I learned about it pretty young, say 8 or 9 . My grandparents lived through both world wars in Belguim. So it was talked about quite a bit.
I barely remember not knowing, and I’m sure it came up in elementary school. I remember having to read not the diary, but more like a 3 grade level biography of famous children (or children that impacted the world in some way), of Anne Frank, and I already had at last a basic idea of who she was and the gist of her story.
I suppose in some ways it was more obvious when I was a kid. People were more likely to personally know older relatives who were WWII vets, or have living relatives who are Holocaust survivors. I was marveling the other day that it is probable my daughter will never have a WWII vet come talk to her class, as was common when I was a kid.
I read a book when I was in third grade called* The Endless Steppe*, by Esther Hautzig. It was the memoirs of a Jewish girl from 1930’s Poland who was exiled (by Russians) at about age eight to Siberia with her parents and two of her grandparents. Life there was very harsh, but they all survived except for her grandfather.
Just before they were taken away, Esther’s uncle knocked on the door, and the Russian soldiers demanded to know who he was. Her mother denied knowing him. The soldiers slammed the door and he left.
Esther later learns that all of her relatives who weren’t sent to Siberia died during the Holocaust. The book didn’t go into detail, but that was the first time I heard about it. Her mother’s grief at her well-intentioned lie, intended to save her brother, was really hard for me to deal with.
Our history classes were strangely spotty and I don’t remember learning about WWII or the Holocaust in school at all. I knew about the Diary of Anne Frank (although we never had it assigned and I didn’t read it) and I would have known very generally that she was hiding from the Nazis.
I’m much the same, except I know how I picked it up- my Dad is an avid viewer of WWII documentaries and the like, so I’m pretty sure I heard about the Holocaust as part of watching one of those with him. I know I saw the World At War episode on it when I was somewhere around 10-11, and my Dad explaining that the Nazis basically killed the Jews because of their religion. I also remember thinking that it was the craziest reason to want to kill someone (and still do).
I can’t remember not knowing about it; my grandparents survived Auschwitz, and “because Holocaust” was the answer to ever so many “mommy, why does grandma act so weird” type questions.
Certainly by my bat mitzvah (age 13) I had read dozens of books on the subject. I received a book about the rescue of the Danish Jews as a bat mitzvah gift!
Edit: Diary of Anne Frank was required in middle school - but I don’t remember it being the first exposure for anyone in the class. Heck about half the class already knew there was an unedited version where Anne bitches about her mom and has sex with Peter.
I don’t know when I was taught about it in school, but I read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was around 10 or 11 years old. IIRC my mother got it for me.
The fact that we were living in Israel at the time might have had something to do with it (not Jewish, my dad’s job brought us there for two years), because I remember asking her about the people with the number tattoos on their arms.
I remember watching Schindler’s List in school when I was 14, but I don’t remember being surprised by the contents. So I must have learned about it prior to that but I have no idea when. I do not have any ties to Judaism.
I can’t imagine not teaching this in schools.
I can’t remember not knowing.
I probably was told something when I started asking why I didn’t seem to have any cousins on dad’s side of the family (I actually have one. Just one). I wasn’t given the full details, it was probably along the lines of “very bad people called Nazis killed them during WWII”.
I don’t think it should wait for the teen years. I also don’t think six year olds should be given the full, bloody details. However, letting very young children know that something bad happened that hurt a lot of people isn’t out of line. At the same age I knew there was a war going on in a place called Viet Nam and young men were getting killed there even if mom and dad wouldn’t let me watch the evening news because they didn’t want me to see film footage of maiming and death at that age.
When kids reach the teen years, though, they can start learning the details. I also am opposed to opt-out. Too bad if the parents can’t handle the truth, the kids deserve to know it.
I seem to remember back in the 70s when they were showing the graphic films that we as students (13 and 14) were warned. I don’t know if the parents had opt out, I do know that the usual number of students were there, I don’t know if any were on a sick absence. We were silent and horrified. I’d seen still pictures of it before. I think a public education should at minimum have the still pictures and narration. The piling of skin covered skeletons like a commodity in motion pictures is an indelible image. I’m not sure that all people are psychologically stable enough for that.
The same teacher showed us the Robert Blake film of Capote’s “In Cold Blood”, which I found terribly frightening at the time and left me worried for months that some similar nuts would do that to my family. I had led a somewhat sheltered life as far as film went until I went off to college.
