Category: Auschwitz

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A Lot of Millennials Don’t Know What Auschwitz Is, so Oregon Is Requiring Schools to Teach About It

As the saying goes, if we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. One of the bleakest chapters of our history is the genocide of Jewish and other peoples during World War II, known as the Holocaust. Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis, as well as over 5 million people with disabilities, people who were gay or lesbian, and Roma people (again, among others).

But as time goes on, events fade from memory. For example, a 2018 study conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany showed that 66% of millennials did not know what Auschwitz was, and that two-thirds either hadn’t heard of the Holocaust or weren’t sure they’d heard of it.

If you’re one of those people: Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp complex, and 1.1 million people died there, including almost 1 million Jews.

Claire Sarnowski, a 14-year-old, introduced the law in Oregon. She was motivated by her friendship with Alter Wiener, a Holocaust survivor who died in December 2018. According to The Oregonian, Sarnowski didn’t want history to repeat itself.

“Learning about genocide teaches students the ramifications that come with prejudice of any kind in society,” she said.

What are the consequences of not remembering our history? According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise. In 2018, they recorded 1,879 anti-Semitic incidents, including the deadliest attack on Jews in the history of the United States: the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

According to the new Oregon law, schools must teach “the immorality of the Holocaust, genocide, and other acts of mass violence.” The law goes into effect for the 2020-2021 school year.

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The Auschwitz Memorial Actually Had to Ask Visitors to Stop Taking “Playful” Selfies

File this under “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

You’d think that when visiting a place that will be indelibly associated with the absolute depth of human suffering and cruelty, people would take it seriously. And yet, I guess we can’t be too surprised by how insensitive people are.

The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland is a site where over 1 million people were murdered during the Holocaust. I had the opportunity to visit it as a young lad with my parents, and the feeling you get there is indescribably sad. Indeed, the very air around the place is still thick with the misery of all those lost souls, to the point that even decades after my visit I still start to choke every time I think of it.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that visitors have been posting inappropriate photos from Auschwitz to social media, the memorial site had to put a tweet out admonishing that kind of ridiculous behavior.

The infamous train tracks of Auschwitz carried untold numbers of people to their deaths, and to see people acting this way has upset many. People on Twitter were taken aback by the trend and weighed in with their own opinions.

The Auschwitz Memorial later added these tweets.

If you’re visiting a place where unfathomable atrocities took place, have some respect and be aware enough not to take cute selfies. Thank you.

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