Joe Gandelman reports on young Britons who don’t recognize the significance of the name Auschwitz.
I once lived with a mathematician who had left academia to work in entertainment. Just as some in my family got interested in geneaology, a few in his family had as well. But it’s different when Jews decide to put together their family histories: I have books and binders full of anecdotes about the Oregon trail, life in Nebraska. I have a folder on my husband’s family with stories about Ireland (a land that has its own heartrending tragedies, of course), and migration to America. My former significant other’s family history was page after page of “Name — died at Aushwitz.”
To hear that young people in any Western country are not really learning about the holocaust fills me with deep rage, partly because I think this failure of education helps to fuel the growing anti-Semitism in Europe. And partly because the story transcends ethnicity as a cautionary tale.
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