Aids to the plentiful weapons of preference.
Inside Story – How’s Israel dealing with fallout of UN vote? (24:30)
Slow-motion genocide
These are but a few of the extremes of genocide, those rare cases we are told noted mostly for mass murder, systemic rape or group starvation – the worst of the worst. Yet, genocide does not demand of us an immediate mountain of bodies or an explosive rage of terror for international law to take hold.
As it turns out, in what increasingly seems to be more than mere passing coincidence, the legal definition of “genocide” enacted by the UN General Assembly was born in 1948, the very same year as Israel – which has since gone on to become both expert at its application and legendary in its denial.
In relevant part, under the applicable Convention, genocide means “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; or (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. Each and every one of these types of genocide has been perpetrated by Israel, seemingly with almost proud boast, and no accountability, for almost 70 unbroken years.
One need not rest upon obtuse historical footnotes to find abundant, indeed systemic, acts of extermination carried out by Israel since 1948 against Palestinians – very much a cognizable “national, ethnical, racial or religious group” as those terms are contemplated and commonly understood and applied under international law.
Beginning with its mass expulsion, rape and murder at the onset of the Nakba (the Catastrophe) Israel has devoted itself to 68 years of non-stop genocide coming up for air only periodically to retool or to change the nature of its weaponry of choice.
What started out with the expulsion, at gunpoint, of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homeland set in motion a refugee stampede that has grown to more than seven million displaced and stateless people, providing the world more than a disturbing glimpse of what was to come decades later in Syria.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/12/israel-crimes-settlements-161229075030106.html
Paul Haeder says
Which genocide? How many Native Americans killed from Columbus to Trump? Which country lost the most people during WW II? China and Russia? Which genocide, the Belgium Congo, the French Indochina? Post-colonial genocide in most African nations?
Which structural violence, AKA, slow genocide, are we talking about?
Many discuss the Holocaust Industry, and, if you look at Holly-Dirt, Netflix, the entire US media publishing gig, not one critical look at Israel and AngloZionist illegal bombings of Iran, of Syria, and the open prison of Gaza and the country’s disproportionate response to rock throwers?
Do the average American and European know anything about the Imperial projects many in the current EU have done? Come on.
The banking policies of transnationals have killed tens of millions.
Absurd to think the German Holocaust needs dusting off. There are so many advocacy groups that bring up the dirty truth of Nazi genocide.
Norman Finkelstein states that his consciousness of “the Nazi holocaust” is rooted in his parents’ experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto; with the exception of his parents themselves, “every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis”. Nonetheless, during his childhood, no one ever asked any questions about what his mother and father had suffered. He suggests, “This was not a respectful silence. It was indifference.” It was only after the establishment of “the Holocaust industry”, he suggests, that outpourings of anguish over the plight of the Jews in World War II began. This ideology in turn served to endow Israel with a status as “‘victim’ state” despite its “horrendous” human rights record.
According to Finkelstein, his book is “an anatomy and an indictment of the Holocaust industry”. He argues that “‘The Holocaust’ is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust”.
In the foreword to the first paperback edition, Finkelstein notes that the first hardback edition had been a considerable hit in several European countries and many languages, but had been largely ignored in the United States. He sees The New York Times as the main promotional vehicle of the “Holocaust industry”, and notes that the 1999 Index listed 273 entries for the Holocaust and just 32 entries for the entire continent of Africa.
https://www.democracynow.org/2000/7/13/the_holocaust_industry
Jett Rucker says
This article overlooks two main problems with Holocaust “education.” First (and most-obviously), its content is mostly wartime hate propaganda intended to motivate people to advocate killing Germans and pay the government to do so on a genocidal scale. It is severely DISinformative.
Second, and more-serious, it sacralizes this Holocaust Thing and imparts a “living martyrdom” upon people who manage to associate themselves with the victims (most of whom today are fakes to a greater or lesser degee). It not only imbues Jewry in general with an undeserved sacredness, it provides cover for the aggressive and subversive machinations of Israel and its worldwide Fifth Column.
Steve Hochstadt says
Jett Rucker, you are clearly a Holocaust denier, which means you don’t know anything about history. You also don’t know anything about Holocaust education, which has nothing to do with advocacy of killing Germans. You live in a nightmare world of your own creation.
You are wasting your time. Nobody believes your denier nonsense any more.
Steve Hochstadt