[Closed] Holocaust Awareness - is it just me or...

Does not compute.

[img] [/img]

Think it's bad with people of our generation, the yoof is even more insular and uninterested in anything outside their bubble. Maybe it's always been like that, feels like it's getting worse. In the past with less media to go to, i.e. basically telly / radio people would end up picking up information and news by accident as it was bundled with other content. These days with the ability to fine tune your content consumption, if it doesn't appear in your twitterer feed you don't hear about it.

Think it's bad with people of our generation, the yoof is even more insular and uninterested in anything outside their bubble. Maybe it's always been like that, feels like it's getting worse. In the past with less media to go to, i.e. basically telly / radio people would end up picking up information and news by accident as it was bundled with other content. These days with the ability to fine tune your content consumption, if it doesn't appear in your twitterer feed you don't hear about it.

I hear what you are saying, but the guy's the same age as me give or take - I covered the basics of it at school way back when, so surely he must have had some similar exposure to it?

At times, TV coverage of it (especially at significant anniversaries) is pretty much at saturation level. It simply is one of those events that we cannot ignore or be allowed to be forgotten so I can't get my head round how he's managed to completely bypass it (or at least profess to have no knowledge of it).

What was also significant was that the lad who was working behind the bar was pretty shocked about my mate's level of knowledge too, and he's only in his early twenties.

I'm a similar age but I don't recall covering it at school. However I've read a few books on it and as you say the media coverage is such (and rightly so) that it beggars belief that someone in their 40s has never even heard of it.

the Holocaust is probably one of, if not THE greatst crime against humanity ever perpetrated

Well, it is certainly one of the most publicised ones, perhaps because there were so many surviving Jews in western societies.

Its probably also worth mentioning, just to round out the picture that other genocides have occured:

the Ukranian Famine (estimates between 1.8 and 7.5 million deaths)

the Three Years Difficult Period (estimates range 15mil - 45mil deaths) in China.

Khmer Rouge (about 2 million)

Europeans annexing America (erm, lots)

Rwanda (0.5 - 1million)

and probably many more, sadly.

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide ]Armenian Genocide was 1.5m[/url]

^ all of which takes nothing away from the fact that its quite amazing that a reasonably intelligent 40 year old hasn't heard of the holocaust, it was a world changing event, particularly for western europe.

I'm going to call BS on this one. It's pretty much impossible to go through 40 years of life in this country without having been made aware of it at some point.

That said, my best friend's mum had never heard of John Wayne. I'm not comparing John Wayne to the Holocaust btw, before i'm labelled as anti-Semitic by the STW Offence Police.

Wasn't there a study a few years ago that found a significant number of people thought Hitler was a fictional character? It's frightening that folk don't know of some of the most important events in history.

Who is John Wayne?

I am as shocked as you are that he didn't know anything about it.
And I would consider myself pretty well educated on the subject.

However,

events like the Wannsee Conference, the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos, and various other

I would be lying if I said I had heard of any of those ?

events like the Wannsee Conference

Not heard of this either .The Polish ghettos, yes

It doesn't actually surprise me, I don't actually remember being taught about it, i am 39. I do remember watching world at war, reading about it, but that is me doing the digging. Plenty on the Romans, middle ages that sort of thing, but the history curiculum i seem to remember is a little chronological so if you dropped it before GCSE you stood a fair chance of not being taught modern history. (syllabus and school may differ)

Found a newspaper behind the skirting the other day date october 1915 and it had some story about a nurse on trial for spying i think. My mum knew the story immediately but i had never heard of it.

The way i look at history is is anyone alive who actually was there.

If people are still alive it will be remembered, as soon as those people start to die it will be forgotten. Sometimes surprisingly quickly.

How to look at life, no one will remember who you are or what you did in 100 years. So don't worry about it! (there are VERY few exceptions to this!)

I'm aware of Holocaust, but only in an abstract "bad shit happened" kind of way - details, numbers, names etc - not a clue, and not a bother

54 (I think) last week and school history for me was the industrial revolution to 1918. That was the syllabus

events like the Wannsee Conference, the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos, and various other

I would be lying if I said I had heard of any of those ?

