{"id":18629,"date":"2023-11-25T21:28:17","date_gmt":"2023-11-26T03:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=18629"},"modified":"2023-11-25T21:28:17","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T03:28:17","slug":"generic-ifying-the-holocaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2023\/11\/generic-ifying-the-holocaust.html","title":{"rendered":"Generic-ifying the Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"
Holocaust memorial, Berlin, via Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Yeah, actually I\u2019m not sure of the best way to label this as I try to identify something that\u2019s disturbing me.<\/p>\n

It has been disturbing me, ever since Hamas\u2019s attack on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli military action in Gaza, that so many Hamas\/Palestinian defenders have been calling the air strikes \u201cgenocide.\u201d\u00a0 It is preposterous and should be written off in the same way as one writes off the claims by those defenders that the hostages, the killings, the sexual assaults, all of the horrors of the attacks, were untrue, or were justified and deserved.\u00a0 But it is more than that.<\/p>\n

A twitter account I follow, a teacher in Rhode Island, made the claim that her school had eliminated Anne Frank and other instructional materials on the Holocaust, because Jews were not \u201cpeople of color.\u201d\u00a0 Others responded skeptically, because, as it turns out, Rhode Island has a law mandating that the Holocaust be covered as a part of middle\/high school instruction.<\/p>\n

But what exactly does this mean?\u00a0 What, specifically, must students be taught?\u00a0 The answer isn\u2019t as straightforward as the Holocaust unit my sons had in eighth grade, where they read the Diary of a Young Girl<\/em> and\/or Night<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here is the actual text of the Rhode Island law<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The state shall adhere to the following procedures:<\/p>\n

(1) The department of education shall collect and disseminate to every school district, private school, mayoral academy, and charter school, and make available on its website, curriculum materials and such other materials as may assist local and regional school committees, and governing bodies of any private school, mayoral academy, or charter school, in developing instructional materials on holocaust and genocide awareness and education. The curriculum materials may include information on relevant genocides, including the Holocaust, Armenia, Cambodia, Iraq, Rwanda, and Darfur.<\/p>\n

(2) Every school district shall include in its curriculum a unit of instruction on holocaust and genocide, utilizing, but not being limited to, the materials collected and disseminated by the department of education, commencing with the 2017-2018 school year. Nothing herein shall require school districts to require holocaust and genocide instruction in every year of middle school and high school, but that holocaust and genocide education and instruction shall be utilized during appropriate times in the middle school and\/or high school curricula, as determined by the local authority. All students should have received instruction on genocide and holocaust awareness materials by the time they have graduated from high school.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And can you guess what troubles me?\u00a0 Yes, the Holocaust has become just one of various genocides from which teachers and schools may choose for their curriculum and, worse, \u201cthe Holocaust\u201d has become a common noun, merely a synonym for genocide.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, the focus of the suggested\u00a0 materials, specifically its \u201cgeneral\u201d anti-genocide links, Stop Genocide Now<\/a> and Facing History<\/a>, appear to be on current-day civics and activism and mix together genocide, ethnic cleansing, and civil war.\u00a0 The Stop Genocide Now<\/em> website, in particular, offers \u201caction\u201d items \u2014 which are, quite honestly, not particularly useful, consisting of links to Amnesty International and other petitions to sign.\u00a0 The Facing History lesson plans aren\u2019t prizewinners either.\u00a0 For instance, the \u201cmini-lesson\u201d about the October 7 attacks, \u201cProcessing Antisemitism, Terror, and War<\/a>,\u201d is vague and simply instructs teachers to share news reports and encourage students to journal about their reactions.<\/p>\n

Now, as it happens, Illinois also has a Holocaust\/Genocide instruction mandate.\u00a0 Its text is more specific<\/a>, to be sure, though in 2005, the mandate changed from requiring education in the Holocaust, capital H, defined as the killing of \u201c6,000,000 Jews and millions of non-Jews\u201d (incidental comment: there is controversy over whether the deaths of non-Jews are a part of The Holocaust or just additional Crimes Against Humanity perpetrated by the Nazis), to also adding a second requirement, that of teaching \u201cother acts of genocide . . . includ[ing], but not limited to, the Armenian Genocide, the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, and more recent atrocities in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan.\u201d<\/p>\n

And according to Wikipedia<\/a>, a significant number of states mandate such education.\u00a0 How many are Rhode Island\u2019s lower-case \u201cholocaust\u201d version?\u00a0 I tried to click through to some of these links.\u00a0 For instance:<\/p>\n

Maine:\u00a0 the requirement is specifically for Holocaust instruction<\/a>, though oddly the law itself does not identify Jews as the target of the Nazis but simply states that victims were \u201cdiscrete groups of individuals based on race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical disability or national origin, from January 1, 1933 to December 31, 1945, in Nazi Germany or in any European country allied with or occupied by Nazi Germany,\u201d which would appear to leave room for teachers to claim that the Holocaust was not specifically anti-Jewish.<\/p>\n

New Hampshire:\u00a0 this law<\/a> is a bit hard to parse but the key sentence is this:\u00a0 that schools much teach \u201cHow intolerance, bigotry, antisemitism, and national, ethnic, racial, or religious hatred and discrimination have evolved in the past, and can evolve, into genocide and mass violence, such as the Holocaust, and how to prevent the evolution of such practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oklahoma:\u00a0 the law, effective in 2022<\/a>, specifically requires Holocaust instruction, defined as the Nazi regime\u2019s murder of 6 million Jews and 5 million others.<\/p>\n

How does this work out in practice?\u00a0 For how many teachers is it simply obvious that Holocaust education should be about the Holocaust?\u00a0 For how many is \u201cthe Holocaust\u201d too outdated, too narrow, not relevant enough to modern life?\u00a0 \u00a0How often do teachers believe that the murder of Jews isn\u2019t sufficiently culturally relevant for ethnic-minority students?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yeah, actually I\u2019m not sure of the best way to label this as I try to identify something that\u2019s disturbing me. It has been disturbing me, ever since Hamas\u2019s attack on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli military action in Gaza, that so many Hamas\/Palestinian defenders have been calling the air strikes \u201cgenocide.\u201d\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":3753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[285],"class_list":["post-18629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-holocaust"],"yoast_head":"\nGeneric-ifying the Holocaust<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yeah, actually I'm not sure of the best way to label this as I try to identify something that's disturbing me. 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