On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, I have some thoughts on why Holocaust education hasn’t been as effective as we might’ve hoped. Much of the western world was taught the “what” of the Holocaust (what happened), but not the “why” (why it happened). They were taught about Hitler’s rise to power on antisemitism, but they weren’t taught that Hitler didn’t invent antisemitism and that it was lying dormant in Germany, as it always does, waiting to be excited back to life again. They were taught about Auschwitz, but they weren’t taught about millennia long antisemitism that needed only shapeshift to the grievance of the time to make Auschwitz happen. They were taught numbers and statistics, but they weren’t taught about how blaming the Jews for every evil was the precursor to persecution, from blaming Jews for the crucification of Jesus during the 1st century, to poisoning the wells during the Black Death in Medieval times, to the blood libel of drinking children’s blood in the 12th century, to economic manipulation during the Farhud. They were taught about concentration camps, but they weren’t taught that what preceded the concentration camps were accusations of secret Jewish council’s controlling the world, “Jewish supremacy” plaguing society, Jews “controlling banks and manipulating the economy,” and tracing all contemporary evils and social ills backs to Jews. They were taught about the genocide of Jews, but not the history of scapegoating Jews as the catalyst to their genocide. Had they been taught the “why” of the Holocaust, they may have been much savvier at identifying today’s persecution of Jews as the “greatest evil of our time,” as another iteration of identical pre-Holocaust antisemitism. Because they weren’t taught the “why,” these patterns have reemerged as they do on estimate every 2-4 generations. Holocaust education should’ve taught the world about Nazi Germany as the horrifying end, not the covert beginning of Jewish persecution.
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