The Wannsee Conference took place at the Wannsee villa in Berlin on the 20th January 1942. It was chaired by SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich (the so-called Butcher of Prague) who was tasked by Hermann Goering to promulgate a "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" - in otherwords to come up with a framework and timetable for the extermination of the Jews within the German Reich. Attendees included Adolph Eichmann and Rudolf Hoess (not to be confused with Rudolf Hess, who was by that time in the Tower of London) who eventually became commandant at Auschwitz. It took the conference a little over 90 minutes to finalise it's plans. It is from this that we get the euphemism, "Final Solution".

The Warsaw and Lodz ghettos were walled prison camps within those cities where the Jewish populations were coralled so that they were under full control of the SS, SD and Gestapo. At it's peak, the Warsaw ghetto covered about 1,3 square miles but was home to around 400,000 people who attempted to survivie in the most appalling conditions, on average 9.2 people per room. The ghettos were eventually cleared [i]en masse[/i] and the occupants transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau for liquidation.

I have to admit that what we learned at school was only a small part of the whole and only covered the basics; but I think to claim total ignorance beggars belief.

We teach this as part of the GCSE course, but not everyone does this, so possible not to do it at school? It is essential in my eyes to expose people to the possibility of the corruoption of humanity, but it is the hardest topic to teach and teach well.

I was always into history, so naturally I would have heard about it, perhaps, circumstances contrived against him ever hearing about it or coming across it ......possible...?

last night I was reading about the Nazi Womans role in the Holocaust, there is a new book out all about it, truly horrifying what these women did to Jewish children...

[url] http://www.****/news/article-2432620/Hitlers-Furies-The-Nazi-women-bit-evil-men.html [/url]

Try sending him here!

[url]= http://iwm.org.uk/events/iwm-north/the-nature-of-antisemitism ][/url]

I'm aware of Holocaust, but only in an abstract "bad shit happened" kind of way - details, numbers, names etc - not a clue, and not a bother

Maybe I've misinterpreted your post, but are you saying that you're not bothered about stuff to do with the Holocaust?

My former housemate had never heard of Napolean.
Another didn't know who the Falklands war (another housemate and I were trying to remember 'H' Jones' first name, she had no idea what we were on about)

I do think that there is a general tendency to dismiss history, however recent, as being irrelevant if you didn't live through it, but to my mind it's an incredibly blinkered approach to take.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should be able to reel off dates, names, places and event and know the minutiae of each one, but history tells us why the world is like it is, why people behave as they do and how everything came about.

To not know this, or not want to know, is criminal negligence in my book.

To not know this, or not want to know, is criminal negligence in my book.

Melodramatic much?

...I were trying to remember 'H' Jones' first name, she had no idea what we were on about

Errr I've no idea who you are on about. Did you mean Herbert Jones? I googled the name and this is the first one that came up. In the grand scheme of world history the Falklands was a fairly minor skirmish.

But what about the treatment of German POWs by the Americans?

Approximately 1 million German POWs were killed by the Americans, but you never tend to hear about it. For a personal account, see http://www.rense.com/general19/diary.htm

h jones???

we certainly covered wwII in history at school, dont remember specifics on holocaust but Im aware of it

just send him a dvd of schindlers list or even the episode of band of brothers when they reach the camp

^This.
Massively important history is a box set you might not have got round to yet. Agree about the problem of GCSE history being optional, and history being taught roughly chronologically these days, if you don't choose the option, you stop at 1870 or 1918.

It's the ignorant insular digital world , innit !

