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(THREAD) I can never forgive the American education system for universalizing the Holocaust. For some reason we've decided to teach it as “This could have happened to you,” when in actuality it would never have happened to the vast majority of American students. (1/x)
Universalizing the Holocaust gives the impression that genocide is just something that randomly happens to random groups of people from time to time. But it was not by happenstance that the Nazis landed upon the Jewish, Sinti, and Roma peoples as targets for extermination. (2/x)
The Holocaust occurred within the backdrop of centuries of European antisemitism and antiziganism. It’s wholly irresponsible of schools to remove that backdrop and act like it came out of nowhere, and consequently that it could happen to anyone, anywhere, for no reason. (3/x)
To me, three things make the Holocaust particularly notable: First, its success – there are still fewer Jews alive today than there were in 1939. Second, how it twisted the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution into a systemic machine of mass murder. (4/x)
And finally, the overwhelming civilian indifference (if not outright support) for the Holocaust. For this point, I would specifically like to contrast the Holocaust with Aktion T4, the Nazis' program of exterminating people with disabilities. (5/x)
In many ways T4 was similar to the Holocaust. Victims were communally transported to purpose-built extermination facilities, where they were murdered in gas chambers and their corpses were incinerated. A notable difference: Many German civilians publicly opposed T4. (6/x)
In fact, public opposition to T4 – particularly from religious groups – forced the Nazis to (at least ostensibly) stop the program in mid-1941. It was criticized by Catholics and Protestants alike as a violation of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not murder.” (7/x).
So T4 shows us that the German public did not support the industrial extermination of *all* groups declared undesirable – only for the Jews, Sinti, and Roma. Furthermore, it shows us that the civilians could have forced the Nazis to stop the Holocaust, but did not do so. (8/x)
And that is why the Holocaust needs to be taught specifically in the context of European antisemitism and antiziganism, rather than as a general lesson in human morality – since it was precisely because of these ingrained prejudices that the genocide succeeded. (9/x)
When American students read Anne Frank's diary and are told “This could have happened to you,” that context is erased, just as the context is erased when European politicians want Holocaust Memorial Day renamed Genocide Memorial Day because "every life is of value.” (10/x)
And the children who wrongly think the Holocaust could have happened to them (since they're told it can happen to anyone, anywhere, for any reason) grow up to be today's adult bozos asserting that people getting banned from social media is no different from genocide. (11/x)
As I’ve said before: everyone’s anti-Nazi until it’s time to be pro-Jew. Antisemitism and antiziganism didn’t start with Hitler and didn’t end with Hitler. (They didn’t end, period.) (12/x)
I strongly believe that teaching the Holocaust through the lens of encouraging students to be pro-Jew and pro-Sinti/Roma, rather than merely anti-Nazi, would go a long way towards remediating these bigotries today. (13/x)
And while, from my experience, other historical injustices aren’t universalized in the same way (i.e. I was never told “This could have happened to you” while reading the autobiographies of Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass the same way it happens for Anne Frank),… (14/x)
I think it might be prudent to teach them similarly— encouraging students to be pro-Black American rather than merely anti-Jim Crow, to be pro-Native American rather than merely anti-Trail of Tears, to be pro-Asian American rather than merely anti-Japanese internment, etc. (15/x)
Because just as the Holocaust shouldn’t be removed from the context that made it socially acceptable, the injustices of American history shouldn’t be removed from the underlying prejudices that made (and make) them socially acceptable. (16/x)
And teaching history through the lens of supporting the victims of past injustice, rather than merely opposing the perpetrators of it, might help reduce the prevalence of the underlying bigotries to the point where those injustices can’t happen again. (END)
