Why don't ?

[Grumpy]

Public schools teach about the Holocaust.

[merrylander]

I was not aware that they did not. Surely it would have to be covered in World History. Or have our schools decided there is no world outside of our borders?

Perhaps with today's test based curricula there is nor test question relating to the Holocaust.

[d-ray657]

Originally Posted by Grumpy

Public schools teach about the Holocaust.

Either that, or you're getting the textbooks tailored to Texas. You won't find a civil rights movement mentioned in the Texas textbooks, either.

Regards,

D-Ray

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Grumpy

Public schools teach about the Holocaust.

Maybe not where you live. Kids here must read Anne Frank's book, some Elie Wiesel (sp?) works, and a number of other such books and have it within their texts. They also take a field trip to the Holocaust Museum down in DC.

I'd say it's one thing in history that kids in Montgomery County Public Schools know better than any other historical event.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Pukka Sahib

Why? Because we don't want to learn about such things. The novelist Frederick Forsyth explained it as follows:

“You still don’t get it? Then I’ll tell you. Before the war just about everyone in Germany knew at least one Jew. The fact is, before Hitler started, nobody hated the Jews in Germany. We had the best record of treatment of our Jewish minority of any country in Europe. Better than France, better than Spain, infinitely better than Poland and Russia, where the pogroms were fiendish.

“Then Hitler started. Telling people the Jews were to blame for the First War, the unemployment, the poverty, and everything else that was wrong. People didn’t know what to believe. Almost everyone knew one Jew who was a nice guy. Or just harmless. People had Jewish friends, good friends; Jewish employers, good employers; Jewish workers, hard workers. They obeyed the laws; they didn’t hurt anyone. And here was Hitler saying they were to blame for everything.

“So when the vans came and took them away, people didn’t do anything. They stayed out of the way, they kept quiet. They even got to believing the voice that shouted the loudest. Because that’s the way people are, particularly the Germans. We’re a very obedient people. It’s our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. It enables us to build an economic miracle while the British are on strike, and it enables us to follow a man like Hitler into a great big mass grave.

“For years people haven’t asked what happened to the Jews of Germany. They just disappeared - nothing else. It’s bad enough to read at every war-crimes trial what happened to the faceless, anonymous Jews of Warsaw, Lublin, Bialystok - nameless, unknown Jews from Poland and Russia. Now you want to tell them, chapter and verse, what happened to their next-door neighbors. Now can you understand it? These Jews” - he tapped the diary - “these people they knew, they greeted them in the street, they bought in their shops, and stood around while they were taken away for your Herr Roschmann to deal with. You think they want to read about that? You couldn’t have picked a story that people in Germany want to read about less.”

- Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File (1972)

That's it in a nutshell. And I've noticed that there are getting to be a lot of things from our history which Americans have no wish to acknowledge.

The nation has taken to wearing a hairpiece.

Chas

[noonereal]

Originally Posted by Grumpy

Public schools teach about the Holocaust.

They do Dave my daughter spent many hours studying and discussing this prompted by her 8th grade curriculum.

[westgate]

iirc, we were 'introduced' to anne franks story in the sixth grade.

[Grumpy]

My kids read frank and a couple of other required readings too. With my older three who thought they new what happened, I sat down and told them what I knew. Then I asked them to watch Shindlers list and The Long way home.

When we were done they were in shock. Reading a book, and seeing it with their own two eyes is two different things.

Schools need to teach more on this and many other subjects. If not we will only keep making the same mistakes.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Grumpy

My kids read frank and a couple of other required readings too. With my older three who thought they new what happened, I sat down and told them what I knew. Then I asked them to watch Shindlers list and The Long way home.

When we were done they were in shock. Reading a book, and seeing it with their own two eyes is two different things.

Schools need to teach more on this and many other subjects. If not we will only keep making the same mistakes.

All I needed to see was the pictures from the death camps.

The frightening thing is not that people could be induced to participate in a slaughter of this magnitude, but the fact that they currently still are.

Chas

[Grumpy]

Whats ironic is that in my family is was a subject that was never discussed. My mothers entire family lived in Berlin. My fathers side Poland.

I do wish that my kids could have gotten the story first hand from those who survived.

We will be visiting the Holocaust museum very soon.

Grumpy