Rather than giving people access to better quality information, it actually means they never actually have to move out of what is the short term sheper of their interest. Many seem to live in a self absorbed bubble.
I'm 53, I was taught about the final sloution etc at school - but it wasn't branded "The Holocaust" at the time. At University, on of my fellow students had parents who had been in Awschwitz, a lecturer's parents had been etc, so maybe it was more relevent.
Whilst, with the passage of time, genocide seems to happen on a regular basis - Cambodia, China, Russia, Balkans etc and no matter how horrific the stories , we still go tribal at the drop of the hat. It doesn't alter how horrific the Nazi killing machine was - I have visited Belsen-Bergen, Dachau and Sachenshausen. Sachensenhausen is possibly the grimmest place I have ever been ... it is a huge killing compound and was metres from the nearest town.

Beware that the Germans have learnt alot about their past - they are sheepish about talking about it and embarrassed - but very aware of the legacy.

Get you mates daughter to go and read about this guy and his mission

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein

but you never tend to hear about it.

In much the same way that you never hear about the pogroms in the Soviet Union both before and after the Second World War, or the treatment of German PoWs by Soviet authorities. Or, if we want to be really damning, the treatment of the German people by their own government from 1933 to 1945.

Not forgetting that the Americans and British came up with the idea of concentration camps as we know them, in the Civil War and Boer War respectively. Try Googling "Andersonville".

A female friend of mine didn't even know WW1/WW2 had happened let alone the Holocaust, it only came about when I mentioned Adolf Hitler and she asked who he was!! She's 40 by the way, I couldn't grasp how she knew nothing about any of it!!

George Santayana

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

^ dude was a genius

History at school - no, don't recall getting this. My daughter at least has, and I'm glad. Being brought up on a diet of Commando comics (I'm 50) at least I'm of an age when it was still 'recent' history.

Aware (later) of Warsaw ghetto, Wannsee conference (through reading Fatherland), Heydrich (same). So the details gleaned through exposure to popular culture.

But yes other crimes against humanity were sadly plentiful. Stalin in particular managed to polish off quite a lot of his own Soviet citizens through his reign, that I've only properly, recently, become aware of..

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Which is why they still murder each other because of arguments their distant ancestors had.

mrmonkfinger makes the most pertinent point imo. History is written by the victors - the Nazi holocaust is generally the best known to us (early 21st century western europeans), but perhaps it's more of a scandal and an indictment of modern education etc. etc. not that a few people have managed to miss knowing about that one, but that probably the vast majority have not even a passing awareness of many of the others mentioned.

And before we get too smug about Stalin, Pol Pot etc, I'd like to add to mrmonkfinger and jamie's list for consideration:

The Great Famine (Irish "potato" famine).

I'd consider myself fairly up to speed about the events around ww2 and I have never heard of 1 million German pows being killed by the Americans, ever. I'm aware illegal killings of prisoners by the allies happened and in particular the Pacific campaign but 1 million Germans pows? seems unlikely but I'm willing to investigate it myself as I feel a bit like I've missed a big part of ww2 history.

the yoof is even more insular and uninterested in anything outside their bubble.

I'm sorry but I believe that young people today are just as passionate and involved in historical and political interests as ever. Writing them off is more an indication that the person voicing this opinion has ceased to communicate with the subsequent generation.

How many 40 somethings know anything about the English Civil War, the foundation of our modern state?

Though not having heard of the Holocaust AT ALL does strike me as utterly unbelievable.

Pfft... call that a Holocaust~ how about the Native Americans...

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/American_Indian_Holocaust

'Estimates of the pre-Columbian population vary, from a minimum of 50 million to a maximum of 100 million; 80 to 90% were killed'

More directly linked, could events in Palestine be a direct result of the atrocities conducted throughout the holocaust, spread out over a far longer timescale?

How about this for an illustration of propaganda and double standards on these issues:

'On 23 March 2011, the Knesset approved, by a vote of 37 to 25,[32] a change to the budget, giving the Israeli Finance Minister the discretion to reduce government funding to any non-governmental organization (NGO) that organizes Nakba commemoration events'

from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_Day

How many 40 somethings know anything about the English Civil War, the foundation of our modern state?

Not many, I'll warrant.

I never cease to be amazed at how the vast majority of people can stumble through life completely deaf and blind to what goes on around them or what has gone before. If you don't know where you've been how can you possibly know where you are going?

