The Scars of USHMM Part Eight: The Broken Educational System On The Holocaust

I am taking American History II and today we learned about the Holocaust.

I went into it really excited because since this is a college level history class we go quite in depth on most of our topics of study so I assumed we'd do that for the Holocaust. So as I'm sitting in class and listening I'm making a silent tally of the incorrect/omitted things I hear. 

We did not mention the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 that ultimately made the Holocaust a legal action, we did not note that there was a distinct difference between the workings of a concentration camp vs. a death camp, no mention was made of any of the heroic efforts some people made to rescue victims. We talked about it for thirty minutes and hardly touched the material.

Needless to say I was very disappointed and a little angered.

In my opinion, I think we need AT LEAST two days spent on the Holocaust as its own mini unit rather than a side note of World War ii. That way educators can hit all the highlights without feeling rushed to get through it so the material can be tested on. That two day unit should not include a test but rather hands on activities like hearing a Holocaust survivor or maybe doing something like the Trunk Project where students actually learn the material by working with it and putting it to use.

I totally get wanting to make sure students know about what happened in the Holocaust, but a big part that education is missing is the significance of the event and how it still affects us today in 2015. We've experienced genocides since 1945 and I believe that a large part of few people speaking out against these atrocities is a lacking education on genocides of the past. If you don't know about and learn from past mistakes how are you supposed to not make them again? This truly boggles my mind.

In a quote by Ronald Reagan that hangs in the museum he explained why remembrance and education of the future leaders of America was so important: "We who did not go their way owe them this. We must make sure that their deaths have posthumous meaning. We must make sure that from now until the end of days all humankind stares this evil in the face...and only then can we be sure it will never arise again."

We are the witnesses. It's our job to make sure that others are educated properly about these things and know when to recognize them in practice and then intervene. That's what we missed back in the 1930's and 1940's: we didn't know how to speak out and we were afraid to because of uncertainty. But I can tell you, doing nothing and regretting it is much worse of a feeling than speaking out and few listening. If we do nothing, then the perpetrators of crimes like genocide win and that's why I believe there is so much evil in the world today.