Teaching about the Holocaust

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

Teaching about the Holocaust

Dyany · Senior Member

I don't think it's a bad thing to show emotion when teaching about something like the Holocaust. It helps your children know that it was a terrible thing.

However, if you also cry at random emotional commercials, it's time to break out the meds.

LoudmouthMormon · Profuse Pontificator

What better way to teach a child about the horrors humankind visits on itself, than with tears in your eyes and a quaver in your voice?

Jen · Senior Bucketkeeper

I can't talk about what happened on 9/11/01 without getting choked up. :(

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

Yeah, that gets me too.

With the holocaust, I just didn't get it until I saw pictures. I knew intellectually that it was a horrible thing, but seeing the pictures made me feel it and take it into my heart.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

I try to tie in the fact that it takes *work and effort* to stop these types of atrocities from happening. We sit and cry about it sure, but then what are we going to do? I tell my kids there will be many more to come... how do we handle them or hopefully prevent them?

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

Very true. I was thinking about the smear campaign that was waged in Germany against the Jews. Rediculous statements that were made and repeated until people began to believe them. I can draw some parallels to current times.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Yes, and the "good guys" as we shrink into a smaller and smaller minority may not be able to prevent diddely squat, but we can still *know* the truth of what's happening around us.

lundbaek · Profuse Pontificator

You have undertaken a formidable task in trying to teach a child, or adults for that matter, about WW2. That's a tremendous responsibility. Be careful about afixing blame. When Hugh Nibley, a renowned LDS scholar who participated in the war in Europe in intelligence writes in his book "Sergeant Nibley" that: "I was finding out things I shouldn't be finding out, I supposed. It looked as though from the beginning the whole thing was operated, controlled and orchestrated by the same interest on both sides." (pg.275); and "During the past few months I have had some extremely interesting documents in my hands....these paper loving boors waited too late to destroy documents, and the result is that you had better not try to tell little old me who started the war." (Pg.288), one might want to be careful.

On the Pacific side of WW2, several historians have researched and written books that leave no illusions as to who they believed were primarily responsible for provoking Japanese military aggression toward the USA, for dangling a big part of a deliberately weakened and exposed Pacific Fleet as bait, and for deliberately deceiving the Army and Navy commanders on Hawaii as to Japan's intentions to attack specifically Pearl Harbor, and denying them information that could have at least seriously blunted the Japanese attack and saved thousands of lives. Seperately as well as together, they make an excellent case for President Roosevelt, General Marshall, then Chief of Staff, US Army, and Admiral Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, and certain members of their staffs having known, primarily thru broken Japanese codes, the intended time and place of the attack, and having conspired to keep that knowledge from the commanders on Hawaii.

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

That may very well be. There are a lot of facts unchanged even if that's how it happened. Many men fought in hard conditions and gave their lives. Many Jews and others were subjected to the horrors of concentration camps.

And it's a good thing I don't have to untangle the intrigues and secret combinations of the political world. It's absolutely not my sphere.

LEVE · Veteran Member

For me, teaching my kids about that era was easy. I took them to visit my Seminary Teacher's husband. He helped liberate one of the camps during WWII and was a first hand witness. After he told them what he'd seen they all knew the horrors men heap upon each other.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Have you read The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom?

This is one of thee best books I've ever read and one of the very few I re-read.

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

I haven't read it. Sadly, I don't read a lot of non-fiction (as I'm assuming this is.) Care to give some tempting highlights for me?

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Here's a summary from Amazon, cuz I'm no good at writing those things...

Corrie ten Boom was a woman admired the world over for her courage, her forgiveness, and her memorable faith. In World War II, she and her family risked their lives to help Jews escape the Nazis, and their reward was a trip to Hitler's concentration camps. But she survived and was released--as a result of a clerical error--and now shares the story of how faith triumphs over evil. For thirty-five years Corrie's dramatic life story, full of timeless virtues, has prepared readers to face their own futures with faith, relying on God's love to overcome, heal, and restore. Now releasing in a thirty-fifth anniversary edition for a new generation of readers, The Hiding Place tells the riveting story of how a middle-aged Dutch watchmaker became a heroine of the Resistance, a survivor of Hitler's death camps, and one of the most remarkable evangelists of the twentieth century.

