Holocaust Education Children Discern Its Unfairness Schweber

Making Sense of the Holocaust: Lessons from Classroom Practice, by Simone Schweber, Gloria Ladson-Billings (Foreword). 2004

Even Children Realize That the Holocaust Supremacism They are Being Taught is Fundamentally Unjust To All the Non-Jewish Genocides

Author Dr. Simone Schweber is an authority on Holocaust education. This book is about Holocaust lessons all right, but not necessarily only those lessons in the classroom that are stated. It teaches the reader about Holocaust as indoctrination: That is, not just the fact of the Nazi German murder of the 6 million Jews, but a particular (not to mention Judeocentric) VIEWPOINT on the presumed significance of the murder of the 6 million Jews. Here’s how:

FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES: WHY DO JEWS GET ALL THE ATTENTION WHILE ALL THE OTHER VICTIMS DO NOT? AN EXCELLENT QUESTION

Author Simone Schweber focuses on the Holocaust teaching of a Mr. Dennis. She describes his classroom lesson as follows, “He then addressed the difficult topic that had arisen, the uniqueness of Jewish victimhood in the Holocaust. In no uncertain terms, he spoke to the students, portentous in his tone and repeating himself to drive home his message: ‘A couple of you asked, “Why so much emphasis on the Jews?” because, yes, almost 7 million were killed, but 5 million non-Jews were killed; [slowly, for emphasis, he repeats] 5 million non-Jews were killed; to make the total 11 to 12 million. And I was asked this question last week, and I’ve been asked this question almost every year. It’s a very, VERY important question and it’s a very good question.’” (p. 135. Emphasis and brackets are in the original.)

THE FALSE CLASSROOM POLARITY BETWEEN THE VICTIMHOOD OF JEWS AND THE VICTIMHOODS OF NON-JEWS

The response to the child’s perceptive question is based on presumed Holocaust uniqueness, is as predictable as it is canned. Mr. Dennis answers, “‘…to my knowledge, the only people in history who have been singled out for total annihilation were the Jews.’” (pp. 136-137). But so what? And what if it isn’t true?

Not a single logical argument is advanced why a (presumed) total intended genocide is one iota more significant than “only” a partial genocide. Why divide the dead? Furthermore, there is no discussion as to why an equally-arbitrary alternate criterion cannot be chosen in order to construct a victimhood hierarchy for the purpose of victimhood competition. For example, consider power disparity, between perpetrator and victim group, as the criterion. We realize that, whereas the Jews had some influence in Allied government circles, the Gypsies (Sinti and Roma) had virtually none. Thus, the Gypsies were even more defenseless than the Jews, and so it is the Gypsies, and not the Jews, that win the Victimhood Olympics and the prize, which is privileged treatment in the American classroom.

Nor is >it true, though constantly repeated as fact, that the Nazis targeted every single Jew for annihilation. There were German Jews arbitrarily declared non-Jews, such as the so-called Honorary Aryans. The Nazis, throughout their entire 12-year reign of terror (1933-1945), always allowed some Jewish individuals and groups to leave Nazi-held Europe and go free. Many more examples could be given.

Incidentally, the 5 million non-Jews are a symbol, not a fact. The actual number of non-Jews murdered by Nazi Germany is in the tens of millions. But you can bet that the children do not learn that.

THE MYSTIFICATION OF THE HOLOCAUST THROUGH THE MYSTIFICATION (AND FALSIFICATION) OF THE NAZI DEATH CAMPS

But wait, it gets even better. In his classroom lesson, Mr. Dennis has this to say to the children, “‘And remember Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec were not built for anybody else, specifically, except for the Jews. And then others were brought there and gassed as well, yes, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Slavs, by the hundreds of thousands…” (p. 137).

Tell it to the handicapped, and the ill Poles, who were gassed elsewhere years before the gassing of any Jews. Tell that to those Poles who were incarcerated at Treblinka and Auschwitz long BEFORE any Jews even set foot there. And tell it to those Russians who were gassed at Auschwitz before any Jews met the same fate. Then tell it to those Gypsies and Poles that were gassed, concurrently with the Jews, at the death camps. Finally, while at it, tell it to those 3 million of the 6 million murdered Jews that were not killed in ANY of the stationary killing centers (death camps).

Finally, why not ask the kids a question. Who was better off? The Jew who got to die quickly from poison gas in a Nazi German death camp, or the Pole who got to die slowly (from starvation, disease, and overwork), in an “ordinary” Nazi German concentration camp?

INADEQUATE PEGAGOGY? OR SOMETHING ELSE?

The conclusion is inescapable: Holocaust education is less about teaching impressionable children what actually happened and more about promoting (dare I say propagandizing) the canned Judeocentric narrative on this subject, moreover at the expense of the genocides of all other peoples.

Genocide Recognition Equality is urgently needed.