I am absolutely floored by something my daughter told me at the dinner table tonight. Her eighth-grade class is doing a reading of Anne Frank’s diary, with various kids having speaking roles as characters.
One of her best friends, A., produced a note from her parents saying she was not under any circumstances to participate in the activity. The teacher read the note, was visibly startled, and sent A. to the media center instead, where she will go every day that the rest of the class gets to know a young girl named Anne who remains frozen in time as a teenager, about the same age as these middle-schoolers.
My daughter, who sits with A. at lunch, asked her what the deal was, and found that The Diary of Anne Frank was not something she was allowed to read because “the book makes it sound like it really happened.”
To clarify, my daughter asked her if “it” specifically meant the ordeal the Franks went through in the attic, or the Holocaust. You guessed it-- A.'s parents have taught her that the whole thing never happened.
In a way, what is most unsettling about learning this is how normal her parents are. We’ve been in their home and they in ours, and even though I realize it’s not like Holocaust deniers have fangs or a label on their foreheads or anything, I was taken aback that a couple as normal as A.'s parents could hold, in this day and age, such a mind-boggling view.
Even most of the kookiest conspiracy theories or “mysteries” have at least some, however miniscule, chance of holding some water, but the Holocaust’s existence isn’t even on the table as far as any possible debate.
My only experience with Holocaust deniers has been to watch the laughable “documentary” about the English “historian” (don’t recall his name, too lazy to google it) standing on one of the very gas chambers of one of the death camps pointing out the obvious hoax. :rolleyes: That is, until I found one in my neighborhood.
Okay, the questions:
Should this affect our friendship? We hardly hang out at each other’s houses, it’s more like the occasional “step into the foyer” because our girls are doing something together. But I have to tell you, the thought of setting foot in their house right now gives me the creeps. Is this fair?
I feel a natural urge to either show A. some evidence next time she’s here, or have my daughter do it, but that solution probably would incense her parents. Rightly so, I guess. What obligation, if any, am I under to have this child know the truth? Her family’s belief system is their own business, right? If that’s what they want their children to “know” it is their right as parents to impart that “knowledge”, isn’t it? I don’t think I have any right to “un-do” another parents wishes for their child (assuming that it would even be possible; for all I know she would already be able to spit back all the canned rebuttals her parents have filled her head with. )
Thankfully, A. is not an influence on my daughter-- although, again… before I learned this, she struck me as a very normal young teenage girl-- pretty well-mannered and polite, in fact. And of course, she IS a normal teenager. She just happens to be handicapped by having two of the stupidest tools in America as parents.
