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 boy in the striped pyjamas is a bad depiction because, if not for anything else, virtually all children and most women were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival at the camps
Its why I hate it being used as a teaching aid. In the end the moral of the tale seems to be 'keep an eye on your children otherwise they can come to harm'. Equally (spoiler alert), why does it require a German to die 'by mistake' to make the ending tragic.

I've had to spend huge amounts of time explaining to ks3 students that the 2 boys probably wouldn't have got close to each other, shmuel wouldn't have been alive, no they couldn't all just rise up and fight their way out the camps. It's not lack of trying to empathise, it's just a topic that doesn't (in my opinion) lend itself to teaching properly below Year 9.

Anyway, some general knowledge isn't as general as we may think. Some of the examples on here seem to be more mocking perceived stupidity from a position of 'but obviously everyone knows...'

The Great Leap Forward, 30-50 million dead, families exchanging children as they couldn't practice cannibalism on their own child, and yet very few have heard of it let alone been taught about it (circa 1960 so not ancient history by any stretch of imagination).

That's so horrible. Ashamed to say I had heard of it but didn't realise the extent of it.

Primary doesn’t teach about the holocaust ect. All the WW2 stuff is about the Home front and evacuation.

My late dgm was German, born in Cologne and was 11 years old when WW2 broke out and her family suffered huge losses including her father.

She was in Hitler youth like all other kids who didn't know what was happening and he touched her on the head.
She met and married an English man and moved here when she was 21 until she died 60 years later.

As a child I was taught not only the German language ( which I hated and chose French at GCSE! ) but history too and so were my own dc.

My ds in particular is fascinated by history and chose it as one of his options. He's 15 and going into year 11 next week.
They still haven't touched upon WW2 which he's very disappointed about.

He's learnt about the history of medicine, the Cold War and something else which escapes my memory but no war.

Luckily for him he knows a lot himself through discussions with late dgm and later with me and his dad, aswell as the Internet and books.

They went on a history trip last year to Cologne which i was thrilled about but apart from visiting the cathedral they spent their time there at a water park, a chocolate factory and shopping!

My youngest is dd (7) and she's showing similar interest in history and is particularly interested in the plague. She knew more than her newly qualified teacher when they touched on it earlier in the year.

Some people are just not interested in the past though and I find that a real shame.

I find it fascinating though obviously very distressing if touching on subjects like wars but I think we should know from a young age how history has shaped our world today.

I would be shocked that someone didn't know what that was but then again I had people at work laughing as i thought private ambulances were for rich people.

Surely Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is for the hard of thinking to realise that everyone killed in the holocaust was a tragedy and they could have been a relative/ child of yours because they were human beings just like us. It's not about Bruno's life being worth more - it's that they were all Brunos.

We learnt about the Holocaust in GCSE history in the 1990s and had a piece of coursework to write about Kristallnacht from the perspective of a shopkeeper affected. I remember being so upset about it and wanting to do proper justice to it on their behalf, that I just couldn't write it. It was the only piece of coursework I ever handed in late and I remember crying at the staff room door because I was in such a state about it.

I know that teachers don't have to teach the whole syllabus but it was definitely on the syllabus at least then.

bitheby
But the bit with shmuel's grandfather disappearing is sort of glossed over quite quickly and you'd only really pick up on it if you knew a bit about the context. The film adaptation in particular places a great emphasis on the shock of bruno's family because it would be awful if he got mixed up in all that. It's factually inaccurate as well. Not only would shmuel not be alive, there's no way Bruno would have got near that fence, no way he'd be so oblivious to what s going on, no way that he's think the camp was called 'out-with' (Holocaust Education Trust trainer said it simply didn't work). It's problematic on a number of levels.

Different topics will be on different GCSE specs. Some will do WW2, study the rise of Nazi Germany and the interwar period, some track the history of medicine, some study Russia and the cold war. Etc.

I think people don't read as much as we did when we were kids - books, films, history on TV - remember when we (us older folk) were little we had parents and grandparents who were first hand witnesses to WW1. Media reflected this and maybe it encouraged wider interest in history?

Plus TV was pretty rotten and the only early hours shows were Open University ones (which I loved watching when I was little and would wake up really early).

