Alligator Auschwitz?
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Sobibor were the ones I was taught about.
Then again, I was in high school from '78 to '82 so that history was a lot more close and relevant. I actually knew kids whose parents had survived the camps.
Shit was hella real.
I was taught about all of these about twenty years after you, except for Sobibor. We did focus mostly on Auschwitz and Dachau. We learned about Auschwitz every year I was in elementary and middle school beginning in first or second grade. We still had survivors speaking at schools into the late '90s.
Well, now I'm embarrassed. I'm from Europe and I can only name one... Other Europeans who can just list these camps?? Is it common knowledge for non-americans?
Honestly I think it pretty weird considering my own (US) education taught us about the camps. Auschwitz was a particular focus for whatever reason but we also learned Mauthausen and others. To be fair I've also been to Auschwitz and our elementary school had an assembly where survivors talked to us.
Auschwitz was a particular focus for whatever reason..
It was the largest and most streamlined of murder mills the NAZIs built. It also had a notorious sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" over it's entrance gate (which was on many of the mill gates, honestly) which means "work makes you free." A particular point of of the darkest irony considering the mills literally forced people to work with such cruelty that their only freedom from the abuse and torture was death.
NGL, it could be easier to get us back to that point and echo those horrors now, more than it's been since the end of the Second World War.. Generational amnesia - what with the liberating soldiers and victims of the camps themselves now mostly dead - being what it is.
Our great-grandparents saw and survived some hella fucked up shit.
My grandparents generation. Grandpa and grandma survived Churchill's famines in India, the independence and separation from Pakistan, and various other events.
The problem is the fucked up shit never stopped.
So very, very true.
I've read Anne Frank's Diary, I've been to the Museum Of The Second World War in Gdansk, visited similar museums in Germany, been to several historical WW2 sites in Germany, so I have definitely read and heard about other camps. But I have probably never thought much about the names of the camps.
If I would have time to think, I would be able to recall 2-3 of them. They are still a part of the games/movies/etc. So nothing what you can only stumble upon some dusty boring schoolbook.
Nearly half of young Americans can’t name a single Holocaust site
It is not "antisemitic". That's ok to not knowing details of some shit happened a century ago on the other side of the planet. I also don't know anything about whatever might happened in Southern America.
honestly the main reason more come to mind now is because of the direction the us has been going.
Considering how fond USA has become of the nazis recently (again), I think you're wrong. It's absolutely important to get history consistently hammered into your skull, or some dipshit is going to abuse the ignorance of the people.
And to add, it's not like it's really that distant history. My grandfather fled the nazis when his brothers were sent to a work camp.
A recent study showed over 60% of American adults read below an 8th grade level. So no, it’s not shocking that their children can’t name a concentration camp. This is the intended outcome of gutting education budgets. Keep people ignorant and they’ll believe whatever you tell them. They won’t recognize authoritarianism because they were never taught history in the first place.
It's even worse, it's 6th grade
https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics
When I worked in journalism we were instructed to write at a 6th grade level or less...
...this was 20 years ago and I can't imagine it has improved.
Why should they? They have been systematically blindsided in school regarding history. Especially about right-wing crimes, and suppression of minorities.
Young adult Americans.
Meaningless detail. Better test young people for knowledge of the holocaust itself, or the fact that the current abysmal situation in Near East is a direct consequence of it.
Better test young people for knowledge of the holocaust itself
There's no way to teach the Holocaust without taking about places like Auchwitz. Ergo someone who can't name a single death camp by proxy barely knows anything about the Holocaust.
the fact that the current abysmal situation in Near East is a direct consequence of it.
Not really, no. The Zionist project was already in full swing by 1939, and the events of the Holocaust only really contributed PR and marginally more people to it. Of all the factor behind the eventual success of the Zionists and the creation of Israel, none depended in any critical way on the Holocaust.
Yet another sign the American education system is a joke. I know of Treblinka and Auschwitz mainly because a long running substitute teacher was the nephew of someone who died in Auschwitz.
How many temporary constructions from 80 years ago do you know the name of?
Ah, an American.
Ah, somebody that claims baseless bullshit.
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