Since Holocaust education has been mandated in German schools for a number of years, can German Jellies share how it has been received?

I belong to a German club and I know a few members lived in that period. I can ask them.

What I remember is the whole class going to the cinema to watch “The Pianist” (starring Adrien Brody).
I also remember watching a documentary in class. One of the survivors had a voicebox, and the teacher threw some pupils out of the class room after they giggled at it.

I think mandatory education about the Holocaust is absolutely essential.
These crimes are a stain on the nation and its people, and accepting and processing the collective guilt and responsibility for it, is a formative factor in what Germany is today, and what it should be in the future, in perpetuity.
“Never forget” is not an attainable goal, if you do not remember and eternalise these lessons.

Which is why I am baffled and frankly, disgusted by the discussions and efforts of curtailing and sanitising historical education about slavery, the oppression of black people, and their fight for equality, with hollow excuses like “What does slavery have to do with me?”, “All sorts of people were oppressed all over the world, why focus on black people?” and “Litlle Billy Bob could get upset by learning about what his ancestors did.”
Happily taking pride in and credit for all the “good” things their country and their ancestors did.
“look at all the art, science, and technology my white ancestors created. That is why our culture is great, that is why my country is great, that is why I am great”.
“What, those crimes against humanity my ancestors committed? Got nothing to with me.”

Grear Question. I am very interested in the answers.

I wonder if I could add that I would be very interested in knowing how Jewish German children feel learning about it in school, especially if they are one of only a few Jewish children in the classroom. I know we don’t have Jewish German jellies here, but maybe they have a friend or some insight to their reactions in school.

What age/grade is the topic first taught?

@ragingloli I only made it 20 minutes watching the movie The Pianist. I couldn’t get through it. Too sad. I don’t think I need to watch it though; I know enough sad horrible stories about the Holocaust, and they obviously hit close to home. I have seen Shindler’s List and The Zookeeper’s Wife, and some other move that we say in school many years ago, but I don’t remember the name of it.

How do you explain the NeoNazi’s in your country? Did they not go through public education? Their parents have too much influence? Why is there still a group of people with such hatred in Germany?

I assume the education is not just about the horrors done to Jewish people and over 3 million others deemed not worthy to live by Hitler, but also covers how Hitler rose to power.

@JLeslie Why there are still Neo-Nazi’s in Germany?
Same reason they are to be found in every country.

One could ask why there are still White Supremacists in the USA.
Same reason you’ll find them in the Netherlands (and every other country in the world.

There’s as many different opinions and views as there are people.

@rebbel In the US we don’t have equal education across the states, and history lessons vary. I don’t know the situation in Germany; if their public schools are run by the central government or the states, and maybe the Holocaust and WWII is taught pretty much the same as a requirement no matter where people live in the country. I was just asking, I was not criticizing. I know there are Nazis everywhere.

Edit: Plus, the US has some billionaires spending a lot of money to push hate and push falsehoods about history.

I also didn’t mean my response to be a critique, @JLeslie.

Those billionaire types are of course also everywhere, in every country.

It feels difficult to do this question justice, but I’ll try.

How was it taught at different ages?

I was ten when I first heard about the Holocaust in school. We looked at pictures of kids in Nazi uniforms and read excerpts of childrens’ books like “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit”, which is about a Jewish girl fleeing Germany with her family. We learned that the Nazis were ruthless and that it’s our collective responsibility to never let anything like this happen again.

I felt sad and upset, though there were no terrifying details provided at that age. It was more of an introduction. Because from then on, the Holocaust was discussed quite frequently – I think we spent at least a few weeks on it every year, as well as mentions throughout class whenever appropriate. As we became young teens, we learned more about how Hitler came to power and what it was like to be Jewish (or otherwise persecuted) during the Nazi time, but this material was presented in an age-appropriate way. We did not hear about the starvation, the beatings, or the conditions at the concentration camps in detail (at that age). It was more about realising the enormity of what happened and how it has changed our society. We were asked to interview our older relatives and I think one classmate’s grandmother came to talk to us in class. We visited museums and plays. We also read the book “The Wave”, which is very powerful and affected me deeply.

