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To: Windsong

"yawn"

I do not understand your indifference? Are you human?


5 posted on 04/09/2005 9:48:40 PM PDT by rawhide
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To: rawhide
"yawn" I do not understand your indifference? Are you human?

Other than the possibility of being a troll, there's also the possibility that the sheer concept of millions of people being exterminated to attempt genocide is so far beyond a lot of people's concept that tossing such numbers around either numbs or approaches irrelevance.

I found the same thing with most of the classes I taught, until I came up with something to convey the point

At the beginning of a class, at the start of a Holocaust unit, I run a little math problem past the students: If a sheet of paper has 4 columns of names, and each name has 54 lines (which is about right for a standard 8.5X11 sheet of paper), how many sheets of paper would it take to list 6 million names? With 500 sheets in a ream, how many reams? With 10 reams to a case, how many cases?

After they come to the realization that it would take a little more than 5.5 cases, I hand them sheets of paper with, yes, 4 columns, 54 lines printed on them. As they leave the classroom, they get to drop the papers into the top of a half-full case of paper.

Oh, the names? No, I don't know that many names. Instead of names, I have printed,

This was someone's mom.

This was someone's brother.

This was someone's uncle.

This was someone's dad.

This was someone's sister.

. . . and so on.

Most stop looking at the Holocaust from a bored, detached viewpoint after that.

35 posted on 04/10/2005 5:15:01 AM PDT by Quiller
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