Eighth Dimension: #79 On A Maudlin Note...

Remove all ads!

The other day someone brought up the Holocaust and how it was studied at school. I actually found myself a little upst by some of the response to it.

During Middle School I wasn't allowed outside during break times so I'd often sit in the library helping the librarian, sat on my own in a classroom or I'd sit and have a chat with a teacher. I used to like talking to the religious education teachers, strangely enough, they were the kindest ones to me despite everything else that had happened in that school. They were great to talk to and we'd discuss different religions, the dangers of extremism and they'd give me interesting facts and ask about what I was learning in other subjects.

One of the discussions was that we were going to start studying the holocaust the next day, we talked about it a bit, all I knew of the holocaust at the time was that it was during WWII and it lead to the killing of millions of minorities under the nazi regime. The teacher I was talking to brought through the second RE teacher who had a book that had pictures of all the different badges, the triangles and colours and what they meant, all listed clinically with the next pages with estimates of how many died. It was awful to read through and I thought how miserable and scared so many people who had done nothing wrong than had the misfortune of being born in the wrong place or to the wrong parents. The teacher told me about the different terms such as the Shoah which the jews use as a term for the death of six million of their people, The Final Solution referring to the order of execution - the first stage being eradication of the jews. Porajmos for the Roma. Others I barely remember or could not even spell.

When it came to the lesson I felt prepared at least for the horror that would come from the discussions, this was a Christian school, there were no jews in the class, there were two traveller children in the year but I think they were Pavees, there was a pole, a few Jehovas Witnesses and at the time I was already on crutches permanently.

We only discussed the Jewish Holocaust. The six million dead and the celebrations that the jews have as a result. At the end of the class 'Any Questions?' I tentatively put my hand up and asked if we were going to discuss the other victims of the event in another lesson.

The teacher went ballistic. Said all sorts of things including that I was disrespectful, racist and ignorant. I was pretty shaken up and when the RE teacher saw me after the class he asked what was wrong and I told him what had happened. He said he'd take care of it.

Next RE lesson he walked from desk to desk and said to each person "I like you, stand up." or "I don't like you, stay sitting." at the end of this there were eleven out of the twenty six students stood up. Everyone was confused, I was of course sitting. The teacher then sat himself down at his own desk and said
"These students are the only ones out of all of you that would have survived the holocaust."

I think it was only at that point the horror sunk into the class. Before that it had been something that happened years ago that affected a different demographic, now? Fifteen of the class were dead when they had done nothing wrong, including some of the smartest and most popular people in the class, including the teacher himself.

I was called disrespectul again the other day for 'daring' to mention the 6.38 million non jewish deaths from the same event. Ignoring half of the casualties does not show respect for the evil that occured, acknowledging the harm done to other people is not disrespectful towards the majority that suffered. It is a testamont the tragedy and shame that not 6 million, but over 12 million suffered at the hands of one of humanities greatest failings as a single species.