My husband likes to relate a comment made by a young woman in a college class, she was commenting on a holocaust movie, said "oh, that didn't really happen, it was just a movie".
Re: the young lady
See the first paragraph under the heading "Our Failure, Our Duty"
(about half-way down) in this gem of a column by historian David McCollough at:
http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/2005/April/