To be surprised and a bit shocked

[Thomasina79]

That a high percentage of young people cannot name the concentration camps of the Second World War in Germany and some are not even aware of the atrocities committed.

in the light of the far right extremism in Europe rising up, financial instability, anti semitism/anti Muslim are we nit in danger of history repeating itself. People have poor memories.. yes sadly there have been many many wars since, some all too recently. The situation in the world is all so worrying and I fear for my grandchildren and adult children.

Nobody forces foreign workers go and work there. They are competing like mad to go and work in Dubai and Singapore - they consider themselves blessed and everybody back homes is jealous of them. They want to return to Dubai and Singapore, but there is a 4-year maximum work visa, after which they have to have a break in their employment. They are - foreign WORKERS, not foreign benefit seekers. I approve of Dubai and Singapore governments and I admire them.

That might well be true, but a Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt is demonstrating something fundamentally a different from disagreements over the Gaza situation.

I think its really important to note that 'othering people' happens a lot amongst those who identify as on the Left too. And anti-Semitism is certainly not limited to the Right.

Thinking that ' its only that lot over there who Other people' is itself a form of Othering ( ironically) and means one is not alert to spotting Othering amongst one's own side, or indeed oneself.

@MistressoftheDarkSide I am a similar age and we did very little about the Holocaust at school. It was a singular page in a book I had in Third Year - Year 9.
A young student teacher read ‘The Silver Sword’ with us, which was so upsetting, and some of us read Anne Frank’s diary in our own time.
History tended to be very centred around Britain itself.
I first saw an article about the Holocaust in the Sunday Times magazine when I was at junior school and I was so shocked. My parents could not really explain it to me, as it is very hard to tell a young child about atrocities.
But I never forgot it.

My children all learned about the holocaust at shcool in England. However, we also took them to visit the war graves in northern France (including seeing where some of their ancestors were laid) as well as visits to the Imperial War Museum and other such places.

The sate has a responsibility to teach this but so do parents.

I wasn't talking about 'disagreements over Gaza', but open anti-Semitism. The fact that you think these incidents can be minimised as ' disagreements over Gaza' is quite disturbing. I hope its just that you have not been following this closely and genuinely don't know what has been happening, though some aspects like tearing down posters of hostages have been very well publicised, so...

You do realise that everyone who commits acts of race based hate thinks they are justified in doing so and the other side ' deserved it'?

I follow it very closely, actually. But this was a specific thread about the Holocaust, which is what I was responding to.

People can have very different opinions on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict without dismissing, or being ignorant of, the Holocaust. I don't doubt, however, that there has been race based hate on both sides and I have not for a second implied that any side 'deserved it', so no idea where that's come from.

So I would appreciate you not putting offensive words in my mouth. Thanks.

If you have been following it then you will realise how deeply offensive it is to refer to the open anti-Semitism since October 7th - as 'disagreements over Gaza.'

It was not a neutral phrase to use.

None of which is effected by your ability to name concentration camps in a foreign country used by a foreign government.....

Nothing to discuss?

Really?

I'd say we gain the most from learning about difficult topics by discussing them.

I haven't claimed that those on the right are exclusively to blame for the vile racist sentiments being espoused as a solution to government failings here and in many other 'civilised' countries...but there's no denying that the most vocal supporters of some sort of solution for those who 'aren't one of us' and therefore less than human happen to be right wing.

No, because teenagers need the facts and the information. It's then that they can evaluate cause, consequence, impact and other second order concepts. Just "discussing" based on nothing is not productive.

Surely it's useful for teenagers (and anyone) to receive the information and also discuss it?

I'm really not understanding why it needs to be one or the other??

My point was in response to another poster who suggested "a discussion". It's a sensitive and challenging topic to teach. There are many myths to dispel and much misinformation, as I'm sure you can appreciate. It needs lessons tackling the origins of antisemitism, the socio political background and journey from prejudice to mass murder. It's a bad idea to discuss anything like this open ended. However, they do have opportunities to not only ask questions, but consider evidence and evaluate, and consider what leads to such an event, how people survive it and if it's possible to prevent it from happening again.

I worked with a woman in the 70s who was moaning about black people in the queue at the post office. She finished by saying her father had fought in WWII to keep Britain white. She was shocked when I told her we weren't the racists in that war.

I agree about Anne Frank to some extent. The issue is that the diary stops before the camps & bc she's so easy to relate to it also needs to be stressed that anti Semtism has particular roots that come up again & again, whereas other prejudices manifest differently,- ofc both can lead to Genocide, but the roots can be different. Anti Semitism has been grotesquely present on SM since Oct 7- no, I don't mean support for ordinary Palestinians but support for Hamas, denial of Nova or 'they deserved it.' 😡 Terrifying views that show these people are utterly unaware of what the Nazis they use as an insult actually believed...
Also, the diary stops before the camps, so it's important to Also teach how people collaborated w every stage of the murders. But graphic detail is wrong to include imo.
She was such a talented writer. If she were alive now she'd be my grandmother's age, I wonder what she might have done...

I agree they choose to go, but once there the conditions are often effectively indentured labour, ie. slavery.

If you admire these governments, does that mean you admire the lack of free speech (workers who peacefully protest have received life sentences sometimes) & prison sentences for gay sex and extramarital sex?

I did, saw really good tv programme but didn’t know about the trials afterwards.

How much do you know about the Korean War? Or the war in Syria or the Vietnam War?

They cannot name any or all? I would struggle to name all the concentration camps.

I am not shocked because I find a lot of people’s knowledge of things that happened outside of their country is really limited. I used to be shocked but now I am not.

And history already repeated itself. We watched that in Rwanda. I am also pretty sure it could happen even in Europe again if you just found the right hate group. I mean we hate people attempting to burn asylum seekers alive in the hotels last year. I could 100% see people (SOME people) being chill with concentration camps if they could choose the groups put in them.)

They cannot name any or all.

The survey reported the former, the question asked respondents to name all they (the respondent) had heard of. @JHound

https://www.claimscon.org/country-survey/

The "rise of the far right" is badly mislabeled. These are just ordinary people who've had their country stolen from them and, as we are in the UK subjected to horrendous two tier policing, constant coverups by Labour and completely biased coverage by the BBC, Guardian etc.

And yes, I can name most of the concentration camps.

I’m shocked by your response. Nothing to discuss? So you think the murder of over 6 million people is not worth discussing?

How ridiculous! Stop twisting my words into something offensive.
I will repeat what I said upthread:
They're yr9. They learn the facts, the origins of antisemitism, the socio economic and political background. They learn individual stories, how the process was developed from prejudice to murder. Where responsibility lies, liberation and aftermath. They look at source materials, they reflect. They evaluate.
No, they don't have "a discussion" because it's deeper than that. I know what teenage "discussions" can be like.
Your comment about my attitude to mass murder is offensive.