Not enough Whisky for this Tango Foxtrot

[Rodia]

And while there's no need for the bill she was defending, the idea that students could better understand the Holocaust in part by getting "the perspective of a German soldier" doesn't seem insane to me. There is a 1984 German film and a 2002 British film -- the latter starring Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci -- based on the minutes of the 1942 Wannsee conference at which the Final Solution was approved. Both were highly acclaimed. It's important to know why people did evil things, so we can prevent that evil from happening again.

I agree with the last sentence, however, understanding why the Nazis attempted genocide does not require students to put themselves in a Nazi soldier's shoes.
The answers are known and clear, and will not be better understood by empathising with German soldiers, or focusing on those who allegedly didn't know what they were doing instead of those who knew perfectly well.

And there are already plenty of documented German perspectives we have that can help us learn about the Holocaust. Oskar Schindler's perspective, for one.

Let's notice the context Frelga mentions- we have neonazis today. We have visible groups of antisemites today, very vocal in social media and in politics (and I am of course not talking just about the US, although it is hard to avoid knowing about your politicians ). There is a serious issue with teenagers being radicalised into the alt-right and taught to blame their frustrations with life on anyone who is different. White supremacy groups have not disappeared. In addition, centrism has unhelpfully become a trend that proclaims level-mindedness and equal treatment no matter what the context.

So now we offer those kids who are already being targeted by white supremacist groups the perspective of a German soldier. Show the human. Create an opportunity to empathise. But what for, exactly? Will this be a German soldier who is morally conflicted, one who regrets his actions, one who fully believed in what he did, one who defected, or one who relished murdering people? Will he be an unwilling conscript, or a member of the Gestapo? What will having his perspective laid out alongside the perspective of those he murdered accomplish?

How will it affect the children already swayed by antisemitism and white supremacy, and how will it affect those who are Jewish, Rroma, Black....? Is the goal (good grief I hope not) a debate from both sides of the issue?

There is a quote in the article which provides more red flags:

An educator in Texas and an Indiana lawmaker have apologized in recent months after suggesting that teachers should remain “impartial” or offer multiple perspectives while teaching about the Holocaust.

They apologised, but first they made those suggestions. The world 'impartial' was used. That's not a slip of the tongue, you'd imagine someone talking about the Holocaust would not for a second think to remain impartial. Especially when teaching.

And, finally, let's add the context of the current war in Ukraine. It's an extremely clear-cut situation: an unprovoked attack on an independent country with the intent to annex and eradicate the local population, seen as inferior. In other words, a genocide is being attempted.

Yet plenty talk about impartiality in this case, or urge people to look at Russia's perspective, even following a logic that says 'Russia had to defend itself against NATO and/or western corruption and Ukraine provoked it.' Westerners repeat this in their search for impartiality, for centrism. They call it 'a proxy war between USA and Russia' which may be the greatest insult of all as it erases Ukraine from both sides. Or, they buy into the lie that Ukraine was full of Nazis and that Russia is cleansing it of racism and violence.

Do we want the perspectives of Russian soldiers and the Russian people? Ok. We have them live. We see the protesters and the defectors. And we also see the rapists and murderers. Are their perspectives in any way equal in importance to the perspectives of the Ukrainian people? Do we need to seek them out and present them to students so that they might understand better why Russian soldiers are bombing shopping malls in Ukrainian cities?

I really don't think so.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

V, I do see where you are trying to take it, and there could be merit in going there in theory. But you keep ignoring the half of my posts that discusses the context of this both-siding, which makes it clear that this is not at all where it will go in practice.

It's not a question of both-siding, it is a question of understanding that there are actually are no sides; we all inter-be.

Please Call Me by My True Names – Thich Nhat Hanh
Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow —
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

[Rodia]

"there are actually are no sides" We are talking about the Holocaust here. How can you say there are no sides in this context.

[Frelga]

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Rodia, l'm sure that you are not aware that most of my family was wiped out in the Holocaust. My great grandparents left Ukraine for New York at around the turn of the century but the rest of the family that remained behind were all killed except for one couple (cousins of mine a few times removed) who survived and emigrated to Israel after the war. I don't expect you to share my beliefs, or even to try to understand them, but when one believes that there are truly no separate selves and that everything inter-is, there are no exceptions to that, not for Putin, not for Stalin, not for Trump, and not for Hitler and his henchmen. Just as Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledges that he is both the 12-year-old refugee who is raped by a sea pirate, as well as the sea pirate himself (not to mention the American forces that bombed his village in Vietnam), so too am I forced to acknowledge that there is no separation between me and those who destroyed my family. Again, I don't ask that you believe the same, or even that you try to understand. But that is what I believe.

x-posted with Frelga. Edited to add: I don't disagree with Elie Wiesel, and I don't believe that what he wrote actually contradicts what I said, or what Thich Nhat Hanh wrote either. Which is why he is the founder of what is called "engaged Buddhism" and why Martin Luther King nominated him for the Nobel peace prize.

[Rodia]

I was not aware, but that changes nothing much, since I am always surrounded by people whose families suffered during the war and I make no assumptions about whether people have such connections or not.

If your belief is that we are all human, then I share that, because obviously. But that does not mean that there are no sides when one human is murdering another.

In that moment we can choose whom to aid. My paternal grandfather, for example, survived the war only because a German soldier decided to look the other way as he escaped. That same soldier may have gone on to murder other people in the name of Nazi ideology. Or he may have defected. He certainly didn't let the other prisoners go- it was sheer coincidence that he discovered my grandfather was in the same Austrian regiment as him during World War One, recruited forcefully.

Right then for just a moment, he chose a side.