When I was around 15, we read “The Diary of Anne Frank” and learned about the antisemitic propaganda and Hitler’s demented ideas on eugenics/race theory. I think keeping this away from younger kids is the right choice. We also watched movies like “Life is Beautiful” and documentaries about Sophie Scholl and the concentration camps. This was when I first learned about the gas chambers.

In high school, we talked about the war strategy for the first time, but only very briefly. My American-educated husband knows more about that than I do. We discussed the difference between patriotism and nationalism and the dangers of neo-Nazi movements. At this age, it was common for students or teachers to bring up the Nazi time in different subjects, such as German classes, sociology, English…for instance, we talked about patriotism in other countries and discussed how parenting was affected by Hitler’s (very cold) advice on child-rearing. Many high school or college courses visit the former concentration camps. Personally, I did not. I feel conflicted (like it’s my duty), but I think I would throw up.

I don’t remember ever not knowing about the Shoah, and I think that’s typical. My family speaks about politics and history quite openly. But also, it’s hard to avoid (which is a good thing, of course). Every time there was an election, my parents would care not just about who won, but also talk about whether the fascist parties were waxing or waning. Angela Merkel would be on TV reminding us that we’re responsible…in the cities, there are golden cobblestones (Stolpersteine) at the former homes of victims. And there are, unfortunately, “protests” of neo-Nazi groups, which parents should educate their kids about.

What impact has it had on German society?

I think that privileged Germans are well-educated in this matter, and that this is quite an effective safeguard against becoming radicalized. It’s definitely not done to joke about the Holocaust, do a Hitler salute, or say (think?) anything antisemitic. It helps that aspects of this are treated as crimes, such as displaying a swastika or denying the Holocaust happened. But still, we have fascist parties and tabloids or blogs gently spreading lies. Not about race theory, in general, but about the decline of German culture, our amazing language, “they’re coming for your jobs”...that sort of thing. The newish party "AFD" is a real problem. Their rhetoric is not obvious enough for them to be seen as the threat they are. And some people, usually older ones in my experience, do think that we should be proud of our country. Fly our flags and stop feeling bad about something we could not have prevented because we weren’t alive. So there’s a divide there.

Do you think it has been a positive reckoning for your country?

Yes. But I wish that instead, it had not happened.

Was anyone you know traumatized by the learning?

The more sensitive kids (me included) did struggle with some of the material. But that’s okay. It’s okay and natural to be horrified by heinous crimes. It’s human and healthy to feel nauseated when you realise that people were beaten, tortured, and murdered right where you’re standing.

I think our teachers did a good job in allowing us to talk about how we were affected. I remember occasional moments of silence for the victims, and it felt appropriate to be mindful of the harm done. The generational trauma is real, and the shame is probably not healthy. But the guilt is appropriate, the memory needs to be kept alive, and knowing that can feel freeing. Like you’re doing a small thing for those who died and suffered.

I think in some ways, my own mind protected me: I’ve had stronger reactions re-reading those kids’ books as an adult. The most difficult experience of all for me was visiting a Nazi prison just a few years ago. There were marks on the floor. People had tried to claw their way out.

@longgone and @ragingloli Thank you so much for your responses. I don’t know why we can’t do something similar nationally in terms of confronting the legacy of slavery. My state does mandate age appropriate Holocaust education, I don’t know if it mandates age appropriate white supremacy education now. As I’ve said on another thread, I only learned last week how prevalent slavery was in my state.

@ragingloli “These crimes are a stain on the nation and its people, and accepting and processing the collective guilt and responsibility for it, is a formative factor in what Germany is today, and what it should be in the future, in perpetuity.”

Well said. I wish Americans could just admit it was an atrocity and start to heal.

