Episode No. 115--Shoah Education

Transcript

Episode No. 115—Shoah Education

This is Rabbi Shammai Engelmayer, and welcome to Keep the Faith, my bi-weekly podcast in which we explore contemporary issues through the prism of Jewish law and tradition.

The Holocaust—the Shoah as we called it—is being marked around the world today because today, January 27th, is the United Nations-sponsored International Holocaust Remembrance Day. We, of course, have our own day, Yom HaShoah, which falls out each year five days after Passover, on the 27th of the month of Nisan. This year, that’s April 18th on the secular calendar.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (more commonly known as the Claims Conference) this week released its latest Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, this one covering the Netherlands. Other surveys have covered Canada, France, the United States and the United Kingdom. Once again, we see yet another country displaying a disturbing lack of awareness regarding key historical facts about the Shoah and a lack of awareness regarding that country’s own connection to Holocaust history. This week’s release coincided with the U.N’s Holocaust commemoration.

The survey before this one was released in November 2021, and it covered Holocaust awareness in the United Kingdom. Both these surveys and the others I’ll discuss have much to say about why such observances are needed.

And so, the topic for this week is another look at why teaching about the Shoah is more important now than ever before. I say another look because I covered some of this material in a podcast in November 2021, which aired two days after the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the so-called “Night of Broken Glass,” a singular event in Holocaust history because it was nothing less than the precursor of the Holocaust, the Shoah, itself.

In Germany, Kristallnacht is known as the Novemberpogrome, but pogrom doesn’t begin to describe this horrific event or its significance.

Not many people know about Kristallnacht even though it was reported the world over in real time. No other event in the history of the Holocaust from 1933 on received as much attention as did Kristallnacht, according to the noted historian and Sir Winston Churchill’s biographer the late Sir Martin Gilbert, so that lack of knowledge about it is itself quite disturbing.

Kristallnacht began on the night of November 9, 1938, and continued throughout the next day, November 10th. It was carried out by the Nazi Party's paramilitary force, the Sturmabteilung, against Jews and Jewish businesses and institutions throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. The stormtroopers were eagerly aided by thousands of civilians throughout Nazi Germany.

267 synagogues were destroyed that day. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were snatched up and sent to concentration camps. As many as 2,000 Jews were killed during Kristallnacht, according to the latest research.

The event got its name, Kristallnacht, because millions of little pieces of shattered glass literally covered the streets after the rioting had ended.

The 2021 Claims Conference Survey concentrated on England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It confirmed what all the other surveys have shown: that there’s a surprising lack of awareness of key—and even very basic—knowledge about the Holocaust. In many countries, this includes awareness of their own connections to Holocaust history.

The UK’s connection begins honorably and is wrapped up with Kristallnacht, but that honorable connection turned dishonorable afterwards. I’ll explain this comment in a moment.

The majority of all U.K. respondents (52 percent) didn’t know that six million Jews were murdered. Worse, 22 percent thought that two million or fewer Jews were killed during the Shoah. In the Netherlands survey, 54 percent didn’t know that six million Jews were murdered, and that number climbs to 59 percent among the Millennials and Gen Z population, meaning people born from 1980 through 2012. Worse, 29 percent of people in the Netherlands thought that two million or fewer Jews were killed during the Shoah. Among the under-40s, that number spiked to 37%.

Interestingly, 88 percent of the UK respondents and 66 percent of Netherlands respondents said that it’s important to continue to teach the Holocaust in schools, if for no other reason than that teaching about it is one way to assure that it never happens again. We’ll see that in other countries, as well, as you’ll hear.

The Netherlands survey also showed that a surprising 53% of people there had no awareness of the role their country played in the Shoah. There were 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands before World War II; 102,000 of them were murdered in the Holocaust, along with 2,000 Jewish refugees who had fled to the Netherlands because they believed they would be safe there. Among those 2,000 murdered refugees, of course, were Anne Frank and her family.

As to the U.K.’s extremely honorable connection to Holocaust history, it happened in the wake of Kristallnacht, as I mentioned. Jewish families in the Third Reich knew they had to save their children, even if they couldn’t save themselves. That led to an organized British rescue effort known as the “Kindertransport”—that’s German for "children's transport.” Ostensibly a private effort, it was supported, publicized and encouraged by the British government.

Among other things, the British government waived all immigration requirements, and put no limit on how many children could be brought in. By the time World War II began, the U.K. had rescued nearly 10,000 children, mostly Jewish, who were placed in foster homes, hostels, schools and even on farms.

No other country had a similar program. In the United States immediately after Kristallnacht, a bill to create one was introduced in Congress by New York Democrat Sen. Robert F. Wagner Sr. and Massachusetts Republican Rep. Edith Rogers, but it died in committee because there was so much opposition to it by isolationists and anti-Semites in and out of Congress.

The U.K.’s role in saving these children highlights one of the more disappointing findings in that Claims Conference survey: 76 percent of U.K. respondents said they had never heard of what the U.K. had done; they had never heard of the Kindertransport.