I'd check your library for a copy. You'll probably end up buying one. It's seriously inspiring.

Another book on the subject I like is As I Have Loved You, by Kitty de Ruyter. I guess she's Kitty de Ruyter Bon now. She came and spoke at our women's conference in Kentucky when I lived there. She's LDS. Very inspiring as well.

I like the accounts where people triumphed over these awful things. That's a lot of the "point" for me. Yes, terrible things happen and will continue to, but look what this person did. That's how we can be.

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

Sounds lovely. And my library has it.

lundbaek · Profuse Pontificator

Germans generally take the biggest rap for the murder of innocent civilians during WW2, but before, during, and after the 1941-1945 segment of WW2, when the USA was involved, there were other slaughters which I, as an occasional substitute history teacher, at least brought to the attention of students when I had to deal with the Jewish Holocost subject. They included:

* Under the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, tens of millions of ordinary Russians were executed or imprisoned in labour camps. ( http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html)

* The deliberate Ukranian starvation in the 1930s

* The "Rape of Nanking" by the Japanese in China

* Operation Keelhaul ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Keelhaul )

* The fire bombing of Dresden, Germany at the war's end when it was full of refugees.

* The questionable nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, reportedly after Japan had initiated surrender overtures to the USA.

dianoia · Senior Member

Gotta second the recommendation for "The Hiding Place."

palmon · Senior Member

Lunbeak, I was waiting for someone else to respond to you - but noone did.

I have to disagree with you about the dropping of the atomic bomb. The during the battle of Okinawa, the estimates are that 90,000 Japanese; 50,000 allied; and 75,000 Okinawan citizens
died. And of the okinawans that died, many were mass suicides - at the instruction of the Japanese soldiers. If the bombs had not been dropped and an invasion had occurred, the American casualty estimates conservatively at 250,000. As for the Japanese: they were prepared to fight to the last man. As horrible as the bombs were, I believe that they saved lives - American, Allied and Japanese.
As for the supposed overtures toward surrender by the Japanese prior to the bombings, Mr. Hamby addresses that in his review of 5 books advocating that view. (2nd )
If The Atomic Bomb Had Not Been Used from the Atlantic Montly Dec 1946

"The Decision to Drop the Bomb" Journal of American History Sept 1997

-- Edited by palmon at 23:43, 2008-04-30

LoudmouthMormon · Profuse Pontificator

palmon wrote:
If the bombs had not been dropped and an invasion had occurred, the American casualty estimates conservatively at 250,000. As for the Japanese: they were prepared to fight to the last man.

My dad would have been one of those quarter-million. He had finished the Battle of the Bulge, sat in occupied Germany for a while, and was headed for jungle training when we dropped the bombs. He had a great respect for his German counterpart - a grunt like him. He had a lifetime distrust and dislike of the Japanese, because of their willingness to sacrifice themselves as well as their wives and children for the emperror and the fatherland. In his mind, a civilization like that, once it attacks you, you get to beat into the ground and replace with something a bit more human.

LM

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Has anyone read I Am David? Like it?

beefche · Profuse Pontificator

I watched a PBS special the other night about a personal photo album of one of the leaders of Auschwitz. I can't remember his name now. What was interesting to me was that these photos show the Nazi's as humans. Normal humans. Not the demons and monsters that I envision. Intellectually, I know that they were human capable of feeling hurt, pain, horror, love, kindness, etc. I get that. But the atrocities that happened at the concentration camps overshadow any thoughts that these men and women who condoned and orchestrated them could possibly be normal.

They also showed pictures from a photo album that showed the victims side of the story. It was interesting to see the photos of both. One showed a comradre among the SS as they relaxed after a day at the "office." They compared that to a photo of what constituted the "office."

LoudmouthMormon · Profuse Pontificator

IMO, the best lessons to learn from the Holocaust (or any such occurance), are that the seeds of such great evil resides in all of us, and it might very well come down some day to our individual choice to not become someone like that.

LM