This thread is really snobby. Just because that hairdresser either wasn't listening or wasn't aware of various atrocities it doesn't mean they lack compassion or empathy.

Was that the whole conversation? Nothing along the lines of "I'm going to Poland?" I think it's a bit harsh to judge that the hairdresser doesn't know about the holocaust just because she didn't immediately remember what Auschwitz was, out of all context. Also, most people don't go on holiday to visit the site of concentration camps and it isn't what springs to mind when somebody says they are going on a break. I've only been to Auschwitz once, and wouldn't go back.

Honestly I think it's down to the vast media choice we have today.
I don't think I was taught about the holocaust at school in the 70's and 8o's but learned through TV or books. At one point we had 3 tv channels for evening entertainment. A World in Action documentary would be on prime time and most of the nation would watch it. My parents always watched the 6 and 9 o'clock news and we had to sit though it.
Now it's just binge watching Netflix series'

Nothing snobby about being surprised than someone didn't know this. Snobby would be notching about their English or their kids names.

Hi Maisy

Yep, that's what I meant about the syllabus. We did the history of medicine and Nazi Germany but we didn't do Russia. So the topics are there to be selected from and depends on the school as to what they teach as there isn't enough time to go into everything in enough depth. But it was on the syllabus.

I studied photography as an adult and we watched the Nazi propaganda films that promoted the idea of the concentration camps as holiday camps with children playing - and contrasted them with Henryk Ross photographs taken within the concentration camps of what was really going on. The plates were buried so they wouldn't be discovered.

So anybody buying in to the propaganda wouldn't have known what was going on. I see Bruno as symbolic of that - ignorant by choice or by design.

Any work of fiction is not going to be the same as a work of fact and it was written to play on the emotions of a particular audience I guess.

R4 programme on now about camps. Heartbreaking.

Am listening.

I really recommend seeing the Henryk Ross photos from the Lodz ghetto. They're on the internet. Be prepared. They're shocking.

@Nakedavenger74 that is a very good point. I too had to sit through news and documentaries etc as a child. I remember the first gulf war making a real impression on me, I was about 12.
Don't think most children do these days.

I am in the over 50s group and history at my school ended at 1914 but WW2 at that time was recent history and our parents and grandparents had lived through it. There were loads of 'war ' films current to the time also. In other words WW2 was recent history known to most people. My son has now studied history GCSE which went up to Vietnam War and spread of communism but hasn't covered the end of the Cold War.

bitheby
Ah right. I misunderstood, I thought you were suggesting that something's gone wrong by it not being on now as such. Sorry.

I think the thing with history is that people are always going to be unhappy with what is taught. I read something online where people were claiming no black history is taught in UK schools. Then some argument over whether studying colonialism and the slave trade and lessons from it counts, some said yes but otjers said no. Then there was some argument over whether US civil rights counts and people were annoyed that London black rights movements weren't there.
Then you think about the holocaust, then you think about the fact there's many other genocides. Which of them do you study?
Then there's Russia and the cold war, is that more or less important than any other period in time etc.
I don't think it's possible to generate a history curriculum to please everyone.

I remember once at the gym (when I used to go) the trainer bossing me about and I said he was like the Gestapo. He had never heard of them. Worrying really.

American tourist overheard at Windsor: "Why did they build the castle so near to the airport?"

But this is not just history, the repercussions are current affairs, the holocaust, anti semitism, Zionism, Palestine all in the news every day

I don’t think you can judge an entire generation by one person. When my DD was 22 she interailed round Northern Europe for a few weeks solo and in every country she visited the War museums and WW2 sites. She didn’t study history past age 14 but she was interested and taught herself as she got older.

OTH this interested and intelligent girl once rang me up to check if we had any tomatoes ripening in the garden - in February in the UK! We all have gaps in our knowledge.

Took my DS 4 to the barbers, regular woman wasn’t there and and younger lad did it. He was talking with the other customers about Nazis and the war and at one point he said “if it wasn’t for the concentration camps we wouldn’t have a lot of the medical advances we have today” !!😳

I'm not sure if I did much/anything about Auschwitz at school. I'm in my mid 50s & went to a small all girl's grammar.

I remember reading Anne Frank's Diary, although not sure if that was at school or after seeing a film.