Auerbach Central Agency for Jewish Education

Holocaust Resources

Articles

Talking to Children About the Holocaust
by Josey G. Fisher

Based upon "Teaching Tolerance" by Josey G. Fisher, Dimensions: The Magazine of Jewish Lifestyle in South Florida, Winter 1997

"Mommy, would Hitler have liked me?"

This was asked by a seven-year-old at bedtime, seemingly out of nowhere. As parents and teachers we should be prepared for such unexpected questions, but somehow we never are.

Questions about the Holocaust can touch a nerve in Jewish parents and educators. Children’s questions not only demand information from us, they also require us, as adults to grapple with our own complex reactions, so that we feel equipped to answer them.

Part of us wants to protect them from overwhelming details with which we ourselves may struggle. Part of us may fear that our answers will turn children away from a positive Jewish identification; if this is what it meant to be Jewish. If the Holocaust is difficult for us to understand, how can we possibly explain it to children?

We delude ourselves if we believe that our children will not learn about the Holocaust from other sources - the media, a friend who is the grandchild of survivors, an adult they know with a number tattooed on his arm. Current events reinforce this: neo-Nazis, deniers of the Holocaust, the rise in antisemitic incidents among young people, racist turmoil in Europe. Whatever our own conflicted feelings, avoiding children’s questions leaves them vulnerable to distortion and information taken out of context. We leave our children unprotected if we leave them unprepared. Yet our struggle to respond can sometimes result in giving too much information, or too little.

Emotional and Cognitive Development
"So what should the parent say?" we ask. "Or the teacher?"

Children themselves give us the answer. Their emotional and cognitive development informs us of what concerns they have and what kind of information they can process at each developmental stage. If we answer the questions, including those of young children, on the level of which they ask, our answers might help them understand - as much as they can or need at that time. This is a gradual process.

We might break down the questions children ask developmentally in the following way and let this be our guide to our answers:

• Would it happen to me?
• What could I do to get out of it?
• How could this have possibly happened?
• What can I do to keep something like this from happening again?

Younger Children
Younger children can and should know that the Holocaust occurred, but in a manner that does not terrify them. They are well versed in the format of the hero (or young person like them) who faces an enemy (or a problem) but overcomes it in the end. We teach the stories of Purim, Hanukkah and Passover which, for young children, reinforce their belief in overcoming odds. This tells us that the Holocaust might be comprehensible on this level for the younger child - that, as we are told, there may be a Haman or a Hitler in each generation, but the Jewish people as a whole have survived. To go further might propel the child into unbearable anxiety – that this could happen to them or their parents or their family. When a young child defends himself by putting evil at a distance, we should not push.

Children can be receptive to the painful issues of the Holocaust if the presentation, context and their developmental stage are respected. This enables them to achieve a sense of mastery over material that might otherwise be immobilizing or distance them from their heritage.

These early years present the opportunity to put the Holocaust into perspective through a strong foundation in the richness and diversity of the Jewish people. The Holocaust cannot and should not be the focus either of Jewish learning or of Jewish identity. Rather, it is the study of Jewish history and the formation of Jewish identity which permit our children to learn from the event rather than be defined by it.

The evolution of Jewish identity is gradual, reinforced by the strength of the history and tradition, reinforced by Jewish teaching at home as well as synagogue and school. Fortified by this foundation, the child’s growing comfort in a group identity as well as an individual identity is consolidated.

Grade School Children
Grade school children are better able to hear about some of the harsh realities, but must learn as well accounts of Jewish resistance and examples of help and rescue by non-Jews. The first offers models of fighting back; the second sustains a necessary kernel of hope and trust in mankind. Stories about families or children protected by surrogate caretakers are less threatening than those which tell of children separated from their parents. This age group may not be cognitively ready for the history itself, but they can learn different aspects of the Holocaust experience through the stories of individuals, especially children like themselves.

Adolescents
It is not until children reach early adolescence that their capacity to understand history is formulated and that sequence of events and causality begin to make sense. When we hear them demand, in confusion or in anger, "How could the Holocaust possibly have happened," we know they are ready for historical information. In addition, detailed personal accounts of survival, of resistance and of rescue, personalize the statistics and offer a window into the experience.

While painful historical information can be introduced at this time, accentuating the evils and the atrocities can be counterproductive. Graphic archival footage, taken by the Germans for their own records or by the Allied liberators to document the dehumanized genocide, can paralyze the learning process. Adolescents may better focus on experiences which relate to their own concerns, including separation from parents by force or by choice, fighting back through spirited resistance ranging from using false papers to writing poetry to sabotage.

They are developmentally able to understand the complexities of human behavior and of individual choice. And they are better able to commit themselves to learning from the past in order to protest current injustice.

The issue of God’s role in preventing evil can also be viewed within a developmental orientation. Younger children view God as an all powerful parental figure intervening on the side of the just. The older child gradually establishes a more complex perspective. But the questioning persists throughout the lifetime of the individual.

At all states of development, children need the security of an environment which permits questions and reactions, and to know that adults can provide a model for their exploration.

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Holocaust education in both public and private schools has escalated in the United States in the past few years, spurred by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and spearhead by the education commissions in various states to mandate or recommend its teaching.

The American prism in Holocaust education is distinct and directly related to both its values and concerns. The American role in combating Nazism, liberating the concentration camps and participating in the Nuremberg Trials, emphasizes its leadership in preserving world democracy.

At the same time, questions regarding the inaction of governmental leadership to rescue and provide safe haven for those persecuted by the Nazis, reinforce our obligation to safeguard and enact our democratic ideals. Educational themes of respect for differences and individual responsibility to protect others are integral to most American Holocaust curricula.

It has become increasingly evident to Holocaust educators that for students to learn the significance of such enormous loss, they must learn about the people rather than statistics. Memoirs and oral histories as well as diaries, letters, poetry, art and music from the Holocaust years, enrich our appreciation of the human dimension. Survivor speakers as well as liberators and witnesses confirm the reality to each who hears them.

Jewish American students may be learning about the Holocaust from the dual perspective of both secular and Jewish schools. They may find these two perspectives merging. Yet, there is an increasing focus in the secular sphere on presenting the Jews as a people and as individuals, thus, humanizing the Holocaust. There is increasing teaching in Jewish schools on the Righteous Among the Nations, those who could not be bystanders; reinforcing the positive potential of human nature and the importance of individual choice.

Jewish children who enter this sphere from a standpoint of positive identity and knowledge base, have the tools to evaluate human and political behavior in a post-Holocaust world and direct their energies toward tikkun olam. In the words of Maya Angelou, "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."

Artwork: "Arrival in Theresienstadt" 1942
Drawing by child artist Helga Weissova, 1929 -