UK Schools drop the Holocaust from history

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It may be an informal policy rather than a law. I've looked on Wikipedia, but the only law they mention is the descendants of Holocaust survivors who had German citizenship and lost it under the Nuremberg laws.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nat ... ersecution


Well yes, I wish there was no prejudice. If there was a way to say "Ok, everyone starts with the same amount of money, and equal rights, nobody owes anyone anything, now go and live your life." But that would never happen. And anyway, it sounds like Communism

The thing about Holocaust revisionism is that many Jews in America who immigrated a short time before the war had relatives in Europe, and they know that a large proportion of them died. And then the revisionists (the racist ones) come along and say that they lied about it to get money, which is very hurtful. There were also millions of Polish civilians who were killed by the Nazis. If somebody said that the Poles lied about that just to get land from Germany, that would really make me angry. But Holocaust revisionists always seem to focus just on the Jews. (Maybe schools also focus too much on the Jews. It's true that the chance of a Jewish Pole being killed was higher than the chance of a Christian Pole being killed, but there were more Christian Poles, so the number still comes to about 3 million murdered.)


The way I see it, ownership of countries should be based on who lives where. Israel is mostly Jewish, so it belongs mostly to the Jews (obviously, Muslims and Christians and atheists who live there must also have equal rights, like Jews must have in Europe, and Christians must have in Turkey, etc.)

I think it would be better if Europeans had understood religious tolerance earlier, then the Jews would still be living there and there would be no Israel, but you can't change history. The fact that many Jews fled to Israel after the Holocaust is part of history - like the Pilgrim Fathers who fled to America because their religion was persecuted in Europe. You can't undo America now, or Israel, even if their founding was wrong.

(Also, Israel did steal homes from some of the Arabs there, and I think Israel should compensate them.)


I don't think the Jews "chose not to", other countries did not want to take in millions of immigrants. And most of the Jews who were killed were not even German Jews, but Polish and Russian. Germany invaded those countries and murdered the Jews there (and also millions of Christian Poles and Russians).


That sounds very unlikely. The actual Holocaust survivors may be paid a small pension by the state, but they are all very old now (soon they will have died out) and I doubt that would go on to their children. You said you have family who moved to Germany - do they really not do any work?!



I don't see how that can be true. I've tried searching but I see no mention of this law. Germany is even one of the biggest arms suppliers in the world:



http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/20 ... 661277.htm


I have never heard of Germans in the USA being discriminated against. I would obviously never discriminate against them myself. The Germany of WWII (Nazi Germany) is not the same as the Germany of the Cold War, which was on America's side. I would guess that because of the Cold War there is more discrimination against Russians than Germans in the USA.

Not familiar with freedom of speech laws in Europe. I guess I just assumed that Europe was similiar to the US laws. In the US you are allowed to believe what you want to believe about anything. It's not a criminal act to deny historical facts. I don't think their is anything wrong with questioning in any field of study; that is the whole point of studying a subject in the first place. There was a Colorado professor who got in trouble awhile back for his viewpoints on terrorism. I thought the press (the right wing especially) was pretty hard on the guy and took his lecture completely out of context. That's the problem with teaching I suppose, every action or thought you have is critically analyzed by society to make sure you are not "corrupting" America's youth. I find it all a bit absurd. It's not like humans start out as blank slates (always hated that expression) in which anyone can manipulate them to believe and think how they want them to believe and think.




Science can be controversial as well. Just look at the global warming debate. History by it's very nature is more subjective then any other field of study given that it is not just all facts and numbers. The qualitative is just as important as the quantative which leads to different interpretations as to what is historically relevant and what is not. I was one of the kids who wanted to know everything about everything; and still do. I don't care if it's not proper etiquette to talk about things that matter. As a kid I caught onto this pretty quick and it annoyed me. If I wanted to live in an alternate reality I would do so. I don't need the government or well meaning individuals to paint a pretty picture on the human race. The old saying rings true. "The road to hell is paved in good intentions".



Well that is politics for you; appeasement. I don't think they want to get rid of the holocaust in history classes to appease the Skinheads. I think it is more of an appeasment towards the parents who not want their kids to have to "think" about "bad" stuff. Emotionalism at it's worst.

I saw discussion of a similar chain email blaming it on muslims, on another board today -
turns out to be false.

Statement from the Holocaust Education Trust
who'd be amongst the first to get upset if it was true.

History will always be a controversial subject, no matter what event had occurred in the past or when it happened.
A teacher I had or modern history when I was in the last two years of high school said to us that the class I was in was one of the best ones he taught. The reason he said was that our class was the most politically minded and that to be very good at studying history, you need to have a strong understanding of politics.

