Teaching the Holocaust is essential to protect future generations

Don’t suppress Holocaust lessons

Opinion echo letter published in The Daily Gazette Schenectady, NY:

Several months ago, the South-lake, Texas school district advised their teachers that if they study a book about the Holocaust, they should also offer students a book from an “opposing” perspective.

What was striking to me is that there is no “opposing” perspective to the Holocaust or to the cruelty and barbarism that destroyed so many Jews; killed only because they were Jews.

A Tennessee school board voted to remove a novel about the Holocaust, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman, from the eighth-grade curriculum because it concerns themes and language they deemed offensive.

This announcement was made just a few days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU FORMER GERMAN NAZI
CONCENTRATION AND EXTERMINATION CAMP

Is this something we should all be concerned about?

I believe it is.

Altering the facts, sweetening the words, banning the books, does not protect the student.

Quite the opposite.

Preventing atrocities from reoccurring and seeking hope for the future is through education by trained teachers who know how to bring to their students the historical facts while respecting their intelligence and ability to separate right from universal wrong.

Our responsibility to fix the world means that we must honestly first know how it is broken, then repair is possible.

The planned Capital District Jewish Holocaust Memorial to be constructed in Niskayuna (New York) is vital because it will be a landmark, a beacon of education that speaks for all against hate, prejudice and bigotry.

Michael Lozman
Menands, New York
The writer is president, Capital District Jewish Holocaust Memorial.