Posted on 11/28/2004 7:13:51 AM PST by SJackson
For what it´s worth: When I lived in the US for a year, I had a highschool junior drawing swastikas in my yearbook, just because I was "German". He didn´t mean to insult me by this, he just connected the swastika to Germany because of the movies. He didn´t even KNOW what it STANDS for. I´d make a point for the US youth being much more ill-informed about this than the German youth (you remember the other quote from this thread, were a US mom said that the German exchange student she had was very well informed about this subject?).
As for your links:
How does this prove your point?
In teaching German the topic is frequently found in classroom reading, mainly in the age group 11 to 15. The best know books are e.g. "Damals war es Friedrich" for the lower grades, of course "Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank" and others like "Ich trug den gelben Stern". . Sometimes you will find the use of comics: Spiegelman`s "Mouse" and Bedürftig / Kalenbach`s "Hitler", which is also used in history lessons. Other Subjects
In other subjects the holocaust is a theme also, but rather in special projects like Schneider's teaching module about "Schindler`s List", which integrates ethical educa-tion, film analysis and English language teaching.
http://www.civiced.org/german_conference2000_boge.html
It rather proves mine, doesn´t it?
As for the other links (I checked all of them, but don´t have the time to respond to each one in detail): There´s some info in it that´s correct, as for instance the OLDER generation not being to eager to talk about this subject, but if you read it closely, you will find out that your initial statement "The holocaust is not being taught in Germany" can not be made. For instance, the once link you provided had a German exchange student in California comparing THE WAY the holocaust was taught (in Germany: very matter of factly, in the US focusing on individual suffering), but not stating that it wasn´t taught at all in Germany. That of course is also very dependant on the teachers themselves, my world history teacher in the US had less of a clue about the holocaust than I had, a then 16 year old student from Germany...
From on of your links:
49 percent approve of the German parliament decision to authorize the building of a national Holocaust memorial in Berlin, and 27 percent disapprove. Support is highest among young people, of whom 55 percent approve of the memorial with a disapproval level of only 18 percent. In general, the older the respondent, the more likely they are to express negative attitudes toward Jews and other minorities. There are consistent correlations in the poll between higher levels of education and lower levels of prejudice
Doesn´t this rather suggest that something is being done RIGHT in educating the young people?
I am not quite sure why you linked the "Deutsches Historisches Museum" article (www.dhm.de), as the info it provides doesn´t seem relevant to this topic (though it´s very interesting and true).
As for the link to the "game that shifts blame on WWII on Poland": Sorry to be blunt: This is one of the stupidest arguments I have ever heard in my whole life. The article at the link provided by you knows NOTHING about the game itself and PC games in general. I am an avid gamer, so let me help out: First of all, the game was NOT programmed in Germany, but somewhere in Eastern Europe (heck, it might even have been Poland, but I think it was in the Czech Republic or Russia). It is only published by German publisher CDV. I have read about the "blaming it on Poland" thing only on FR, and German public is hyper sensitive to something like this. I have NOWHERE read HOW the game "shifts the blame" on Poland, and I´d be really intersted in how it´s supposedly done. Can you help here? I know that this is a "big market" title, so the company would have to be crazy to jeopardize it by a "blame the war on Poland strategy". The only thing I can think of is sort of a mission briefing before the game starts, with some Nazi officer telling the player that "the Poles have attacked our radio station at Gleiwitz, we must take revenge" (the original "excuse") to remain "in character". I don´t know however.
I did a search and came up with a discussion on this, half of it in English. It is very much like I expected it to be:
http://www.cdv-board.de/deutsch/showthread.php?threadid=19249
In 1994 (?) American company SSI had an even bigger commerical success with the game "Panzer General", which let you assume the role of a German general and let you conquer the whole world, even letting you park your panzers at Pennsylvania Avenue in the last mission. The game was probably the best selling strategy title ever. Care to enlighten me about the difference between the two games? Oh, now I remember another detail. The game actually got BANNED in Germany, because you could WIN WW2 as Germany. Not so in the US or Poland however.
To make my point: Just go out in the streets and ask an average US citizen/pupil the questions asked by the Jewish poll in your link, and judging from my experience, you might be very surprised. I am quite sure that none of the people I met at highschool would have known the exact six million figure.
No matter what info I send you, you will insist you are right. So be it then.
Live in your delusions...believe what you want to believe.
Delusions, delusions...
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=53&story_id=3131&name=%27Stumbling+blocks%27+mark+the+Holocaust
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