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 think the issue is it’s being shown as a shocking statistic, but in reality it might be an average trend - we just wouldn’t know.

We should all know. After all, those people in the camps lived through it. We are safe where we are & should be able to read about it, to honour their memory and to ensure we understand the process of how such evil escalated through society. A lot of books focus on why it happened rather than the mechanics of the violence.

I thunk names are a red herring. The point isn't the names but what happened there. In a sense maybe names are counterproductive as it removes the focus from the fact it could happen anywhere.

I think you should read about how the hatred spread and people went along w jobs that related to the camps. But there's no need for anyone to read horrible details of what happened there.

It isn’t a case of worrying if history will repeat itself. Genocide / ethnic cleansing did not stop when WW2 ended. The atrocities have not been on the same scale but they do show that lessons were not learned. I don’t think teaching children the never ending brutality of human nature would make much difference.

What about the effective slavery Dubai's foreign workers live in? You sound like you approve of such governments.

I don't think the OPs assertion is true based on what my children have studied at school.
KS3 - year 9, history WW2 and in English studied The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
KS4 - GCSE history indepth study of the 3rd reich and the final solution including a trip to the Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum.
So if you don't continue to study history you would have an idea but not have been taught in as much detail about it. However, there are plenty of ill-educated people young and old!

Highly recommend watching 'The Zone of Interest' with teenage children, Based on the family life of Rudolf Hoss, camp commander of Auschwitz, you see the relative normality of childhood running alongside the sinister backdrop of the camp and how it is 'normalised'.

All my DGC (ages 6 - 17) have studied the two world wars in different schools and at different key stages

Why not?

People watch all sorts of fictional horror

How about what people REALLY did to each other in living memory?

Subject matter in the title would be useful

In gcse history one of the units is events leading up to ww2, including the treatment of the Jews and how antisemitism became enshrined in German law. There was never any shying away from the reality in the school my kids went to and where I taught for 20 years, we had close ties to the Holocaust Memorial Trust and the Anne Frank Foundation. To be able to get a decent mark in GCSE history you would need to have studied how the rise of the Nazis and antisemitism enabled each other in 1930s Germany.

I wonder what percentage are also unaware that gays and Romany gypsies were sent to the camps too.

Very vey few and you don’t need to know as long as you have an understanding of what happened in them and how atrocious it was

IMHO, fiction is a lot easier to digest than the finer details of real-life events that actually happened. They sicken you to the core, while reinforcing the evil we all know that undoubtedly, exists within humanity. There is no comparison.

An understand of the atrocities and what happened without finer details is enough; unless you wish to know the intricacies.

Yes but it's exacerbated by the lack of democracy & suppression of dissent which Hwi seemed OK w sacrificing in return for the benefits. Besides, @Hwi India is not really democratic, Modi has taken the country into a mire of religious fanaticism & his party regularly intimidate people w violence, I shouldn't be surprised if that was the reason for some of his votes. People have been thrown in jail in some Indian states for criticising his party's belief that cow urine can cure serious illnesses. Satire & questioning of politicians is mainly suppressed in the media. He's loathsome.
What were the other large democracies you were referring to? I wouldn't count Russia as one either. Or was it someplace else?

I was in secondary in the 90’s and we never studied WWII in history- only those that took GCSE History did.

Learnt plenty about it from my grandparents and TV though. Could only name one or two camps, but I’m well aware of the atrocities committed there.

Some people don't watch horror. Violence makes me feel ill, however I am trying to desensitise a bit as I want to be a criminal lawyer & that will be a liability. But I don't recommend that for most people like me. Besides, fictional horror is just that. Real horror is much worse because it happened to someone.
On another note, I think part of the reason Holocaust material can be so graphic is bc deniers fixated on details of the gas chambers to disprove. Plus it was so unbelievable & unprecedented to use science to commit Genocide.

Yes it was, my children learned about it

And the camps are still referenced in the news these days

How can people not know?

News articles?

Frequently comes up

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.

I think that's why Anne Frank's Diary is such a valuable teaching tool. She's such an absolutely relatable teen. I remember it having a profound effect on me.

And I generally agree with you about the state of the information ecosystem feeling a bit hopeless at the moment.

The 'Lest we forget' message hasn't really held up, has it?

No. And here's a January 6 rioter.

I can only name two camps from memory, Auschwitz and Dachau...only one of those was based in Germany.

The information seared into my brain about concentration camps wasn't their location/name, but how people ended up there and there sheer hell they either endured or succumbed to.

It should never be forgotten that the concentration camps are the appalling conclusion of nationalist exceptionalism which is the dangerous territory far too many countries are seeing a popular rise in. Othering people and blaming them for government failings because of their race/religion is how Hitler got away with it for so long and managed to get ordinary people to go along with the camps, or at the least turn a blind eye to the reality of them.

That's the sad and shocking thing to me, the pure vitriol being made popular by racist populists like Farage and Trump honestly makes me believe that it's possible we're sleep walking into a similar future atrocity. Not that people can't name the concentration camps!

You don't really need to go to USA to see open public displays of anti-Semitism. There has been plenty on the streets of the UK since Oct 7th.