(Chalkbeat via JTA) — “Hey, I did have one question …” That was the tentative opening to an email I recently received from a high school teacher. The Ninth Candle, the Holocaust education organization I founded, had led some educational programs for her students, and the teacher and I had been trading emails for a few weeks.
Even teachers at schools with established Holocaust programs can be reluctant to get too close to the big questions about it. I sense a widespread but unspoken fear of being called insensitive or offensive — or worse, antisemitic. She only asked me her “one question” after a relationship had begun to form and she had my repeated reassurance that nothing was off the table.
The post The Holocaust is exaggerated in pop culture. That makes it hard for educators like me to teach the truth. first appeared on World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust & Descendants.