They remember the past in ireland, the middle-east and the balkans (amongst others).

Which is why they still murder each other because of arguments their distant ancestors had.

Before every conflict is a peaceful time.

Shame they don't remember that bit of the past.

But what about the treatment of German POWs by the Americans?
Approximately 1 million German POWs were killed by the Americans, but you never tend to hear about it. For a personal account, see http://www.rense.com/general19/diary.htm

More directly linked, could events in Palestine be a direct result of the atrocities conducted throughout the holocaust, spread out over a far longer timescale?

Of course they are, how could they not be? Until 1948, the Jews were a stateless people. They had always claimed that God had given them Israel as their "promised land" so who better to wrest it from the Arabs and return it to them than the victors of WW2?

And that's when the sh!t REALLY hit the fan...

They remember the past in ireland, the middle-east and the balkans (amongst others).

Which is why they still murder each other because of arguments their distant ancestors had.

and how often is Crusader used by modern islamist groups...

I do find it slightly creepy that Mrs Pondo teaches kids now who are too young to remember 9/11, but that's just kinda how time works.

andrewh - Member

Another didn't know who the Falklands war (another housemate and I were trying to remember 'H' Jones' first name, she had no idea what we were on about)

Out of curiosity, I just asked my boss, who was on Hermes- he had no idea who H Jones was.

Quite disturbing, repeating history's mistakes would seem a likely result of being oblivious to major historical events such as the Holocaust. My lads have done the WWI Battlefields trip and the youngest is off to Poland in Feb to see the camps.

It's not hard to be informed, the BBC History mag is a good, if not in depth, source of history which should be required reading for secondary school kids IMO.

I didn't do history GCSE but funnily enough have heard of the holocaust, blaming the teaching profession because people don't know sh!te from shinola is a bit disingenuous to say the least. And re ireland, balkans etc there's a difference between remembering and learning the lessons of.

Not really sure genocide should be treated as a p*ssing contest, but...

Think Stalin wins on body count

but the holocaust gets a gold star cos it's about as near as anyone's come in modern history to actually annihilating an entire people

The Americas - wasn't necessarily a deliberate genocide, perpetrated by an individual/group, except the end of the 19th century in North America, maybe. Spaniards/Portugese were more into conquering and ruling, just managed to spread disease and cause death through displacement of peoples - just as despicable but different

I think people don't know because they don't want to know. Bit like the fact we piss about on the internet talking about bikes while people are starving to death/being murdered by tyrants, if we can dispell it to focus on somthing less challenging/ more palatable we will

he who dies with the most vegetables wins.

but the holocaust gets a gold star cos it's about as near as anyone's come in modern history to actually annihilating an entire people

I dunno, the British & Spanish made a good fist of it in the Americas

This mate is 40 years old, [b]reasonably intelligent[/b], good job, nice house and car, married, and has a 12-year-old daughter.

This is the bit I would call into question. Plenty of muppets out there who have no idea about anything beyond their immediate circumstances, but someone who is reasonably intelligent will almost certainly have heard of the Holocaust.

MrNutt - Member

but the holocaust gets a gold star cos it's about as near as anyone's come in modern history to actually annihilating an entire people

I dunno, the British & Spanish made a good fist of it in the Americas

Bizarrely, you seem to have forgotten the Americans, that is to say citizens of the the USA.

I think people don't know because they don't want to know.

To a point, but you can't find out about something unless you know where to start.

Was reading the other day about how the Australian government won't recognise many of the deaths during the aboriginal wars on the national war memorial as they weren't really wars as they weren't overseas.

Similarly i am aware that there are claims that there are pre maori people in NZ.

And although i might be vaguely aware they don't affect my life so why would i dig and understand the full picture?

Mind you i can tell you that the shield of Ajax as described by homer is out of time, by hundreds of years in comparison to the rest of the story.

Thats just name calling, they're all ex brits, Irish or Spanish, mostly, in general, ish.

