Don’t remember a time I didn’t know about it, because there was a copy of a book called Eyes of the War by Nat Hyman in the house. Lots and lots of graphic photos, including ones of skeletal bodies stacked in trenches at liberated concentration camps. (Volume 1 was the European theater and the only one I knew of. I can’t find a scan of it with a small amount of Googling, but Volume 2 about the Pacific Theater is at archive.org.)
Like several others, I don’t recall not knowing it. I remember Roosevelt’s death (I was 8) and my father’s awe at the atomic bombs, but I must have learned some time between then and my hearing of it. I was old enough to understand dying (my uncle died around the same time and I remember the shiva) but the truth didn’t come out for a while.
I have no idea. I always hated history class - probably because it was pretty much all rote memorization with no trace of analysis or understanding of what actually went on.
I do know the one and only time we went to the Holocaust Museum in DC, I couldn’t get past the lobby area (our tickets were for several hours later.) The few things that were on display just tore me apart and sickened me, and we never did use our tickets. I don’t know if I can ever go back.
An earlier thread on the term ‘Holocaust’. Later, I saw a doc on the History Channel, which indicated that the term was once used in Britain in the 13th century or so in reference to a purge of Jews. I’m guessing that was probably coincidental.
I first heard the the term in the miniseries QB VII, because that was the title of a book that Abraham Cady had written. I’m not sure exactly when I knew that Jews had a ‘special’ place in Hitler’s designs, but I’m pretty sure I already knew about it by then. (But my guess was probably 10 or 11.)
I find this pretty stunning. In 1978 students in college didn’t know what the Holocaust was? Granted, I was only 3 in 1978, so I don’t know what the mainstream consciousness of the Holocaust was, but that just sounds absolutely bizarre to me. Was it really not taught or mentioned in schools back then? I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic grade school and high school, and it sure as heck was mentioned there.
I have no idea when I learned of the Holocaust, but it was early on - and I was raised Protestant in an area where the Jewish population was pretty much zero. In fact, the first synagogue in the county where I live wasn’t organized until I was a senior in high school. Interesting fact: The Torah acquired in 1983 by the synagogue was one of 1,554 that had been confiscated by the Nazi’s during the Holocaust and stored in a warehouse.
I think I was 14, but yes, the same book did it for me.
But as others have mentioned, reading about it is one thing; At 17 in an English class we were shown the French film “Night and Fog” (the shorter version), and I’ve visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington and the exhibit at the Imperial War Museum in London in my adulthood. Sobering experiences.
I must have been very young, as I don’t have any conscious memory of a moment when I first learned about the Holocaust. I do recall being appalled that the two girls next door knew virtually nothing about WWII or the Holocaust. The sum total of their knowledge was “Hitler liked blue-eyed people.” We were all about 8 or 9 years old at the time.