Sorry to stall the righteous indignation train, but that wasn't quite what the report actually said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6517359.stm

Bolding mine, to point out the details the original poster's link missed out.

Very true indeed. The English word "History" comes from the French word for "story" or "l'histoire" Whoever controls the story, which is usually the dominant political faction of the time, controls the mind of the populace.

Without the Holocaust or any other evil within that story, the political establishment can do such things all over again. And the historical cycle repeats itself....I swear this sounds like something Orwell would imagine.

Necro alert!! !

This thread is OLD. The topic isn't neccessarily anything that should be up for discussion.

History is one big, true, epic story which can be interpreted in different ways, and parts of which have been lost by acts of secrecy and ruin.

Heh, read George Orwell's 1984. History becomes impossible to track because it's filled with lies, if they say the apple is blue it's blue (even if the dumbest idiot could see that it's red).

Another interesting topic.

I have been studying historically documented genocides, especially the Holocaust, for the past 41 years.

One of the posters asked "What is a holocaust?" Briefly, it was the sanctification of mass murder by the nazi state of a population of human beings belonging to the Jewish religion and occurred just prior to and during the Second World War, resulting in the loss of six million human beings belonging to this group. It was also termed the Final Solution. The term holocaust is actually spelled as Holocaust. It is a genocide because it targeted persons of a specific ethnic and/or religious/disenfranchised group.

Other genocides occurring duing World War Two included the murder of the Roma, persons identifying themslves as homosexual, Slavic civilians murdered in countries conquered by the nazis, and patients nazis deemed useless eaters (physically and mentally challenged patients in nazi controlled patient care institutions). All of these groups were considered life not worthy of life. Total murders of all groups of non combatants (civilians and not soldiers) by nazi methods were probably close to ten million, including six million Jews. Some researchers have found evidence of even more deaths.

Suffice it is to say that the destructive practice of genocide has also included Armenians and Hutus. Genocides have occurred in the Sudan, Bosnia, other Africa nations and the Middle East. I suspect murders occurring in the Soviet Union during Stalin's rule might even be considered part of a genocide, after more research.

This forum was originally started by information supplied by a poster and then elucidated later on by another. Controversial viewpoints written by various posters are difficult to untangle. Since a conclusion cannot be reached at this point then I can offer a compromise: history is a vast subject and this reality may be difficult to make it as comprehensive as one would want possible. Politics (ideology) and economic challenges can make the teaching of certain documented (factual) world events at worst impossible or unlikely, and at best, glossed over.

The Internet is a valuable source for those wishing to extract and explore further information about any information in my comment, and indeed, in this forum.

I find this concept blatantly offensive.

To be relevant to the original post, first of all, it's always a challenge for teachers to cover the whole curriculum at any time, to cover it in any significant depth is even more difficult, and to cover controversial topics--with discussions likely to get out of hand--can be even more difficult. It appears from Elemental's post that the recommendation to avoid such topics was merely until stronger support, guidelines and research could be provided. That doesn't sound prejudicial to me; that sounds wise.

I'm going to throw caution to the wind here and say what I believe needs to be said, come what may.

DrizzleMan said:

I believe there is a fundamental difference between the two: time. Israel has been in existence now for a mere sixty years. America is over two hundred years old.

Let me draw a popular analogy, for those in the West who so rarely get the chance to consider it:

If you welcome me into your home, then I kick you out of your own home, and I get my buddies to keep you out for long enough, would it become my home?

Resentment and hatred cannot be erased without justice and politics will never be about wishful thinking.

Palestine was not empty land. Not by a long shot.

source: http://www.haevents.org.uk/PastEvents/O ... report.pdf

...the hell? =_=**

And let me point out that because the United States is a lot more vast in size than Britain or other European nations, there is a lot of variation in education programs, state-by-state, county-by-county. If you compared the British system to the schools in Louisiana, for example, the Brits would look like geniuses. However, if you compared them to the school system in Fairfax County, VA, where an A is 94-100% and an F is 64% and below, the US wouldn't look so stupid.

*SARCASM MODE* There are no such things as historical facts, just narratives invented by the elites. *SARCASM MODE*

Muslims, I'd guess. I've had a middle eastern guy say to my face that the West constantly brings up the Holocaust just to keep people supporting Israel.

I try not to feel superior to NTs. I really, really try.

But this has broken me. It makes me wish that more people had AS, that someone with AS was in charge of UK schools. We tend to value fact over opinion. The Holocaust has been tastelessly exploited for propaganda purposes, certainly, but that doesn't make it any less, you know, REAL. Truth is truth.