Spiritually feeling connected to everyone doesn't mean you treat victims and aggressors equally, does it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

No, nor have I ever said so.

[River]

You can acknowledge the humanity of someone without condoning, and even while condemning, the actions. In fact, you have to. If you ram a person or group into a bin and exclude them from humanity at large for any reason, no matter how despicable you think they are, you've basically doomed yourself and everyone else to making the same mistakes. You'll end up doing what Russia's doing to Ukraine, for example. This isn't exactly refusing to take a side, or treating both sides as equal when they obviously aren't. But there's a darkness in all of us. If you can't see it in others, if you can't acknowledge that you yourself might be as capable as they, you will fall prey to it.

There are ways to teach the German perspective of WWII, or, more broadly, the aggressors' or criminals' side of any war or other altercation, without making them particularly sympathetic or persuading anyone that they may have had a good point. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a very dense example of this. Now, whether or not primary or secondary school is the time and place for such lessons is, to my mind, debatable, but there might be safe ways to do it (assign The Wave, maybe). Humanities grad students and scholars who delve into this sort of stuff (not just Nazi-ism but extremist movements and conspiracy theories in general) have spotters they check in with regularly to make sure they aren't falling prey to the propaganda and warped ideas they are studying. It can be very potent stuff. Not for the unprepared, unprotected, and untrained.

[Impenitent]

The Assignment by Liza Wiemer is a fictionalised exploration a real incident of teacher who set an assignment for students to argue for the Final Solution. It's illuminating. I wouldn't support a repetition of the teaching experiment.

[River]

No, I don't think that's a good idea either. In fact, it illustrates why scholars of certain topics have, for lack of a better term, spotters to check in with. But reading about these types of teaching exercises and experiments and the outcomes is a safe(r) approach to understanding how populations can come to support atrocities right under their noses, be it by actively participating or just turning a blind eye. I think this can be achieved in secondary school along with some basic instruction in what propaganda is and how it works and some training in critical thinking. I also think it's important to understand how that can happen, because then you can recognize when it's happening again and maybe change the outcome.

[Rodia]

No, nor have I ever said so.

I'm glad that was not what you meant and that I misunderstood.

[Frelga]

If we want to look at how it starts, we have to go a few years back. But if you want to see how it's going...

The Jewish Federation of San Antonio says it received information from the FBI of a potential threat to a Jewish community facility in San Antonio.

The Federation says that all formal Jewish gatherings at synagogues and other venues have been suspended until further notice.

20220710_110424.jpg (151.38 KiB) Viewed 1058 times

[RoseMorninStar]

I think this can be achieved in secondary school along with some basic instruction in what propaganda is and how it works and some training in critical thinking. I also think it's important to understand how that can happen, because then you can recognize when it's happening again and maybe change the outcome.

I think River is on the right track and I believe that is what Finland does, with much success.

* edited to add the part of River's quote I was referring to.

[Sunsilver]

This was before Biden's election, probably sometime around Charlottesville, and Trump saying there were 'good people on both sides.'

[Sunsilver]

Last night, I made a rather lengthy post about the way Holocaust history was taught in my school around 1970, and how we were shown actual footage of films from the death camps, and of the huge Nazi rallies featured in 'Triumph of the Will'. I deleted it because I though it was rather off-topic. Now I wish I hadn't.

My history teacher was Jewish, and had worked for the O.S.S. during the war. When the first camps were liberated, they were among the first to be shown the footage. He said he couldn't eat for the next 24 hours, he was so sickened by it.

He became a history teacher as a result of the war. He wanted people to know the truth. He frequently mentioned how those who didn't study history were doomed to repeat it. He pulled no punches, but still stuck to the facts, including how the treaty that ended W.W. I did a great deal to cause WWII due to the reparations Germany was forced to pay severely hurting the country's economy, especially when combined with the effects of the Depression. He also mentioned how the latent anti-Semitism that's existed in Europe for hundreds of years helped Hitler encourage people to see the Jews as enemies. And, of course, he also mentioned the German propaganda machine, which pushed Hitler's 'Master Race' theories. The people had know such hardship due to the failed economy that they were all too willing to listen to something which made them feel better about themselves. [cough-MAGA-cough]

History teaching NEEDS to be based on facts. They should NOT be whitewashed to protect people's feelings. But I also think it's important to note that we were in Gr 13 when we were taught about WWI and WWII. Of course, we already knew about the Nazi atrocities - many of us had parents who had fought in the war, or lost loved ones. Now we were learning the details, and at age 17-18, we were old enough to handle them.

The age of the students does need to be considered when teaching about the more bloody and violent events of history. Perhaps younger kids need to be spared some of the details to avoid traumatizing them. Teaching about Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement doesn't mean you have to show the kids newsreels of marchers being gassed and beaten.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I wish you hadn't, too, Sunny. I would have been interested in reading it!

[Frelga]

Me too, but maybe it should be its own thread. Unless we collapse all current events threads into one giant WTF, which would fit the zeitgeist.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I already was considering splitting off this current discussion. Should I?

[Sunsilver]

I wish you hadn't, too, Sunny. I would have been interested in reading it!

Voronwë, it was pretty much exactly what I said above. I think I was able to remember over 90% of what I said, and actually added a bit to it about my teacher being so sickened by seeing the films from the camp that he was unable to eat.

We need to get back to the Walter Cronkite style of teaching history (which is, after all, just yesterday's news) - just the facts, ma'am, with no embellishment or politically motivated spin to them.

Needless to say, the same goes for science. There are many places in the south where evolution is not being taught, and hasn't been for decades. I learned about this from one of my profs when I was in teacher's college during the very early 1980's!

[Sunsilver]

THIS!!! 100X this!