Holocaust Memories Fade?

A recent story in the New York Times reports some survey results that indicate many Americans don't know some very fundamental things about the Holocaust--the estimated numbers of dead, the location of  Auschwitz, etc. (Link to Times story.)

I've already heard some reactions that blame millennials and their iPhones, etc. Safe targets.

But, of course, we, the older generations are to blame, not the younger. Younger people learn what we have taught them: They didn't invent iPhones and computer games. We did. And we--well, many of us--have let those devices become electronic babysitters.

And we--the adults--have also trivialized the public school curriculum, making test scores the most important "outcome" (quotation marks because I hate the word!). We teach what is easy to measure. We measure what is easy to measure.

Now of course there are schools and teachers out there who are doing their best to educate the young rather than merely train test-takers. These educators and schools deserve Nobel Prizes in my view. It's hard to do the Right Thing when the Wrong Thing has ascended.

I retired from public school teaching in January 1997, and at that time the Test Virus had only begun to infect the curriculum. My colleagues and I could still teach things we believed--knew--were important. My history-teacher colleagues taught about the Holocaust. I taught The Diary of Anne Frank (stage version) in my final decade or so--and taught a lot of related Holocaust history, as well. All around our school (Harmon Middle School; Aurora, Ohio) teachers were dealing with things that mattered, and kids were learning about them.

But cultural memory fades quickly if no one lets the young know that it's important. So--again--if the young don't know much about the Holocaust, whose fault is that?

Let me end with this. I was born in November 1944. My dad was with the U. S. Army in France and Germany, fighting the Nazis. And while my mom was wheeling newborn-me around the safe streets of Enid, Oklahoma, in a stroller, Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were dying in Bergen-Belsen. Anne and Margot would die in February 1945--while I was enjoying my third month of life in the arms of those who loved me.

We should be horrified that we're "forgetting" the Holocaust. But to fix blame we need look no farther than a mirror.