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.

I couldn't name the camps

Pretty sure it wasn't taught in school in the 80s

But we were taught historical analysis- looking at source documents and working out the whys

totally agree that people today don't learn or just forget - this is what makes me mad about the Poppy Day in November- most people wear poppies but a huge number of people don't bother to find out what it was all about , the causes , why people behaved like they did so history repeats

The rise of the right wing , the way people turn a blind eye or support evil, the divisions being sown in our society all scare me

I didn't learn about it in school (in any great depth anyway). I dropped history and chose geography from year 10 onwards.

No, you said that "they just talk about it for an hour or don't mention it".
I'm saying that for most schools, usually half term is devoted to it. Most of us use the excellent materials from the Holocaust Educational Trust. Perhaps your children were not well educated on this issue.
However, it's not "an hour" or "not mentioned" in most schools of my (very long!)experience.

They’ve also forgotten or don’t know that Russian troops raped hundreds of thousands of women.
The allied troops raped at least 100,000 women in Berlin alone.

Some years ago I went to an exhibition in France about deportation and camps. One of the exhibits was a listing of all the camps, detailing the number of people sent and the number who survived. The camps where none survived are forgotten.

i Think it’s important to note that this isn’t in the U.K., where as a previous poster has highlighted the % was very very low.

Ok perhaps I didn’t choose my words as well as I could have done. My dc have been very well educated on it because I am very keen on history myself, particularly the holocaust and the rise of the Nazis and we talk about it a lot. But the education they’ve had via school has been nowhere near the in depth approach I had when I was a teenager. If that’s different in your school, then that’s brilliant and I wish more schools were like that.

For many years, every year, we had a survivor come to talk to our yr9s.
An elderly person recounting the horror of their personal past to a packed hall of teenagers was always extraordinary. You could hear a pin drop. They were encouraged to ask questions, and many wrote to him afterwards. I'll never forget those sessions, and many students have told me the same.

This isnt a recent thing.

I'm in my 50s and can only name one. I don't recall being taught it in primary school, I didn't do history at GCSE.

I'm degree educated and have a professional job.

Where do people get their knowledge? It's not a topic I would want to go and research and read up on.

I couldn't name one camp in Germany. The only one I know is Auschwitz.

If you haven't already, Plato's Republic is a great read

Oh, I see what you mean. I'm really glad that parents like you take this up, and fill in the gaps.
I agree with pp about the significance and importance when we see the rise of the right in Europe and elsewhere.

It's on the secondary curriculum, if they fail to remember or think it's amusing to tell the researcher they know nothing then there's nothing we can do. My dc's school ran a trip to the camps each year

https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/the-holocaust/the-camps/extermination-camps/
This is a good resource, if you're interested.

This.

Are you saying that you never did a lesson about poppies and Remembrance Day, or never looked at war time poetry in an English class? Never learnt about evacuees or read or watched any of the war media aimed at children (eg Goodnight Mr Tom)?

The WWs were almost pervasive in my 90s education and touched a variety of subjects.

That said, I can’t name a single concentration camp - the only two I know (and have visited) were in Poland.

History doesn't repeat but it does rhyme.

We go through cycles as a civilisation, and civilisations go through seasons and ultimately end.

The death camps were the dark side of an enlightenment that gave us everything we would rather die than live without. There is no way to stop humans being human.

There's a HMD Trust link I've just given to another poster. This gives information on other genocides as well.
I would also recommend the Holocaust Educational Trust.

I think many people overestimate how much people learn from school, and underestimate how much we learn in later life.

We didn't cover the holocaust or WW2 at school. Despite that, I still know about it from decades of exposure to news items, films, TV documentaries, museum exhibitions, etc. That's how you learn so much about these types of topics, not "I did it at school".

So it's not really surprising that people in their 20s don't know as much as older people. It's knowledge that accumulates over time.

However I do wonder how this type of knowledge accumulation will be affected by changes in media consumption. It already started with age-related TV channels - there was far less children's programming when I was a child and so we watched a wider range of grown up programmes.

And now people's media consumption is increasingly fragmented - choose to follow a very narrow set of interests on streaming services and social media and don't come across anything else. No more channel hopping across a limited range of TV channels and ending up watching a documentary on BBC2.

Errr. Are in Germany by any chance ??
Cause if you are then by all means get annoyed but if your in England then you need better education standards

Good points, @zzplex . Also good parenting, like pp who take time to inform their children about challenging issues like this.

I think the history curriculum in schools is the one that needs most reform (as a history grad). Currently the idea seems to be to teach a few aspects of a few isolated periods/ world events in a lot of detail but that's at the expense of students having any sense of continuity through time and cause and effect over decades and centuries.

Honestly, I'm not sure what the answer is as obviously you can't teach everything, but teaching topics in isolation (and often on repeat- Hitler for GCSE and A level) can't be the optimal way.

If they are going to focus on a few topics, I'm not sure there's a massive rationale for WW2 being one of them over something like the creation of the British Empire/ the Industrial Revolution/ rise of the US, unless the main focus of WW2 is on the geopolitics before and after.

I suppose it also depends on what the purpose of history in schools is - if it's critically appraising sources/ essay writing then it probably works. If it's giving students an understanding of how the world came to be as it is, then it's a massive fail.

Off the top of my head I can name:

Auschwitz
Dachau
Bergen Belsen

Because those were the highest profile in terms of scale and focus after the liberation.

I went to one in Belgium that was primarily allegedly for political prisoners but I'd have to look up the name. However the details of some of the stories and the utter chill of the remaining buildings and the starkly presented museum features have never left me.

I remember being a teenager and watching the "World at War" late at night and alone and sobbing my heart out.

It should never be forgotten but more from a humanitarian perspective than a facts and figures position except of course in terms of scale. What I think I'm trying to say I think is that at some point younger generations need to know where we are in history and how we got here including the worst parts, but how that is done does require some sensitivity for all concerned.

I think they should know more about it and be able to name some but there are around 27 main camps and sub camps too, so would not be able to name them all.

@SuziQuinto thank you very much, I didn't do much history at school due to lots of illness so I'll take a read.

For all those saying they were never taught it and worried about their lids not knowing, maybe today is the day to find out?

wikipedia list of all camos here : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nazi_concentration_camps - I could only name 4 or 5.

As a starting point BBC Bitesize here on the Holocaust https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zt48dp3#zxpyvwx

Auschwitz Museum https://www.auschwitz.org/en/