Things overheard in the hairdressers. Couldn’t believe my ears this afternoon.

[ChocolateDoll]

Sat with dye on my hair listening to this conversation taking place next to me. Didn’t know whether to laugh or cry

HAIRDRESSER: What you going to do on your holidays, then?

CLIENT: Well, we’re planning to visit Auschwitz.

HAIRDRESSER: Oh, right. What you gonna do there then? Just chill out for a bit?

CLIENT: Umm...well uhhh....it’s a concentration camp, you know?

HAIRDRESSER: oh right....sorry.....thought it was like a resort or something.

The fact is there is no reason not to be informed nowadays.
We have had the third information revolution with internet (the first was invention of writing, second invention of printing) , so information is now everywhere all the time.
Who is to blame for the lack of general and basic knowledge? The school curriculum?
I was schooled in the French system and you do a strict chronological order for both the history and literature content. So ancient times in Y7, Middle Ages Y8, and so on until contemporary history in Y12. Bloody heavy amount of thing to remember (and quickly forgotten) but you learn about birth of democracy, imperialism, main european wars that shaped our borders.

Now here in Australia, it is all about skills and not content. The curriculum is stripped of whatever could trigger dangerous emotions so no book in school in which there is a suicide. Gone are Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, .... only exception are shakespeare plays, I guess because half his plays would have to be banned ....

I believe there should be a balance between the immensity of the French curriculum and the emptiness of the Australian one. No wonder, people then forget there use to be constant wars in Europe and every family had lost a brother, son, father, in one, and so they rush to the Brexit and jump into hate.

she's probably had to politely enquire about 10 other clients' holidays already that day.
Honestly - it's far more likely that she gave an auto-pilot response

Agree, this is likely. God I hate having to make chitchat like that. Probably hairdressers do too? It’s so forced and I’d prefer they concentrated on the job in hand anyway having been on the receiving end of some dire haircuts at times. The chatter makes me anxious in that I’ve often thought never mind that, watch what you’re bloody doing!

I’d love to ask for a mainly silent haircut - but how do you ask without sounding like an anti social knob? (even through I probably am 😄).

If someone genuinely has never heard of Auschwitz, on one level I’m surprised , but then I have an interest in history. There are other areas in life I should definitely know more about but don’t, and I’m 53.

I love my hairdressers, they are Turkish and hardly speak, they call every one darling, one of them called me beautiful. that is what i want from a hairdresser.
another hairdresser said Enough about your children, what about you?
so rude. Perhaps I dont want to talk about myself!

I'm actually quite glad WW1 and WW2 are passing out of living memory.

@Maelstrop

I don't know about all Holocaust deniers, but the one I'd a disagreement with online on Holocaust Memorial Day (when else) firmly believed that It's All Fake. Every last bit of proof of the Holocaust has been faked.

It seems that some of them think Holocaust denial is illegal across the EU, so we're all being forced to "go along with" the accepted narrative & anyone who dares question it will be imprisoned.

He was almost eerily polite though. You feel as if Holocaust-deniers should yell at you/be profane when you keep on pointing out the flaws in what they're saying. But he didn't. I mean, I don't want to be being abused online, but the thought that maybe someone nice & normal-seeming could be thinking this mad shite is... alarming, to say the least.

He did seem, however, a bit thrown by someone who, when told "you have to read Solzhenitsyn!" asked which books he had in mind & then refused to agree that "Two Hundred Years Together" is worth their time, filled as it is with demonstrably false claims & anti-Semitic ramblings.

He really came apart when he started trying to claim that the word Holocaust wasn't used until the 1970s. It's in the founding documents of the state of Israel. Obviously the word itself has been around since the medieval period, but with its original meaning of mass-death-by-fire was unlikely to have been applied to earlier smaller-scale slaughters of Jewish populations.

He also wasn't keen on my pointing out it wasn't only soldiers who liberated the camps (you'd UNRRA teams going in to help, so people like Girl Guide Leaders; Red Cross volunteers; & Quakers) so the idea of creating propaganda in the first place, much less maintaining a conspiracy of silence for all these years, becomes even more absurd.

It was as if he'd read a pamphlet (& maybe a condensed version of that sodding Solzhenitsyn - he'd certainly no idea of the context, nor any of his other works) & was determinedly sticking to what it told him. They are so determined that it didn't happen that they will denounce any & all evidence as fake. They've some mad ideas about the gas chambers not really being gas chambers because the size is wrong (or something) & of course if they admit to there having been crematoria, that's because people die of natural causes & that's the most hygienic way to dispose of a body...

