Sunday, November 18, 2012

compulsory Holocaust studies?

Last week the Israeli Embassy called for making studies of the Jewish Holocaust during WW2 a compulsory subject in NZ secondary schools.  Webpage with video.

While a subject deserving of attention, the question becomes, if you make it compulsory study where do you stop?  As has been mentioned earlier, the Turks killed off 1.5 million Armenians over 1915-16, the forgotten Holocaust.  And the total number of people who perished under Stalin through the 1930s to mid 1950s comfortably exceeds that under Hitler.  In more recent times over a million Cambodians were disposed of under the Pol Pot regime in the 1970s.  And there are the hundreds of thousands slaughtered by both sides in the civil wars in Spain, Algeria and Rwanda.

The best approach is to make students aware of these things and encourage their own studies.

1 comment:

Lord K said...

Being an Israeli, a Jew, and a Holocaust victim's close relation, I totally agree with you. I'm deadly serious.