Should Children be taught about the Holocaust?

History should teach us all about all the major events and significant moments from throughout the world from the first beginnings up until something close to the present. It is the nature of human history that far more of it is bad than good, which remains true whomever has had the power to do bad things to weaker peoples. History is often a tale of dominant and powerful people and states abusing less powerful ones. It just so happens that the dominant states in the world from about 1500 up to the present have been white Europeans or their colonial offshoots (eg most of the states in north and south America). As a result of their technological dominance for most of these centuries, white people were far more often the perpetrators of bad things to others than victims of them. Most of the bad things done to white people were the actions of other white people. So white people behaving badly or insensitively to non-white people is going to be a frequent theme in the history of the last 500 years or so. This is inevitable if we want our history to be honest, and it has to be otherwise it becomes propaganda rather than history.

But it was not always thus. Prior to about 1500, and certainly prior to 1400, there were no ethnically white colonies outside Europe (apart from the crusader states for a time), and Europe itself was much more of a historical backwater. Before then it's only impact outside Europe were the colonising efforts known as the Crusades, motivated by religious ideology. But for most of the period between the fall of Rome and about 1500, the main movers and shakers in the world were not white Europeans but brown or yellow Asians. The Arabs overran much of the middle east and North Africa and conquered much of Spain. They even got as far as Toulouse in France though were defeated there. At that time whites were far more likely to be enslaved by non-whites than the other way around. The Arabs were taking Africans into slavery long before white Europeans started doing it. And then there were the Mongols who rampaged throughout Asia and most of eastern Europe, reducing Russia for a long time to tributary status and pouring into Poland, Hungary and the Balkans. They were notorious for slaughtering the entire populations of any town or city that dared to resist them. And then there were another Asian people, historically known to us as the Ottoman Turks who were the final destroyers of the Byzantine Empire and who then went on to conquer most of south eastern Europe and oppress it's white Christian populations. Twice it got as far as Vienna, though from the 18th century onwards it went into serious decline. Still, it was not until the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 that it was finally expelled from Europe except for the small area around Istanbul (formerly Byzantium/ Constantinople) which Turkey still holds today.

So in ethnic terms, who was being bad to who was largely dependent upon who had the power at the time. For most of the past 500 years that has been white Europeans and their colonial offshoots. Nevertheless, when non-white peoples have ever succeeded in challenging white Europeans, as Japan did successfully for many decades until overwhelmed in the Second World War, it was capable of behaving just as badly as white people at their worst. Japan caused a sensation in 1905 when after a crash course in adopting European technology it became the first Asian  power in many centuries to defeat a great power of Europe when it defeated Russia. Outside Russia an astonished Europe mostly admired Japan at that time - the UK had a treat of alliance with it at the time - and Japan was on our side in WW1, though mostly to serve its own expansionist aims in the far east against Germany.

White technological and cultural hegemony is starting to be seriously challenged again by an Asian power with the rise of China. Time will tell whom they choose to use their growing power to behave badly to. Most probably their fellow Asians at first. When Japan first rose to great power status its first expansionist war was not against Europeans at all but against China whom it resoundingly defeated in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95.

Kids knew about concentration camps in the late 60s and kids being kids made jokes about it .
In my experience a tv programme called The world at war put everything in perspective but there was some references before .

None of that addresses my post.

”Children should be taught about the holocaust but they shouldn’t be burdened by it .” ie it should not be something that they feel personally responsible for .

“Tell them that the Nazis wanted to destroy Jews but ease up on the gory details for a while .” Pretty much self explanatory.

“I am a bit suspicious that history taught in schools might become an essay in how bad white people were/ are.” Ie the people who were subjugated were generally no better than us . We were just better at subjugation.
Slavery , wars, conquest and torture all existed outside of Europe and outside of European influence . White people are not exclusively bad and badness is not exclusively white .
I hope this helps you understand the post .

There is no reason why children should ever feel personally responsible for the holocaust.

I think the holocaust is best taught at 15. This should not involve an excess of detail re the acts of individual sadists, but needs to involve enough detail to convey the horror of what was happening. It is enough to report that millions were killed before execution pits or in gas chambers, the motivations for this, the numbers involved, and which groups fell victim to it and why.

And people are people, no particular group being any intrinsically better or worse than others. The people with the power to do so tend to oppress those with less power. In the last 500 years that has mostly been whites doing the oppressing due to their technological superiority. Before that it was mostly Asians. I have no doubt that had the Asians been the technologically dominant ones these past 500 years they would have been oppressing us rather than us oppressing them. And they would have been the ones oppressing the Africans instead of us. So I accept your basic point. I do not think white people are any worse or better as people than other ethnicities.

And I never said white people are exclusively bad nor that others could not be equally bad. I cited examples of Asians being bad for example in the centuries before white Europeans became dominant. In the last 500 years it has much of the time been a case of whites behaving badly to non whites as well as to each other, though. That is a fact of history. But this is not due to white people being any worse than anybody else but simply due to them being the ones with the power. Because they are no better than anyone else either and it is a sad fact of the human race that whomever is dominant at whatever time tends to oppress less dominant people.

You are clearly misunderstanding me if you are reading my words and seeing me trying to tell you that whites are worse people than others. Which is not something I would ever say because it is not something I believe. If you think I am saying that then you are failing to understand my words.

I am well aware of the part played by religion. I touched upon it when I mentioned the crusades. Islam was also clearly a driving force behind the Arab conquests. But my post was going to be long enough already. Are you really criticising me for mot making it even longer? Had I gone into detail about the religious angle the post would have doubled in size. Besides which, the main dynamic I was discussing was one of power, the power of stronger peoples to oppress weaker ones. Religion was sometimes a driving force as it clearly was behind the Arab conquests. And it was frequently an additional tool of oppression. And it was often used as an excuse for Europeans to persecute each other, as well as non-Europeans. But religion was nevertheless mostly incidental to the basic point that those with more power tended to oppress those with less. Such power rarely sprang directly from religion but was a function of technological or military advantage in most cases. Which is why I chose not to muddy the waters with it.

If you have a point to make about religion which is relevant to this thread then my all means make it. Though before you do I will point out that when it comes to religion the Nazis themselves were highly ambivalent about Christianity, and their hatred of Jews was not motivated by it, but was largely based on perverse ideological racism mixed with conspiracy theories about worldwide Jewry.