So yes. Short of taking them back in time to see for themselves I don't know what proof they'd accept. And to be honest for lots of them that probably wouldn't be enough. It's a pretty horrifying state of things, really.

I'm actually quite glad WW1 and WW2 are passing out of living memory

Why?

There’s a few holocaust deniers on mn - maybe this thread title didn’t capture them.

I’ve read some weird notions about British history recently on here. Several posters think we fought WW1 and 2 on our own. Another insisted repeatedly that Britain had no help after ww2 - conveniently forgetting the billions in the Marshall plan.
Posters were using this as arguments - I find that ignorance worrying-
the hairdresser hadn’t heard of auschwitz - fine - she wasn’t advocating anything based on it.

I’ve read some weird notions about British history recently on here. Several posters think we fought WW1 and 2 on our own. Another insisted repeatedly that Britain had no help after ww2 - conveniently forgetting the billions in the Marshall plan.
I think this is to do with the general xenophobic drive that has taken over British politics. I wonder what people from other countries think when they hear things like this - say countries like Poland which were close to destroyed or the Soviet Union where millions died. I bet they don't look back on those years fondly

On the other hand I find it just as shocking that a 7 year old knows "all about WW2" as a pp said.

I think hairdresser was just in small talk mode using her standard hairdresser lines without really listening to the response. To be fair, that is one of the most unusual holiday destinations she is likely to hear this summer.

think this is to do with the general xenophobic drive that has taken over British politics

I don’t know. I think the ignorance must already have been there for xenophobia to take hold. Otherwise when some arse goes ‘we did it alone in WW1 and 2 we’ll be fine’ they’d say, ‘eh don’t you know about the polish pilots in the Battle of Britain or the hundreds of soldiers from the Caribbean or the Chinese labourers or the Indian troops...’ they really don’t seem to know any of this. It’s a shame.

Do we really expect an 18 year old to have watched Schindlers List

Yes, I watched it in year 9 as part of our study of the holocaust. That wasn’t a history gcse or a level, it was standard. Im shocked education has sunk to this level tbh.

Havnt RTFT.

But in 26. We learnt about the world wars and the holocaust in year 9. Including being shown a film which I can't remember the name of but many of us left crying as there was a woman on it who smothered her baby as it was crying and would get them caught.

In drama we did a bit on ww2 aswell, around the battle of somme and going over the top. And learning the Flanders field poem by heart.

I read anne Frank's diary after becoming interested in it all by the lessons in year 9. In fact my father read it after me prompted by me asking questions about it.

(My dad was born in 1944 so obviously knew a lot more about it than I did)

Do we really expect an 18 year old to have watched Schindlers list

Yeah yeah Schindler’s list or boy in the striped pajamas are hardly some kind of pinnacle of educational rigour.

I’m 10 years older than you Lalalalalalaland and what we studied sounds almost exactly the same. My DS is studying it at primary school.

Perhaps you watched Downfall, that wasn’t out when I was at school but is hugely poignant.

Yeah yeah Schindler’s list or boy in the striped pajamas are hardly some kind of pinnacle of educational rigour.

Still better than knowing fuck all about the death of 6 million jews. It’s an introduction to the topic for children...

Yes I agree they are good starting points, (although I think Anne franks diary might serve better)

This thread has wound me up so much.

Judging hairdressers as ‘thick’
Judging people who don’t know about historic events as ‘lesser people’
Judging educators for not teaching 10 year olds.
Judging parents for talking about history around the kitchen table.

I’ll leave a ladder here so that the ones on their high horse can step down.

FFS. Only on Mumsnet is there such a debate and judgement on a whole group of people.

Not everyone responds to that medium, that’s why films and the book are used. I think anything that ignites interest in the child to seek out their own information is useful. A lot of people leave school and never learn another thing on some topics which is why you get the “what did that ever do for me” comments about algebra. But history is interesting on so many levels, even if you aren’t a massive history buff and only know a little, you can still read historical fiction and enjoy it. I feel sad that a lot of people must be watchjng tv/reading a book/visiting places/having conversations and going “huh???” a lot of the time.

Yeah, it’s kind of extraordinary there is so much information available, all kinds of knowledge at our fingertips like never before and yet...

