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.

Mrbatmun The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas sounds dreadful. Isn't millions of Jews being gassed shocking enough? I'll stick with when Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. It really brings home how it felt to be a Jewish child in Germany in the 1930s.

Holocaust - surprising not to know
Elgin vs Elgar marbles - oh do fuck off

Also, sneering at a young checkout employee because they don't know how to spell aubergine?? ODFOD

Holocaust - surprising not to know Elgin vs Elgar marbles - oh do fuck off

Meant to say, this

@ShirleyPhallus £26k last year for 23 hrs a week.

I dread something like this happening to me. It's really hard to hear over all the hairdryers and I have poor hearing anyway, especially when I'm concentrating.

My stock reply when I'm working in a salon is "Oh, that's nice." rather than stopping what I'm doing to ask them to repeat themselves every five minutes or ignoring them.

So far I've managed to avoid any;

Me: So, are you off anywhere nice after here?
Client: My husband's funeral.
Me: Oh, that's nice.

But it's only a matter of time.

Yes, 'cultural poverty' sums this up well. I have an avid interest in history which basically boils down to my parents. Most of my knowledge about history stems from them. And then finding my own way through wider reading & documentaries. Dad's history degree came in useful!

I don't think we did anything about WW1 or WW2 at school and I'm in my 40s. We looked at Ancient Greece, the Arab/Israeli conflict and Medicine. The Arab/Israeli topic in particular bored me rigid, namely because I had no context for it. It really was just a load of blurry photos and waffle in a text book. When I started reading around it, things slotted into place and made far more sense.

Not sure what the answer is as by the very nature of history, the topic just keeps growing. It's impossible to teach 1000s of years of history at school alone. I do think knowing about the Holocaust (& other genocides) is a non-negotiable though.

Interestingly, a German exchange student who stayed with me in the 1990s said that learning about WW2 and the Holocaust is compulsory in German state schools. Not sure if that's still the case.

Frequency I've been there too!! I am still utterly mortified by the exchange that took place earlier this year with a friend I hadn't seen for ages and didn't know had been unwell. In my defence, we were in a noisy room and I'm a bit mutt 'n Jeff at the best of times...)

Me: Hi friend! How are you? Haven't seen you for ages!
Friend: Oh, I'm much better thanks. Had to have a hysterectomy a few months ago.
Me: Oh right! Great! You do look well.
Puzzled look from friend.
Me: I'm so sorry, what did you just say? I didn't catch it...

She repeated what she said and laughed as I apologised profusely for being a dick. And deaf.

When I was at secondary school in the 1970s (excellent girls' school) we had five years of compulsory history lessons. As far as I can recall, it went:

Year 7 (as we didn't call it then ): English history, starting with Roman Britain, little or nothing about Anglo-Saxon period, Norman Conquest, Middle Ages.
Year 8: Wars of the Roses? Still English history. We might have got as far as the Tudors.
Year 9: British history, but what that really meant was English history. Stuarts, English Civil War. I suppose we must have got to the Glorious Revolution, can't really remember now.
Year 10: British history, . For some reason we seem to have skipped over the politics of the Georgian era. I think we did something about the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. Mostly from that year I remember the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.
Year 11: we had a choice between two syllabuses in the run up to History O level. One was British social and economic history from 1750ish to the modern era. The other was World political history 1870 to the modern era. I did that one. It was a great year. We studied or at the very least touched on: the Paris Commune, the unification of Germany/Bismarck, the Dreyfuss affair, the Balkans, factors leading to WW1, Russian Revolution, the women's suffrage movement.

I wish I'd done History A level. I loved the three subjects I did do, but I do regret not studying History formally to a higher level.

@ChocolateDoll Hahahaha! No it wasn't me! I'm definitely not the Hairdresser but I'm pretty sure I know the Client What a coincidence!

My 11 year old knows about the Holocaust. Maybe doesn't know the name Auschwitz but does know of Belsen as I told her I visited there when I lived in Germany.

@theluckiest I'm the same age group and you're right, that was the syllabus back then. I'm not sure how I found out about the wars, but it wasn't at secondary school.

My hairdresser's stock phrase is "aah, cool". She's actually very smart, but I'd rather she focused on my hair than trying to lipread in the mirror.

I did a GCSE in history and we didn't touch on WWII at all, it was all abotu WWI. As far as I remember we did a little bit about it in earlier years but it was all to do with how life on Britain was affected - air raids, jam made out of carrots, that sort of thing. Everything I know about the holocaust, I learnt outside of school. The same goes for the Russian revolution, American history and politics, basically anything outside of a very narrow scope. (I've been to bloody Mountfitchet castle three times...)

