to be horrified that people are forgetting the Holocaust?

[FleurDelacoeur]

www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-shows-americans-are-forgetting-about-holocaust-n865396

OK, so it's an American study but 11% of all adults and 20% of millenials in the US haven't heard of the holocaust, or aren't sure whether they've heard of it or not.

Given that this is one of the most important events of the 20th century isn't this simply appalling? How can people NOT know??

I'm not aware of the curriculum in the rest of the UK but I know my secondary age kids in Scotland have learned about the Holocaust as part of a WW2 topic, and it was touched on in RE too when they learned about Judaism.

And quite frankly if it wasn't in the curriculum I'd be making sure they knew about it as it's such an important event which should never be forgotten.

The Holocaust is also one of the culminations in the centuries long victimization of one particular people, the Jews. Since the Antiquity, they have made the scapegoats of crisis, famines, plagues, general catastrophes in the countries they lived in. They survived only by the protection of kings, sultans, (even popes, like Alexander VI) that could withdraw their support on a whim of for political or financial reasons. They were overtaxed, hounded out of their homes, suffered endless pogroms. When expelled from their homes, they were kept at ransom, violated, forced to lose or hide their identities under pain of death. And yet they have managed to keep the spirit of Judaism alive, their culture, their pride. Their legacy in this constant adversity is a culture of education, of being the great doctors of their time, patriots when they settled, industrious and ressourceful. And yet they had to endure again the industrialised murder of their kin, The systematic use of their belongings and worst of all, their dead bodies, hair, teeth, fat, or skin, as if their were just meat and materials. So yes, the Shoah is the Greatest Crime against Humanity. It was the greatest obscenity man could do to another, and we should never forget it.

@Dairy, I’m of Armenian heritage. I know exactly what a genocide is, thanks. I don’t need “useful reminders.” The Slave trade was a genocide. It’s aim was to subjugate and own a race of people considered sub human. No thought was given to whether those people died as there was always more supply.

noble not in the years affected by those discussing it on here.
Sorry to be a pedant but can we just clear up a couple of things here?
Genocide refers to the systematic eradication of one group of people. Therefore the atrocities committed during WWII by Japan, or the treatment of slaves, are not genocides (that is not to say they should not be remembered)
Secondly Jews are not a race.
Thirdly the Holocaust refers only to the systematic extermination of JEWS. That number is around 6 million. It does not include those killed by the Nazis as purification of the German race (e.g. disabled/homosexuals etc) nor non-Jewish people in Poland and other invaded territories.

The slave trade was NOT a genocide - I'm sorry but this is a misuse of the term.

This wasn’t something I was taught at school. I stopped history in year 8 so maybe I missed it by one year. It also wasn’t something spoken about at home maybe because I wasn’t learning about it at school. The most I know was learnt by the boy in the stripped pyjamas. It’s not something I’ve looked into. I’ve heard of Anne franks diary but again I’ve never read it.

Can I recommend people watch Schindler's List, if they haven't already. Saw it when I was doing A-levels. Most powerful thing I have ever seen.

When it comes to defining genocide, we do need a definition. Considering a people sub human and enslaving them is not a genocide. Turning a blind eye to mass starvation ( The Irish Famine ) is not a genocide. It is the deliberate planning and eradication of people. That this mass death of people as a by product by neglect, colonisation etc etc is not considered a genocide is due to the necessity of semantics. Theres thousands of books on this. And depending on films for historical accuracy and representation in lazy, really watch Shoah etc.

Sorry, but genocide refers to the deliberate killing of a large group of people. The trans Atlantic Slave trade DELIBERATELY kept humans in horrific conditions. DELIBERATELY subjugated and tortured. DeLIBERATELY Stripped humans of their culture, identity, their language, their religion, their names. It sought to eradicate any humanity those people had for profit and didn’t care about the death and destruction it caused. That is a genocide

I think we're getting sidetracked - people should know about both and in a way the labels are less important. Horrific things have been done and we should remember them, whatever definition they go by

Genocide comes from the Greek genos - (race or tribe) and the Latin cide (killing). The by-product of the slave trade was the death of millions of people. But it was not a systematic attempt to get rid of that people, it was an economic system.

I agree that we should learn about these atrocities in history.
But as a pp said earlier, we don’t learn from them.
I know a Bosnian family and I was horrified to learn what they’d been through. The men and boys were put in Serbian concentration camps and had been rescued. Many of their family members were killed and tossed into mass graves.
If only we had learnt from history....

That is a genocide

By definition, no, it isn't.

Jam although I agree that semantics can get us side-tracked, I really try to impress upon my students the targetting of Jews and that it does not mean a race or a religion - it takes a long time to get a 14 year old to realise that lots of people they consider 'normal' (I always start with Adam Sandler) may well have been murdered. In their heads Jews are all orthodox and therefore could have just 'given up their religion'. I find it the hardest topic to teach.

The idea of forgetting it is horrifying, I entirely agree.

DayKay I'm not sure we ever will

@I8toys Oradour worth a visit if you're in South West France, absolutely haunting

Speaking of genocide, one is happening as we discuss it.

edition.cnn.com/2018/03/12/asia/myanmar-rohingya-un-violence-genocide-intl/index.html

Two thirds of European Jews were disposed of. That is a truly shocking amount.

What made the Nazi genocide particularly appalling:

Drone footage from Nazi concentration camp
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36207882

The methodical, meticulously planned and documented attempt to exterminate a people, on an industrial scale.

(The film is worth watching, and is historically accurate. The dialogue is taken word-for-word from the minutes of the meeting it portrays.)

There a people still living who survived this. It is not ancient history.

Yes Lweji Myanmar would probably be a better place to bomb than Syria.

I'm american and the only people I ever met who didn't know were Alaskan children whose parents were ex cult members

Know about the Holocaust that is

We were made to watch the documentary called 'Nacht und Nebel' (Night and Fog) at school when we were 12-13 years old. It shows footage from the concentration camps. I will never forget it or how quiet we were when we left the class room that day.
It's on youtube, well worth watching.

More than ruins of the camps, footage like this, filmed when camps were freed, it's harrowing.

Also speaking of genocides, the one that I've found most shocking during my lifetime was in Rwanda.
Not on a Holocaust level, in numbers, but mostly for how fast and how many people died. As the link says, a rate 5x higher than the Holocaust, in the first 6 weeks.
People were killed by machetes, by neighbours, but organised by the government.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

Lweji agreed - the shocking thing about Rwanda is the speed of it, it was terrifying.