If she'd never heard of concentration camps and what they were for, that's pretty awful. However, it's different for me if she just didn't recognise the name Auschwitz, especially in what was an odd context for it - I wonder if the client offered any explanation about why they were going there during the summer holidays?

Mymycherrypie: Yes, I watched it in year 9 as part of our study of the holocaust. That wasn’t a history gcse or a level, it was standard. Im shocked education has sunk to this level tbh

Really, that level? Schindler's List was made after many MNers had left school! Millions and millions of Britons won't have seen it whilst school children.

Lalalalalalaland I think you're mixing up your world wars dear.

We didn’t do either wars at school, which was a shame as I’d really have enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy the tudors & Stewart’s and what felt like irrelevant, the wars were recent and relevant.

I’ve done so much with my kids about it, as I’m conscious a lot of my general knowledge came from just talking to grandparents. They don’t have that sadly. I’m well aware schools concentrate on English grammar and maths so much now there’s very little time for the rest. So I’m trying to fill the gaps, but I’m not a teacher. It’s not something my parents would have done though, we didn’t do days out etc let alone an educational day out.

I think most posters on this thread have done the hairdresser a disservice. OP states that the (probably not fully listening/concentrating) hairdresser hadn’t heard of Aushwitz, not the Holocaust in general. There’s not some black and white division of what knowledge we should have and what we don’t necessarily need to have. What if someone has heard of Aushwitz but not Bergen Belsen? Or has heard of Bergen Belsen but not Treblinka? (Orher WW2 concentration camps)? Is that deemed ‘acceptable’?

And that’s before we even get started on what knowledge we ‘should’ have of atrocities other that those of WW2, inc those outside of Europe. How many outraged, sometimes sneery, posters here also have the same level of knowledge of other 20 century events - just for example - Kymer Rouge in Cambodia, Argentina’s Dirty War or Stalin’s Russia? And again, what le rl of knowledge is it acceptable to have/not have. Is it ‘acceptable’ to be aware of eg Pol Pot & Kymer Rouge but not to know the name Tuol Sleng (building in Cambodia’s capital where 1000s were tortured and massacred)? And of course while I happen to be aware of these, there’s no doubt atrocities beyond number that I’m completely oblivious of.

And no doubt all the outraged posters of this thread could name the towns & cities in Syria or Yemen where civilians are suffering and dying daily....

Sorry, long rambling post to say that the Holocaust should not be seen as the be all and end all of atrocities. I think that way of thinking is problematic - Eurocentric and focusing on (on the whole) white victims.

And I say this as a Jew who was bought up to be fully aware of the Holocaust and its impact on my extended family - my grandparents has cousins who were killed in the camps for example.

Schindler’s list was released in 1993.

I would recommend ‘if this is a man’ by primo Levi for those who want to know more. (My minds blank now but I’m sure there are many others)

Just as boy in the striped pajamas has its problems - (unrealistic being the main one) - Schindler’s list does have its detractors. As pomp have said it’s not the last word on the holocaust- you can, if you wish, find out a lot more. I think ‘shoah’ Is available on the internet somewhere, this documentary is very well regarded.

WW2 was a war that the British were right in the middle off. Most people here have relatives killed, grandparents fought - maybe their parents even remember it. It is very close to home. It's very much still first hand memories to some people in the uk.

Russia and Cambodia is less known about - perhaps because a generation ago not just about every kid in class would have a relative who fought or died there.

Learn about man's shittiness to man and have an interest in the world beyond reality TV and social media. (Old grump here).

the Holocaust should not be seen as the be all and end all of atrocities

Of course it shouldn’t.

People should know more about what goes on the world, that’s basic.
If people don’t know that millions of people are dying in the Syrian civil war right now that is problematic.

The holocaust is shocking in several ways: It’s perpetrators was the most civilised nation on earth- wealthy nation, home of Beethoven Brahms and the great philosophers etc. It’s methods were the most heinous- this was organised industrial murder on an industrial scale. It should be shocking that brilliant scientists invented the gas chambers and huge transportation systems were arranged to get people there. And it should be shocking that people who - believed themselves to be entirely assimilated- and who had massively contributed to their countries esp in ww1- were taken there and that the children (1 and a half million) were stripped, led to showers and exterminated.
This Is unique in human history and the word auschwitz - which is where the highest numbers were murdered will forever be associated with that.

We remember for those who were lost - and to protect ourselves from it happening again- don’t be complacent- when you see discrimination speak out before it’s too late.