@longgone Masterful answer. Thank you.
@ragingloli Excellent answer. Thank you.

@longgone We discussed the difference between patriotism and nationalism This! Remember when Trump was throwing around that word Nationalism and Nationalists like it is something to be proud of and we had jellies trying to defend the use of the word? I tried many times (not just me) to explain why that was a trigger word for many of us. I too learned about the difference between patriotism and nationalism in school and specifically related to the rise of Nazi Germany as a lesson for all of us in all countries, but it seems like huge parts of America didn’t have those lessons in school.

Thank you so much for writing out so much detail. Very interesting.

Did you have any Jewish children in your classes growing up? I just wonder about their reaction if they had any.

@JLeslie It makes me very sad to say, but I do not know any (openly?) Jewish people from Germany.

My two best friends (they’re sisters) might have been Jewish, if it hadn’t been for a fire. Their great-grandmother was raised Jewish, but went to an orphanage at a young age. Her papers were destroyed when the place burnt down – it is very possible that this saved her life.

Of the few Jewish people who survived and stayed, so many had to deny their family history for their survival.

@longgone I’ve heard that in recent years some Jewish people are moving to Germany, for some it might be moving back, meaning their families were from there I guess? Plus, I think some Jewish people are probably expats from other countries going to Germany for work. There are very few Jewish people in Germany, I have read 30,000 and 100,000, I don’t know what is accurate. Jewish people who stayed after the war were basically in hiding, so probably their children and grandchildren lost some of the Jewish identity, I don’t really know.

My boss who lived in Berlin for 15 years said the German government bends over backwards for any Jewish people who want to live in Germany. I don’t know if that is any Jewish person, or more specifically children and grandchildren of German Jews.

Regarding what @janbb mentioned, comparing Holocaust history in Germany and Black history in America, in America the situation is different regarding Black people. Germany basically purged the country of their Jews. They killed most of them, and then after the genocide they helped set up a country for the Jews go to if they had survived. Or, as you said, some denied themselves the privilege of living as Jews to survive or didn’t know they were Jewish. In America after slavery ended we had over 100 years of segregation.

Thank you for your candor and sharing your experience.

@JLeslie The comparison is about confronting oppression in our country’s past of course. It doesn’t mean that the two situations are completely analogous. And the fact that Germany confronted its much more recent past is admirable to me.

I also don’t think that the Germans helped set up Israel. Israeli settlers fought the British for the state of Israel but that’s a totally side issue.

This may be too off topic but

@longgone “It’s human and healthy to feel nauseated when you realise that people were beaten, tortured, and murdered right where you’re standing.”

I felt this very thing when I went to the Peace Park in Hiroshima as an American in high school. Within the park is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and in that museum there’s a stoop from a home that had been relocated there. On that stoop you can see the shadows of Japanese civilians who were vaporized and forever burned into the rock.

That was an experience that fundamentally altered me—gut wrenching, haunting and a deep visceral shame about the greatest act of terrorism perpetrated on a civilian population by the leaders my ancestors elected.

@janbb Me too. I admire how they handled it. I’ve often wondered if the US should outlaw certain words and symbols similar to Gernany. It’s very tricky for us in the US.

My only point was the German people grappled with their atrocities without having to interact with the people they harmed at the same time. Moreover, the people harmed were not living in the place that oppressed them, they were in new countries.

In the US in the last 45 years I think we do teach Black history in most parts of the country. Why it hasn’t been as effective as we would hope has to do with the continued issues today. The Germans barely deal with that, except to say they now deal with other minorities coming into the country, but a decent portion is fairly recent and significantly after WWII.

If 99% of the Black people had left America after slavery the dynamic would be different here. Furthermore, if we had not had segregation over 100 years we would be very different also.

^^ I see what you mean.

@gorillapaws Interesting. I feel a deep sadness more than anything. Sadness and sickness about what the people suffered. It’s more empathic than shame for me. I see myself as them or in their place, not as the one committing the act.