Lesson should be “age-appropriate” but the Holocaust should be taught right along with WWII at the very least. I’m not really sure what children are taught about the Holocaust, but I see no reason that any child shouldn’t be at least told “The Nazis wanted to kill every Jewish person, and millions were killed.” Detailed stories of concentration camps should wait for high school, probably, but you don’t have to go into that level of detail to teach the Holocaust in its basics.
I don’t think we were formally taught about WWII until I was in 8th grade (1985?). Prior to that, history/social studies was a never ending loop of Columbus through American Revolution, sometimes getting as far as the Civil War. For all I knew, nothing happened in the United States (much less the world) between 1865 and 1973.
In 7th grade, we were required to take the Constitution/American History exam so efforts were largely dedicated towards that. 8th grade was the first we were taught about 20th century history like the Labor movement, the Great Depression, The Jungle, World War I & II, etc. Come to think of it, it was the first in depth look we took at the slave trade as well (though it was tangentially mentioned in earlier years).
My vote was age 14 and mandatory. My reasoning is that while you can make the child aware there was something called The Holocaust at an earlier age, until they are at least 14 they likely haven’t the maturity to understand the concepts behind it other than “bad people did bad things to these other people”.
The Diary of Anne Frank (as an example) would be an excellent resource at this age, because she would’ve been in the same physical and emotional age group as a 14 year old. They would be able to relate her writings more viscerally, and it would likely have more impact, for example reading about her 14th birthday, spent in hiding.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
I was a bit of a World War 2 geek as a kid, and I can’t remember not knowing the Nazis were killing Jews. I may not have known all the details.
I think it should be taught in high school. I don’t see the point in teaching it any earlier, when kids can’t process it. I had a friend who went to a Jewish school and got inundated with holocaust lectures at an early age. It kind of messed him up. I was at the museum and saw a lot of little kids staring in appalled horror at the more gruesome exhibits. I don’t see the point of that. Why not show them Hostel while your at it? Kids can learn about it when they’re ready to handle the information. If parents feel they’re ready earlier they can discuss it themselves.
I put down “compulsory” for if it should be taught, but that’s a little more simplistic than I would like. I think if there’s a class on Modern World (or European) history, it should be taught as part of the class. I don’t think it should be its own class, except maybe as a senior elective.
FWIW, my father is Jewish, my mother is not.
I read a biography of Hitler in first grade on my own and learned about it that way. Don’t recall when we studied the subject in school.
Regards,
Shodan
I grew up in a neighborhood with kids whose parents were Holocaust survivors, so I kinda always knew about it.
I agree that teaching about it should very definitely not be opt-out.
I don’t remember when I learned about it. I’m not sure I actually covered it in school until high school, but my parents certainly told me about it at least by 3rd grade (8/9 years old). I don’t recall being damaged by it, but they didn’t show me stacks of emaciated bodies or anything.
My maternal grandparents (and by extension, my mother), were Holocaust survivors. Well, my Opa spent time in a camp, survived, and died before I was born. My Oma and her two daughters were able to get to the USA; my mother was five. Anything German was banned from our house and us kids always knew why .So it was always a big part of my existence as a kid and I also can’t remember not knowing about it.
That said…I think some sort of general introduction to it is fine before 11 years old. In a general sense and in a wider context: Since forever, groups of people have been inflicting horror on other groups of people and that is why it’s important to Be Nice and Accept Other People’s Differences Even If You Don’t Like Them. I think that concept should be compulsory in schools.
Count me in with the others here who are Jews or related to Jews or knew a lot of Jews growing up (I am in the first category). I can’t really remember not knowing about it, so I probably was exposed to the history in some form or other during elementary school. Most of my recent ancestors and most of their families came over in the great migratory wave around 1900–my paternal grandfather, the last to arrive in the US, came over in the late 20s–so I don’t have any close family connections. But since it was only 25-30 years after the war ended, there were many survivors around the synagogues we attended when I was a kid.
There are still a couple of members of our shul who survived the war, and they usually meet with the Hebrew school kids once or twice a year (probably starting around 3rd or 4th grade) to share their experiences.
For Jewish kids who are involved in a Jewish community, the subject will come up at a very young age, since it is part of the text and subtext of many rituals and conversations. For other kids, middle school is probably the appropriate time to start teaching about it, and the history should be compulsory.
You guys sure had a better education on the subject than me back in the day, or more likely were more inquisitive. All I remember being taught about the war when I was a kid was that it was a thing that happened, Anderson Shelters were involved and there was rationing.