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 agree with a PP about the rise in people claiming to be "objective" about Hitler and his crew because "Economy, vegetarian, nice to his dog," which can be loosely translated as "Promised the electorate the moon on a stick to build a war machine to eliminate a whole cohort of people he wrongly thought were responsible for all society's ills and convinced a good number of them to adopt similar thinking, plus planned world domination at any cost and to the death, while doing downtime domestic shit as all humans, with all their flaws and differences do".

In general terms what needs to be reinforced education wise, is that anyone, at any time, can fall into, or be engineered into "undesirable status". Political systems that encourage and actively create division and exercise wholesale oppression need to be examined and avoided.

Warfare used to be largely inspired by tribal resource disputes, this is now usually about money with a strong veneer if ideology.

I have other thoughts but my new girl cat has just done a running puke over my sofa and the end of my bed, so excuse me while I deal with that.

I do - but if you have a low paid job, a kind of diagnosis, struggle with paying food bills, can't find a rent and you don't have hours enough to cover school runs and laundry it won't be first thing people do.

A lot of people on MN have lives about average.

What a load of excuses- no one is suggesting anyone does it all day every day - choosing to live in ignorance is dangerous and inexcusable.

Most people spend a lot of time on the internet looking at utter rubbish.

Saw that this morning. Shook!

I would argue that Britian, during the time of the Boer War wasn't a proper democracy.
No women had the right to vote, and only men who met certain property owning requirements.
However, I agree - it's not just "bad guys" that do things like this.

If it makes your day not accepting that a lot of people don't have ressources to educate themselves as a nice everyday project.

I am not. A lot of young people feel that UK policians act in their own interests alone. Look at Boris parties during covid...

Former history teacher. I can remember in the 90’s showing my students the school’s version of ‘Schindler’s List’ when it came out and it was far more effective than any lesson I delivered. The little girl in the red coat broke their hearts, as they could see themselves in her.
The Holocaust was much discussed in my house growing up. Both my parents discussed the cinema footage they first saw as children, which they said was so shocking it never left them.
Over time we do become less connected to past events. Young people as times move on will feel less connected to WWW2 as a whole, because anyone they have in their lives who witnessed it will have gone.
However, it was a war which was very well documented and the Holocaust in particular was. You only have to look at the records kept, the names recorded, the numbers given out, the sheer volume of historical data which shows its existence.
It is vital we still listen to witnesses as human stories are something we can connect with.
However, in a world where young people are told news outlets lie, news is fake news, and influential people spout absolute rubbish at them, I feel a bit helpless.

If it makes your day to excuse chosen ignorance, crack on.

Yes, and I think this recent trend for ' Hitler wasn't such a bad man, he cared for his people and had the volkswagon built for them'.is implicitly delegitimising the groups of people Hitler was trying to wipe out. Clearly Hitler did not care for Jews and Roma and so on, so by saying he did, one is implicitly saying Jews and others were not legitimate German citizens.

Lets face it, whoever started this ' Hitler was not such a bad man, he cared for his people' stuff was motivated by rank anti-Semitism and this was created as a an entry point to recruit people into anti-Semitism. And for at least one person I know in RL who started saying this, it has worked. She now says ' The Jews' in air quotes and with a sneer on her face.

There were 16.6 million Jewish people before the holocaust.
So over a third were murdered.

We estimate that there are 2.3 billion Christians worldwide.
So a third is roughly 8%? Of the world population.

Politics (and maybe a social science subject) need to be added to the compulsory curriculum. People do not understand the importance of their vote nor how society has functioned/could function. I think not including it for everyone to learn or be aware of is a means of keeping people ignorant; and it gives a message that it’s not as important as maths for example. It’s actually much more important for all of us!!! Imo it should be taught from the beginning of school until the end.

Exactly. Auchwitz and Belsen possibly.

Eh? Kids are taught about WW2 and concentration camps. It tends to stick in the mind. However they are not taught the names of camps AFAIK.

I'm educated and interested in history, am widely read especially of historical fiction and WW2 era historical fiction. I've read the diary of Ann Frank and Primo Levi 'if this is a man'. I've been to Dachau.

Other than Dachau, Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen where Ann Frank ended up I couldn't name all the camps.

I don't know if my 14yo would even know Aushwitz.

As I said, I’m ignorant about some of the aspects of the Holocaust but I’m not going to put myself out to read or research something deeply upsetting.

So yes, chosen ignorance.

That’s a whole new debate I agree.
I wonder how we would describe the UK in Victorian times.
The sovereign had few powers.
But yes the country was run by the elite and Churchill in later years was happy to send troops in to striking miners to protect landowners.

I will admit to only vague knowledge of what's going on in equivalent concentration type camps since WW2. Worldwide I know genocide still goes on, look at Gaza.

I'll never read about kz camps again or Holocost. I have done my part.
And tbh I have stopped reading news of Ukraine, Gaza and you name it. I can't change the horrors around the world and won't have nightmares at night.
I am fully aware of a lot of horror is going on around the world but I struggle enough with life anno 2025 and I have stopped thinking it is of any importance to world leaders either to do a lot about it.

I don’t think it matters that people can’t name actual concentration camps (although it’s odd as Auschwitz is very famous!) as long as they don’t forget that one million Jews were exterminated because of an extremist dictator in a highly cultured, western country that was admired and thought of as civilised. Whose views were formed by the vast amounts of anti-Jewish propaganda around during his fairly miserable youth. Who normalised political violence on the street to the point that people turned a blind eye to it and where teachers and dissenters were removed from society. And that this could - still - happen anywhere given a bad set of circumstances.

My kids have learned about it via Anne Frank’s diary and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas at school and now in GCSE history. I did it a lot in the 90s albeit for GCSE. Then of course there was Schindler’s List.

Not my experience at all with my children.
i have 12,13 and 15 year old and all have covered WW2 in huge detail, many times in both primary and secondary. They know all about the atrocities, and have even been to the Anne frank museum in Amsterdam and heard accounts first hand on large screens from survivors and friends of Anne frank.
All their class friends have had the same topic covered multiple times. So it’s just not true for many young people that they know nothing about it.

They cover UK Politics and the system of democracy in PSHE in most schools.
Unfortunately, there isn't enough time to cover everything in schools.

I couldn't name them during my history GCSE about WW2. So I'd not expect someone who was not studying that subject to know them?
I can name maybe two. And I got a B for my History?! If they don't teach it in schools how will people know it? They don't teach us about the history of the USA or slavery or anything like that either.

It was six million Jews who were murdered, and, as discussed upthread, this represented over a third of all Jews in the world at the time.

I think the scale is important. This was industrialised, administratively detailed work to murder all of the Jews living in countries invaded by Nazi Germany.

Other groups were targeted for murder too, Roma, those with learning disabilities, gay people among them.

I completely agree with this. The whole curriculum needs an overhaul.

When I was a teen in the 90’s, we did WW1 and WW2 to death. And purely from the British aspect (the role of America completely left out, for instance). It wasn’t balanced, and it was incredibly dull and depressing. My teens are doing the exact same curriculum now and both say they hate history with a passion.

I have started listening to The Rest is History podcast with them to show them that there is more to history than the British take on these 2 world wars. That there is a way of telling a story without it being dull and history can be informative, interesting and entertaining.

Sorry, you are right it was one million at Auschwitz alone I think wasn’t it. I am pre-coffee. Totally agree and was also going to mention that it was not just Jews and not just in Germany but my post had turned into a long rant so I deleted some!