Auschwitz

I understood gracesmum to be making just that point absentgrana. And I agree with it (and yours) wholeheartedly.

gracesmum You have raised an important issue, but one that brings much baggage with it. Conflating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism ensures that critics are put on the back foot and supporters of Zionism can [easily] defend themselves against a prejudice that the critic doesn't actually hold or, at least, hasn't expressed.

Agree with last three posts in particular.

Has anyone read Viktor Frankl's book 'Search for Meaning' which he wrote about his experiences in Auchwitz and other camps during the war?

He gives a detailed account of day to day life in those camps and, amongst other things, comes to the conclusion that there are only two types of man, decent and indecent, that is there were 'decent' Nazi guards and indecent prisoners, most notably the kapo, who would torture and abuse their fellow prisoners for personal gain (his terms, I'm paraphrasing).

So although I do believe that children should learn about the awful forms man's inhumanity to man sometimes takes, I do strongly believe that they should be given a fair and balanced view.

Absentgrana - I am finding agreeing with you is becoming a habit Britain may well have feelings of guilt as the anti-Semitism we decry in the 21st century was absolutely unremarkable in the Britain of the 1930's (and clearly earlier) Something I find hard, so please be patient, is that criticising Israel is frequently perceived as being anti-Semitic . It is not, and I wonder how many political leaders fall into that trap. When you know what the Jews went through in Europe down the centuries (pogroms existed way way before 20th century anti-Semitism) does it make it right or even understandable to be as dogmatic and inflexible as modern Israel is proving? Is there ever going to be toleration or are we all going to dragged into further conflict?

I agree with everything you've said absent.

To be honest, I don't think there's any merit in the plan.

There are many sites that our young people could be taken to e.g. the Killing Fields of Cambodia but then the Holocaust does have a special place as it happened so close to home. However this country was not responsible for the Holocaust - maybe it would be more appropriate to take them to West Africa to better understand the slave trade.

Also, there are many places of great injustices happening now that they could be informed about, such as the prison camp that is the Gaza Strip.

I wonder too if there is a residual sense of guilt in this country and that motivates the government's sponsoring school visits to Auschwitz and the setting up of Holocaust remembrance day. The Brits have always seen themselves as the goodies in World War II, bravely standing alone against the massive Nazi war machine. Although Tony Blair assured us that Britain went to war to save the Jews, nothing could be further from the truth. Moreover, anti-Semitism was rife in Britain at that time and, in a casual way, remained common among many of our parents' generation. And of course, Palestine was a British Protectorate and, while Britain agreed to the principle of a Jewish homeland, it never envisaged an Israeli state.

So how much of what we see now is a belated way of saying what nice, sensitive, unprejudiced people the Brits are?

Absent - I absolutely second what you say (this has to be a first!) as there is a tendency to "do" the rise of Hitler/Holocaust/Nazism at a pretty superficial level for GCSE without reference to e.g. British concentration camps in the Boer War, other instances of genocide in Africa, Central Europe and elsewhere. This pocket version of history leads to gross oversimplification in so many ways and if anything, can even trivialise it. I have taken Sixth Form groups to Sachsenhausen many many times and their understanding has deepened by the visit, so while visiting Auschwitz is worth a thousand words on the subject from a book, as you say there were other camps, not all of them extermination although equally evil and barbaric and other victims -such as intellectuals, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma etc etc. I have such mixed views about the whole subject as it is all too obvious that, as absent says, Nazi Germany was neither the first nor the last perpetrator of genocide.

My daughters school has holocaust survivors give talks to the children. I think this means far more to them than visiting a concentration camps.

Mishap That is an excellent point and very well made. I think that might be part of my original feeling of unease about this plan.

I think that children should learn about these atrocities in their history and ethics lessons, but I do not approve of dragging children around concentration camps or WW1 graves. It does not feel right to me - better to take them to the European Parliament, which, with all its flaws, represents the future and the idea of a united Europe. It discomfits me to labour the point about Germany's atrocities - our children should be part of the future - of an attempt at co-operation. They need to be learning about co-operation and moving on from that dreadful period in our history. Their perception of Germany amd its people needs to be balanced by learning about its culture and beautiful poetic language.

It is important that new generations of young ones understand what the holocaust was. My (then) 25 year old son watched Schindler's List about 5 years ago with some friends, and found out he was the only one among them who knew what the holocaust was! The others were utterly shocked that the film was true.

When I was 21 and living as an au pair girl in Vienna, I went with the family to Prague, were we visited a memorial synagogue. We went there because the 16 year old daughter was denying the holocaust and would not believe her parents and me that it happened. She believed her disgusting history teacher, who said it never happened. This was 1966, and holocaust denial was just starting. She soon learned the truth.

It WILL be denied more and more, unless programs mentioned here continue. I'm all for them. That synagogue I mentioned had the walls all painted white inside the building, with the names of the murdered people written in red, with a star of David between each family's list of names. There were so very many that at first the walls looked pink. I knew my history of the Third Reich, but I was physically unable to speak a word of German in there - it just would not come out. The curator spoke English and I remember talking to her.

I still have nightmares from time to time. We need to keep it in mind; I'm firmly convinced that knowledge of the holocaust has made us all far less inclined to be racist, because we have seen where it can lead if taken to extremes.

I had these feelings, too, when my twin daughters visited Auschwitz during their school brass band trip to Poland. I wanted to prepare them, and to be with them to deal with their responses to the horror of what they would learn at close quarters. We had already visited the Manchester Jewish Museum a few times, and spoken to the curator whose own family died there. The visit had no impact on them as 14 year olds. They were with a large group of mixed ages, and although the teachers had planned the visit in a meaningful way, children were scurried around and not encouraged to engage in deep discussion. They don't remember much about it, although they know a lot about the Holocaust, having lived in an area with a dense Jewish population for several years, and exchanged visits with Jewish schools for debates and to learn more about the cultures within their community.

I applaud attempts to keep the consequences of the Holocaust and persecution of Jews in people's minds, and hope the authorities manage this, but do wonder whether this 'sheep-dip' strategy is the answer.