Thats just name calling, they're all ex brits, Irish or Spanish, mostly, in general, ish.

you missed the French from your list

MrNutt - Member

Thats just name calling, they're all ex brits, Irish or Spanish, mostly, in general, ish.
Posted 2 minutes ago # Report-Post

They weren't Brits though, they were Americans and that was an American atrocity and nothing to do with us. It's no more down to Britain than the moon landing, Disneyland or raspberry frosted Pop Tarts.

And the French, although their couple of little outposts hardly count, and there's no such thing as an American as a race, they're a mongrel breed. 😉

They remember the past in ireland, the middle-east and the balkans (amongst others).
Which is why they still murder each other because of arguments their distant ancestors had.

I've checked and Schindler's List was '93, which makes him about 20 when it came out, surely the age at which most people are watching films so quite likely to have seen a film which got loads of Oscars (personally I reckon I've seen it at least 3 times, and I'm not a big film buff) - you'd think at the very least he would have heard of it. Or do people think that's all made up? I think my first question would have been whether he'd seen that.

mr mo - i bet the OPs mate had heard of WW2 hows that for a place to start digging?

you don't need to know everything about everything, no one does. but understanding something of the majorevents in human history might give someone a valuable insight in to human nature, their own cultural context and some of the reasons for modern conflicts, politics, points of view etc. This just might be relevant to them and way they choose to conduct their life, mais non?

Can't remember ever learning about the Holocaust at school, although I suppose it must have been mentioned at some point.

In much the same way that you never hear about the pogroms in the Soviet Union both before and after the Second World War, or the treatment of German PoWs by Soviet authorities. Or, if we want to be really damning, the treatment of the German people by their own government from 1933 to 1945.

Not forgetting that the Americans and British came up with the idea of concentration camps as we know them, in the Civil War and Boer War respectively. Try Googling "Andersonville

None of that is exactly covered up, and Stalin's pogroms are frequently mentioned - just get into any who's-the-nastiest atheist vs christian conversation... Agreed they don't get as much publicity as the Holocaust, though.

Not sure who mentioned the Great (Potato) Famine in Ireland - I don't think that should be on the list. There was no intentional killing of a people, rather an ineffectual government letting ideology get in the way of an effective response.

the claims are made in a single book

but 1 million Germans pows

As imnotverygood said, it's because it's untrue. Yes, far more died post-war than was reasonable but there were SO many men under arms and so many important people hiding as low-ranking soldiers (Himmler for example) that it was important to keep them contained until they could be processed. Additionally, I think a lot of allied soldiers had little interest in being nice to the defeated army; my dad's uncle said his front-line British unit took two prisoners in the entire war, and his fight started in 1940 and went through to 1945.

In any case, currently the estimates are from 500000 to 1000000 deaths in total over the entire war with the lions share dying in Soviet hands.

Not sure who mentioned the Great (Potato) Famine in Ireland

That was me. Not really the space here to get properly into the history and causes debate, and isn't that usually the case with history - it's so inconveniently complex? Perhaps that's one reason why the nazi holocaust gets the higher awareness, there's such a simple narrative for people to follow...

Anyway, without getting into it in too much depth, my reasons for citing it (the Irish famine) stem from: 1 million dead (reasonably rigorous estimates by proper statistical types) when there was more than enough food being produced to feed everyone, but a lot of it was being exported. I do agree that it is debateable as to causes and culpability, but I'm calling genocide on the basis of the result.

But just in terms of culpability (and this applies to other ones, including that 1940s german thing), to what extent does culpability extend not just to those who perpetrate, but also to those who could have intervened, but stood by and allowed the horror?

I was concerned that I wouldn't have anything constructive to add to this discussion, but having read it through I'm surprised to find that I can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Jones_%28musician%29

You're welcome.

mr mo - i bet the OPs mate had heard of WW2 hows that for a place to start digging?

but is ww2 a war between germany and britain, end of story, or do you carry on, Burma railways, Pearl Habour, Hiroshima, Jews, Gypsies, Catholics, (remember the final solution wasn't just Jews), and if you start digging who do you believe? There are the denialists for a start.

then is the real war the one fought by the soviets on the eastern front or the one we know fought on the western front.