I think a lot of people get their general knowledge about culturally significant events from books and films (which also explains why there are so many popular misconceptions!)

Saw this today and thought of this thread. www.yahoo.com/news/one-third-americans-don-apos-143916915.html?guccounter=1

I don't know Krakow. The name rings a bell but that's all. And I consider myself fairly knowledgeable.

HolyMerlot - that’s so funny. Was she as shocked as I was?!

Meh, a lot of people don't know about the khmer rouge and that was arguably worse or stalins genocides. If anything involvement in university (unless you are specifically studying history) actually makes you less aware of this stuff given how many student politics idiots there are spouting all kinds of nonsense about how Jewish capitalists are the route of all evil on campus. In many ways the holocaust has been over emphasised in curriculums to the point where it used as a yardstick for ignorance despite being just one (relatively small) brick in the wall of human barbarity. The real significance of the holocaust was the impact on international law and migration policy rather than the event itself.

in Asia - i dont know many people (unless super old) who would know what Auschwitz was - they dont teach that in schools. I should know - i only know about it when my DH told he he visited it. Its sad really.

Oh am I once had a teacher who thought that the holocaust happened in WWI. She wouldn't believe me when I corrected her. You get all sorts

DappledThings that sort of crassness is why I have reservations about such places becoming a tourist destination. Of course there are some people who have a deeply personal reason to go there and many more who will know how to behave with sensitivity, but not all. As Hector says in The History Boys "Where do they eat their sandwiches?" Wasn't there an incident a few years back when some boys on a school trip pocketed something at Auschwitz?

Poor hairdresser. She could probably neither hear properly nor care about where every single client goes on holiday. She probably was expecting a more lighthearted response.

I agree with others that she likely misheard but I think are better ways to help with concerning ignorance than to be hostile and trying to find someone to blame.

I mean, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has the previously mentioned "and then they came for me" poem on their walls inaccurately and the wrong version is often more quoted particularly in the States than any of the accurate versions. Due to anti-communist feelings at the time of its construction, communist was changed to socialist which is never how any of the variants of Niemöller's works start (he wrote multiple versions but they all start with the Communists and end with 'came for me').

All history is taught with a bias, including what is and is not taught. I grew up in the States which is notorious for many states having very badly biased history curriculums. I remember once a professor from a nearby university came and interviewed students on WW1 and our knowledge was what many would call abysmal. No matter our parents or how open-minded we were, we were surrounded by a culture and systems that prioritized certain parts and versions of history over anything else.

Even with WW2, we may prioritize the Holocaust but which parts are commonly looked at and which are ignored? In the US, how many American businesses played both sides for years, refugees we turned away and died, that we helped develop the technology the Nazis used, how many protested both in the UK and in the US to not go to war with the Germans for quite a long time, the reported aftermath of how many men, particularly on the Western Front, 'celebrated' their victory and took revenge on civilians - particularly women and girls - is often quietly brushed aside for where we're the hard-working heroes. That's not going to be in schools, in most movies or documentaries.

Even things taught as common knowledge like the Stanford Prison Experiment which has been debunked and more and more evidence that it was poorly done to purposefully get the results that happened, the fact it's still held up and used in basic psych courses is more to do with it fitting a cultural narrative and bias than it does the science behind it and same goes for history.

I don't think this is a snobby thread. It's never been easier at any point in human history to go off and investigate a subject you don't know anything about. Having said that, you do need reasonably good reading comprehension skills, common sense, a questioning disposition and a bit of general knowledge so you can evaluate what you're reading.

The fact that so many people (of all generations) know so little and care even less is worrying. How can you make sensible decisions about how to vote if you know nothing about the world?

The answer, of course, is that people who know nothing more often than not don't vote, or vote on tribal lines. That might not matter too much but in the Brexit referendum a ridiculously complicated issue was reduced to a simple yes/no question and it now seems absolutely certain that the Leave campaign preyed on the ill-informed in particular to get them to break the habit of a lifetime and make their way to the polling station. We're all going to pay the price for that for generations to come.

@hmcaswas - maybe not those (I haven’t seen the Boy film) but I’d expect them to be aware of the film Dunkirk, maybe Captain America. Or to have played COD one of which is set during WW2.

The boy in the striped pyjamas is a brilliant film and a good example for young teens to watch to understand what happened.

my seven year old DD knows all about Auschwitz.

@Gardeninginspring I find your post a lot more offensive than the vast majority of other posts on this thread. It’s not snobby and no one is crowing over anyone

No one is laughing at the hairdresser - just incredulous that a person can have no knowledge of an event that has shaped the world in such a devastating manner. I do agree it’s more likely she was responding on autopilot though in this particular instance.

Lest we Forget is literally becoming forgotten which is an absolute travesty.