Greg Schneider, Claims Conference Executive Vice President, bemoaned the fact that Kindertransport, which QUOTE reflected the best of humanity and should serve as a beacon of hope in the darkest of times, is being forgotten. UNQUOTE

As I noted, though, as glorious as the Kindertransport was, the British government took another route once World War II broke out. Like so many others, the U.K. shut its doors to Jewish immigration. Yet 67 percent of U.K. respondents wrongly believe that the British government kept those doors open.

Another interesting and somewhat more positive  finding—and also a sad one for us here in the United States—was that U.K. respondents had a somewhat better knowledge of concentration camps and ghettos than Americans have. Only 32 percent of U.K. respondents were unable to name even one of the more than 40,000 camps or ghettos established by the Nazis, including the most infamous camp, Auschwitz, while 45 percent of U.S. adult respondents were unable to do so.

Only 14 percent of U.K. respondents were able to name Bergen-Belsen, by the way, which is somewhat of a surprise because that death camp was liberated at the end of the war by the British 11th Armored Division.

Finally, 70 percent of U.K. respondents said that at least a few people there believe the Holocaust didn’t happen, and 22 percent of respondents say a “great deal” or “many” people in the U.K. believe that. In the Netherlands survey, that number is 23 percent.

In the survey covering France, 57 percent of French respondents didn’t know that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. More concerning, 69 percent of French Millennial and GenZ respondents didn’t know that. Thirty percent of French respondents overall, and 44 percent of Millennials and Gen Z respondents, believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed during the Shoah. The French, by the way, refer to the Holocaust the way we Jews do, as the Shoah.

Still, 82 percent of French respondents said it was important to continue teaching about the Shoah in part so that it doesn’t happen again; 79 percent said that all students should learn about the Holocaust in school, and 75 percent said Holocaust education should be mandatory.

Another interesting takeaway from the French survey, 45 percent of Millennials and GenZ’s were unaware that France collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust, hunting down and deporting 67,000 Jews to concentration camps.

In the Canada survey done in 2018, 54 percent said they didn’t know that six million Jews were killed during the Shoah, with 23 percent saying they believed the number killed was well below two million, while another 24 percent said they had no idea how many were killed. Among Canadian millennials, the number who said they believe that far fewer than six million Jews were killed was 62 percent.

Other Canadian findings included these:

22 percent of millennials haven’t heard or aren’t sure if they’ve heard of the Holocaust.

49 percent of Canadian respondents couldn’t name a single camp or ghetto. That number is 52 percent for millennials.

32 percent of respondents said that Canada had an open immigration policy for any Jewish refugees fleeing Europe, whereas Canada had one of the worst records of any country. It allowed in only 5,000 Jewish refugees. On the other hand, after the war ended Canada allowed in between 2,000 and 5,000 Nazi war criminals.

Operation Paperclip in the United States only brought in around 1,600 Nazi war criminals, although several thousand others made it into the U.S., as well.

On the bright side, 82 percent of Canadian respondents believe all students should learn about the Holocaust in school, while 85 percent said it is important to keep teaching about the Holocaust so that it doesn’t happen again.

Finally, these are the findings from the 2020 U.S. Survey:

31 percent of all Americans and 41 percent of Millennials believe that far fewer than 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, most believing the number to be 2 million or lower.

45 percent of adult Americans of all ages couldn’t name a single concentration camp or ghetto; that number was even higher for Millennials.

This one really got me: 11 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z respondents said that we the Jews caused the Holocaust—caused it, not that we were its principal victims. 

There nevertheless is some encouraging news here, as well: 93 percent of U.S. respondents said that all students should learn about the Holocaust in school, with 80 percent saying it’s important to keep teaching about the Holocaust to prevent it from ever happening again.

Those are the results from the just-released Netherlands survey and several of the previous ones and the message is the same from all of them. Clearly, we need to do a much better job than we’ve been doing until now of teaching our children and our adults about the Shoah—how it started, what happened during it, how it could have been prevented, and what needs to be done to keep anything like it from happening again.

George Santayana wrote that QUOTE Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. UNQUOTE That goes double for those who do not even know of the past.

As for what Jewish law has to say about all this, it’s summed up in this simple commandment: QUOTE Remember what Amalek did to you when you left Egypt. UNQUOTE

The Amalekites didn’t attack Israel on its way to Sinai by a frontal assault. They attacked those who were at the rear of the march, the people who couldn’t move fast enough or who couldn't adequately defend themselves: Children, the elderly, the infirm, the women who were pregnant or who had just given birth. If we must remember Amalek, we must certainly remember what the Nazis did, which was far worse than anything Amalek did.

This is Rabbi Shammai Engelmayer. I do hope you come back for my next podcast, and I’d like to hear what you have to say about this or my other podcasts. Go to www.shammai.org—w-w-w-dot-s-h-a-m-m-a-i-dot-o-r-g—and email please. If you don’t get the Jewish Standard but want to read my columns, go to the columns page of my website. 

Shabbat Shalom, stay healthy, keep wearing those N95 masks in indoor venues and in outdoor crowds no matter who tells you otherwise, and get fully vaccinated if you haven’t done so as yet, including all the available booster shots.

And above all stay safe.