What We’re Not Taught About the Holocaust
The Holocaust is something that is taught in school from a very young age (or at least it was for me), but I still feel that it’s something that we don’t know enough about. History is perhaps the most important thing we can learn, not just to learn about what happened but from where we came, how we ought to behave and how we ought not to.
It is only now that I myself have started to teach history that I have come to realise how poor my education was. We know all about the cattle cars that take the people to the camps and sub-camps, what happens there - the labour, the starvation, the gassing and all other atrocities, but we know little about the day to day tragedies. It is very easy to think of the Holocaust as just one horrific event in itself, which sadly I made the mistake of doing. But I think we take away from it by not acknowledging the painful individual days that make up the Holocaust itself. I watched a documentary where Kitty Hart-Moxon, an Auschwitz survivor, revisits and talks through what a day in Auschwitz was like, which you can watch here.
‘The Germans were the most enlightened and educated people in all of Europe at that time. And yet, I saw with my own eyes Germans tossing babies in the air and shooting them. I couldn’t believe it, but I saw it. It did happen, and they were laughing as they were doing this.’
Joseph K
We see photos and videos of the barracks that people were made to stay in, but I never questioned how many people a barrack could hold. The barracks were built to a size that could contain seventy-two horses, but there were over one thousand people to a barrack, with between six and eight to a bed. There are, of course, no bathrooms and a bucket was given to each barrack for all those sleeping in it to use. And by day, it was the job of a prisoner to empty the bucket.
Similarly, I was very much aware of the carts that took people to the camps and that the people in there were just pushed in with little breathing space, no food or water for days at a time. But it never occurred to me that there was no bathroom. It seems obvious now that I think about it properly but these small things like having a bathroom is something so easily overlooked. Once these things are realised, we can see quite how much they tried to dehumanise the prisoners.
In the documentary, Kitty recalls the different roles that she held at the different camps she was taken to - one of these was to go through the belongings of those brought into the camps, in which case she was the one chosen to collect men’s jackets. She was told to cut open the seams of the jackets to see what was found (money, gold, etc.) and to turn everything in. Kitty recalls how she and others found more money than they could do anything with, the money was meaningless and had no value for people that could not spend it, so they used it as toilet paper - which they got none of. They used money as toilet paper.
The Holocaust not only tore families, friends, loved ones, a people and nations apart, but tore people apart in themselves, which is a pain that I don’t think many have the misfortune of experiencing.
‘This man came, this tall SS man, and he pointed with a finger. He put my brothers together, and my little kid brother there. And I told my little brother, I said to him, “Solly, geh tsu tate un mame. Go with my [mother and father]”. And like a little kid he followed. He did! Little did I know that, that I sent him to the crematorium. I am, I feel like, I killed him. My brother, who lives now in New York he used to live in South America, every time we see each other he talks about that. And he says, “No, I am responsible, because I said the same thing to you. And it had been bothering me too.” I’ve been thinking whether he has reached my mother and father. And when he did reach my mother and father, he probably told them, “Avramham hot gezogt ish zol geyn mit aykh [Abraham said I should go with you]”. I wonder what my mother and father were thinking, especially when they were all, they all went into the crematorium. I can’t get it out of my head. It hurts me, it bothers me, and I don’t know what to do.’
Abraham P
From what I was taught and how I was taught, I assumed that it was when people arrived at the camps that they were divided into groups of those ‘worthy’ of life (who were fit and able to work) and those to be sent for death. But actually this was only the start. Regularly, the barracks were checked and those assigned to them would be tested physically through various activities, such as jumping over objects. Perhaps jumping over something does not sound too difficult, but after living on three hundred calories a day for months, I cannot even begin to imagine how much strength and energy you needed to jump. And if you could not, you were sent to be gassed. But gassing is not as I knew it either. It is not as simple as just sending people to the gas chambers, but even death was calculated. Often the prisoners were not even worthy of death. When these checks were done and people were sent to the gas chambers, the Nazis had to deem it worth the cost the gassing, the cost of the poison, the cost of the Nazi that would administer this etc. and by cost I do not mean monetary, but the effort required. So those sent would be left in a room for days or weeks at a time, while they found others to ‘make up the numbers’ and warrant it, and then they would be killed. Left without food or water for weeks, and their arms coming out of the windows begging for food, other prisoners would see them often starving to death but unable to help when they could not even feed themselves.
The Holocaust is a permanent stain in history, and one that we must learn from and never allow to repeat. We need it to be taught better and we need to learn more than what we do now. The extent to which people were dehumanised is something I struggle to wrap my head around. I was told by a friend a couple of weeks ago that it is common for homeless people to be urinated on as they slept, by others walking by (normally drunk) and I was shocked, appalled and disgusted that human beings could treat other human beings as objects unworthy of life, but learning the details of history and what happened on such a scale is terrifying.
I am so happy that I get to teach history and that I get to learn so much in doing so. The parents of the children I teach thank me often for teaching them well and they always comment on how the children’s grades have improved so quickly and how much they enjoy my lessons. I don’t think this has any bearing on my ability, but rather that I teach history as though we are learning about people and not events and that is how history, those who have suffered and those who continue to suffer should be remembered.
(This post is more a documentation of my realisation than to teach anything, so if there are things here that are obvious to you, please bear in mind that it is new to me. I have so much to say on the matter, which I have taught myself through reading and watching and listening and not enough space to say it all.)
