Holocaust Study for School Children in France and Germany

While it is necessary for children to learn their history, in depth submersion at vulnerable ages that mold the direction of thought for the future can damage their independent thinking development, particularly if it imposes guilt, particularly if they are not guilty.

In France and Germany children are studying Holocaust history by studying children that lived through the Holocaust. As in all literature, they will certainly identify with the children of their studies, and they will feel guilty, but they are innocent. It's time to put the past of 65 years behind us, all of us not only France and Germany, but the whole world, and look to the problems we have currently that give rise to future problems.

Certainly French and German children need to learn their history. But couldn't they learn it through an ordinary study of factual history and perhaps a visit to the Holocaust Museum instead of being forced to emotionally involve themselves? They didn't do the damage, but they are made to bear the burden in a world already overloaded with burdens that can be alleviated; global warming, terrorism, merging of cultures.

France and Germany have made great contributions to literature, art, science and every level of culture. A maniac like Hitler can arise anywhere in the world at any time. Training in developing one's own thought and refusing to be taken in by propaganda could go a lot farther in preventing future Holocausts than making children who weren't even there guilty for the behavior of previous generations.

These are the best times in the world to teach the power of independent thinking. Leaders on the world stage are saying the Holocaust is a myth; it never happened. A movie, a trip to the Holocaust Museum won't negate the lie, but careful training in propoganda, what it is and how some leaders try to use it to dominate others would be much more effective and impressionable than taking the mind of the child back to World War 11. How is Iran's leader like Hitler? How can a rational person deal with that kind of break from reality? How can a child tell the difference between an attempt to propagate a lie, recognize the attempt to create the delusion behind it, and keep it from crippling her own power of thought?

A human being is where her thought is. Forcing a child back to a time as horrible as World War 11 is crippling because the child is no longer free to go from the present. It plays into the hands of those delusion creators and confuses the issue. It relies on emotion rather than fact to condition reality. Right now in the face of accusations and delusions flying in all directions, the world needs the voice and thought of reason more than anything else. Germany and France have a much firmer and illustrious background in those areas than the madness of World War 11. Our children are our future. Let's teach them to go forward to face the uncertainties of this world and this time with courage, independence of thought, and creativity.