«History is not here for you to like or dislike, it is there for you to learn from it, and if it offends you even better, because you are less likely to repeat it. It is not for you to erase or destroy, it belongs for all of us. »
I found that on the net. My first reaction was to agree fully to it.
After looking around, I saw that it was used by southerners to fight the removal of secession war monuments.
In my opinion, that does not invalidate the sentence, but it sheds on it a particular light.
And it reminds a story i read some time ago : " As Django unchained was made, Di Caprio has to use the word N… and he was unable to act the sequence properly. During a rest, the black actors came to him and asked him not to be afraid to use the word as they were conscious he was playacting and they would not be angry or choked if he did it rightly. "
And another one : " The daughter of a friend was studying in a USA university, and had to make a lecture about Tony Morrison. She choose to read an excerpt in which the author uses the word N… and she choose to speak it fully, to better restitue the intents of the author. She was harassed and boycotted for the remaining months of the year. "
I would like to know your ideas.
Incidentally, i suggested a forum reserved for history topic. It seems to me as worth of one as religion of philosophy.
I saw something today about those historical figures belonging in museums, where the full context can be given, rather than in a park where they seem to be held up, venerated. The first is history, the second is confusing
Netherlands: The genocide of the Jews during the Second World War, a “myth” or an exaggerated account, according to a quarter of young people
According to a survey, more than half (54%) of Dutch people are unaware that the Holocaust caused six million deaths, and 23% of 18-40 year old consider the number of Jewish victims to be very exaggerated.
Do people prefer the fake informations on the net to science and history ?
Are they not taught in schools ?
Our findings indicate that Dutch students are underexposed to the Holocaust and lack basic knowledge and conceptual understanding of it. Fundamental concerns regarding the civic obligations of citizens in a democracy and basic principles of human rights that are raised by the history of the Holocaust in The Netherlands are often ignored or examined superficially
86 % of young French have learnt about the genocide, 80 % think that it is a monstrous crime, 10 % think that it is a drama among other ones, 3% think that it is exaggerated and 1% that it is an invention.
But 33 % think that the teaching of the genocide prevents the teaching of other historical dramas ( slavery, war in Algeria) and 25 % have been exposed to negationism.
When I was in elementary school, we were shown pictures and movies of the Holocaust survivors and the victims who were murdered. They all looked like anorexics on death door, dead and living. It was horrifying to see the dead, who were nothing by skin and bones, literally, piled up like discarded garbage in a mass dump. Gehenna had nothing on that, if we were comparing. That’s all for starters and every time the subject came up with vivid graphics, I cried so much that I had to be taken out of the classroom. To this day, I cry when watching documentaries on the Holocaust and historical movies, such as Schindler’s List. I think the disregarded barbaric and savage mass murderings of 6 million Jews and millions of “political criminals” whose only crime was saving the Jews is so unbearable that people either deny or turn a blind eye to it. How can anyone do that and not realize that history will only repeat itself if we do that is beyond me. I refuse to become callous to the barbarism of history, but I also refuse to deny the genocide of 6 million Jews (at least) just because it’s horrically barbaric and beyond tragic. Of course the U.S. is just as guilty of genocide when it comes to the Native Americans, that I don’t dare say who was worse. Tragic is not the word, but I don’t think any language as a word for the Holocaust’s barbaric mass murder of 6 million Jews. Genocide is not a strong enough word either.
However, I can be just as guilty and if I could back to the day my older son asked me about an old man’s numeric tattoo on his arm on the bus, I think I’d worked up the courage to tell my son to ask him, instead of “shhhh”-ing my son, just so the old man could tell his story and so my son would never forget. That was my fault. I did tell him my son after we got home, but I think it would have meant more if the old man could have told his story.
Six million Jews, at least and that’s not counting the “political criminals” who tried to save Jews. Corrie Tenboom was lucky, but her family was not. She was the only “political criminal” in her family who survived being incarcerated with her friends, the Jews, and she was proud to have spent time with the Holocaust Jews. Her story, as well as, others like her, are just as important too, despite all the Christian views preached in her story and others like her.
No, we can teach about the genocide of the Native Americans and slavery too. It can be done… IF teachers can stand the crying of sensitive children, like I was. I still am very sensitive, but even if we just get through to children and adults like myself, it’s a start.