Saturday, December 1, 2007

Teaching [or Not] the Holocaust in the UK

Esther Solomon, an editor at Ha'aretz, has written about an issue which I have been blogging about for months, the false rumor that the UK [or the University of Kentucky depending on the version of the email you received] has dropped teaching of the Holocaust.

1 comment:

FAIIRPLAY said...

It's a sobering thought that the Holocaust and WW2 History, should ideally be taught in all the occupied countries. In Prague, I was in the road where Heydrich was assassinated, none of the passers-by had heard of him, never mind knowing what I was enquiring about. Eventually I found a butcher's shop, whose manager knew what had happened and pointed out to me the nearby spot. The same with finding the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw, Pawiak prison and Therensienstadt.

This lack of interest in their own nation's history tells me that one day the Jewish Community are going to realise that Holocaust Memorial lessons produce the opposite reaction to what was intended. Essentially all the Holocaust teaches us is the fact that Hitler hated Jews, and the average reader / listener pays more attention to what Hitler thought, than to the field of disgusting human behaviour it portrays. Result the Neo-Nazis have gained a convert. A 100 years from now all Holocaust Museums will be portrayed for what they really are, Phineas T Barnum's Coney Island attractions. Waxworks of the past.