What about the french resistance, or the Vichy, how about the Jews such as Joseph Mengels who worked for the Nazis?

There's a large difference between an adult not knowing about something, and not having heard of it at all. Someone not knowing finer details about what happened during the Holocaust isn't all that surprising; I can readily see how it might not be the most engaging of subjects for some people. But having never heard of it at all, that's pretty bizarre I think.

gonefishin - Member

...I were trying to remember 'H' Jones' first name, she had no idea what we were on about

Errr I've no idea who you are on about. Did you mean Herbert Jones? I googled the name and this is the first one that came up. [b]In the grand scheme of world history the Falklands was a fairly minor skirmish.[/b]

as a purely military engagement...possibly....but without the Falklands war Thatcher would have been a one term PM who dissappeared from view after achieving almost nothing.....because of the falklands the entire world changed....privatisation, deregulation of the banking sector these are now major global themes everywhere that came about because of Thatcher's survival as PM.

I contend that the Falklands was a very important event globally

Well thats what i thought, I know the approximate sizes of the german army at the begining and end of the war and also that the bulk of the German divisions were fighting the Soviet forces so i couldnt work out where all the prisoners actually came from (even counting non Germans serving in the German army). I'm not saying that war crimes by the allies never happened but as the Germans found out themselves the sheer logistics of covering up such a crime takes industrial planning and setting up and even then you probably wont get away with it (i accept that the allies won btw and thus could influence the history as it were).

Oh and back on topic, my MIL claims to have never heard of the Titanic until very recently!

Anyway, without getting into it in too much depth, my reasons for citing it (the Irish famine) stem from: 1 million dead (reasonably rigorous estimates by proper statistical types) when there was more than enough food being produced to feed everyone, but a lot of it was being exported. I do agree that it is debateable as to causes and culpability, but I'm calling genocide on the basis of the result.

But just in terms of culpability (and this applies to other ones, including that 1940s german thing), to what extent does culpability extend not just to those who perpetrate, but also to those who could have intervened, but stood by and allowed the horror?

Similarly the genocides perpetrated against native peoples of North America and Australia tend to get short shrift in UK school curricula. Teaching about these seem to be associated (as does Irish Famine) with a "political" viewpoint, in a way that the Holocaust doesn't.

marcus7 - Member

Oh and back on topic, my MIL claims to have never heard of the Titanic until very recently!

To be fair to your MIL..I've seen the film and I've tried hard to forget it.

....the hot dogs go on

I met someone who had heard of the Titanic, but thought the bit about the iceberg was invented by James Cameron 😕

I knew about Colonel H Jones, but probably because I met Chris Keeble, who was fascinating to talk to...

In remember doing the Diat of Wurms in history at school, lots of medieval stuff and then doing the Marshall Plan in European Studies at the height of he Cold War so had no exposure to the holocaust in school.

absolute unutterable BS

the bloke is having some sort of joke at your expense that went over your head

As a geographer I didn't do much history at school either, but we did watch Schindlers List nearly every time is rained. Maybe he had a run of lucky weather or a school with an all-weather pitch?

On the other hand I'm not sure if many under sixteens are really ready to comprehend the evil it takes to design, build and operate an industrial process for genocide

OP you might want to sure to direct him to Simon Sharnas series now on bbc2, whilst not explicitly on the holocaust the last episode covered a few issues.

It is scary how some people seem so ignorant of such important events, I suppose that's how evil prospers anew.

The Holocaust education work of the UN is quite broad and recognises there have been many examples of genoside.

the Three Years Difficult Period (estimates range 15mil - 45mil deaths) in China.

Well they win the prize for understatement at any rate.

As a geographer I didn't do much history at school either, but we did watch Schindlers List nearly every time is rained. Maybe he had a run of lucky weather or a school with an all-weather pitch?

As pointed out above, if he's 40 now then he'd have had to be very special to have watched SL at school. I presume you're in your mid 30s?