From Generation to Generation...

Essays in Remembrance…

From Generation to Generation, We Must Never Forget

by Jonathan Schneck

In 1945, a generation of witnesses vowed, “Never forget!” as the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust were revealed to the world with the end of Hitler’s empire.  Citizens of all nations stood aghast as detail upon grotesque detail was unearthed by the liberating military personnel, and restoration teams sought to help survivors rebuild their lives.  However, today, just a few generations later, clear recollection of the Holocaust is fading from the collective memory. 

Mine is the first generation when many Holocaust survivors have passed away and are no longer able to share their stories. The pleas of “never forget!” are being drowned out by the frantic pace of modern life. While people today have the opportunity to hear survivors speak and experience vivid emotional tales from the camps, within the next few decades the remaining survivors will have died. Young people will not be able to pay tribute firsthand to the resilience and hope that were required to survive the Holocaust. Upcoming generations of youth might not be able to understand the horrifying things that the Nazis did to the Jews and many others, and will only be able to see dramatized documentaries and movies.

Already in the news and national discussion, the term “Holocaust” is being thrown around as a casual verbal comparison to many international tragedies in a manner that trivializes the severity of what the Jews and other victims suffered at the hands of the Nazis.  People compare events to the Holocaust that, while still heartbreaking, are not even close to the scope and breadth of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. As such, we risk the new generation not realizing how brutal the Holocaust really was.  Worse, “Holocaust deniers” like Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are becoming more impertinent on the international stage in their challenge of the historical evidence of the Nazi genocide. For the first time, we risk a generation misunderstanding the brutality of the Holocaust.

It is vital that the next generation understand the terrors of the Holocaust accurately. Even today, properly conveying the impact is difficult.  Many young people do not fully understand how large a number eleven million is, or that with six million Jewish deaths, the Nazis nearly cut the Jewish population in half.  In the generation just after the Holocaust, it would have been difficult for survivors not to understand the magnitude of that number, because they were not just millions of abstract individuals, but mothers, grandmothers, brothers, and children – missing from every Shabbat table that left a cavity in every survivor’s heart.  The Mishnah teaches if someone kills one man, he kills not only that man, but all of his descendants.  In effect, the death of that one man kills an entire race.  As such, the Holocaust was not merely the murder of eleven million of individuals, but eleven million legacies, eleven million sets of hopes, dreams, and future families. 

            There is the greater question in Judaism in particular about the education of the younger generation in all respects, not only in Holocaust education but also in the total preservation of Jewish identity.  The Shema exhorts Jews to teach the commands of G-d to their children and all future generations.  Part of instilling Jewish identity involves not only religious and Hebrew language instruction, but also the teaching of new generations about persecutions that have come against the Jewish people in history, from the days of the Patriarchs to the modern-day Holocaust.

Today, as in history, prejudice, discrimination and violence are a continuing problem. Discrimination based on skin color, religion, race, and nationality persists, and the proper upbringing of young people, must focus on learning from the wrongdoings of the past. In 1945, the world had promised itself “Never again!” upon learning of the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, and yet in the past few decades European and African nations still experience bloodbaths fought along racial lines (“Rwanda – The Wake of a Genocide”).  If we draw no other conclusion, we must realize that combatting prejudice and discrimination is a deeply complex issue. Nonetheless, it is an issue that must be a focus for the next generation.

One manner in which young people can become part of the solution is by raising awareness and facilitating mass education, particularly through the multimedia options available today.  Young people can also be faithful students of the past, studying history as is vividly recorded on television, the Internet, DVDs, and other modes of modern communication.  Furthermore, awareness campaigns can succeed on a global level on Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia – media favored by today’s youth. The near-global access to multimedia can help young people embrace their shared humanity to transcend identity labels relating to religion, race, or national origin that can become tiles of a human mosaic rather than contentious points of division. 

A possible awareness campaign could involve key social media hubs and other voluntary participants who could support a partial website redirect on Holocaust Remembrance Day.  For a 30-second interval, participating websites could display one of a variety of educational articles on the Holocaust, then let site visitors continue to their requested material.  Such a campaign would provide a tasteful, but palpable, opportunity for many millions of people to reflect on the loss to humanity that was suffered in the Holocaust.

However, success will require more than awareness campaigns – it will be more about teaching courage than teaching morality.  Most people know prejudice is wrong, but relatively few people choose to stand for what they know is right at the risk of harm.  In Nazi Germany, a decisive portion of the population supported Hitler, but a silent majority closed their eyes and did nothing. Only a small group of “righteous persons” opposed Hitler at the risk of their own lives.  While there is value to organizing campaigns, awareness, and education about the evils of prejudice, cataclysmic events like the Holocaust happen not because a few bad people do evil, but because many good people remain silent.  Mere education cannot adequately ferret out the root of the matter.  

The real need is therefore for individuals to choose to change.  I myself must choose not to be prejudiced, and likewise, every “I” in the human family.  What stops an individual person from being prejudiced is his or her personal choice not to be. This embracing of individual, personal responsibility for one’s own actions and for the world we live in will be the key to securing hope for the next generation.

Works Cited

  Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a

    Education – For Students – Topics of Study.  The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, November 12, 2008.  Web.  April 16, 2012. 

  “The Holocaust – Yad Vashem.”  Yad Vashem: The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, 2012.  Web. April 16, 2012

  Rwanda – The Wake of a Genocide.  SciCentral, 2012.  Web.  April 16, 2012.

Grobman, Gary M.  “The Holocaust – A Guide for Teachers.” 1990.  Web.  April 16, 2012. 

London, Dr. Perry and Frank, Naava.  Jewish Identity and Jewish Schooling.  Yeshiva University, 2010.  Web.  April 16, 2012.

Short, Geoffrey.   Issues in Holocaust Education. 

Suarez-Orozco, Marcelo M., ed.  Learning in the Global Era:  International Perspectives on Globalization and Education.  1^st Edition.  London, England:  University of California Press, 2007.  47-66.  Print.