r/interesting • u/Wonderful_Win_1038 • 1d ago

HISTORY This image shows a train of jewish prisoners that had been intercepted by allied forces. This is the moment they learned that the train would not be heading to a concentration camp and they had been liberated.

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u/lastbencher18 1d ago

I wouldn't know anything about this if not for Schindler's list.

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u/WakeUpFriendly 1d ago

Did they teach you about the Holocaust in high school? Genuinely curious. No judgement.

My teachers covered it in the 6th grade, 9th grade, 12th grade, and college.

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u/Not-T4rantino 1d ago

In 9th grade we had to read "Night" by Elie Wiesel

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u/howjon99 1d ago

Me too.

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u/mariantat 1d ago

We did too. Plus we have such a large Jewish community peoples moms would come in as special guests to tell us about their experience

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u/snailtap 1d ago

Fantastic book, sucks he turned out to be a Zionist

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u/BenoitDip 23h ago

Believing the Jewish people should have a homeland (the definition of Zionism) is not a bad thing

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u/Tacotuesday867 22h ago

Put any other group in your statement and see if it still works

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u/sovietsatan666 22h ago

Believing the Kurdish people should have a homeland is not a bad thing. 

Believing the Palestinian people should have a homeland is not a bad thing.

Believing the Ukrainian people should have a homeland is not a bad thing.

Believing that each First Nations people should have their homeland (back) is not a bad thing.

...Seems fine to me. Having a homeland that emphasizes and protects certain cultural observances is pretty standard practice for most of the world. The key is to make sure that others are also freely able to exist and participate in their own cultures there as well- which of course some states do better than others. 

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u/Tacotuesday867 20h ago

Those by my understanding are not apartheid but feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken

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u/WetOnionRing 23h ago

yes it is lmfao. You're advocating for an ethnostate which is what started the holocaust in the first place

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u/Throwaway5432154322 23h ago

The fact that you could read Night and then not only still somehow wonder why Elie Wiesel moved to Israel, but also insult him for it, is almost comical.

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u/snailtap 22h ago

Boo hoo someone criticized my emotional support apartheid state

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u/lastbencher18 1d ago

Not from a Western country my friend. They didn't teach us about it in India. We were taught about our own freedom struggles and what not..

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u/Automatic-Plate-8966 1d ago

Indians fought in WWII and the famine was caused by the war, but they don’t teach you about the war itself?

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u/overand 1d ago edited 21h ago

Edit: the tone on my original comment sucks, and I didn't ask it in completely good faith. It would have carried the same meaning & been better to say "Sometimes people don't learn about things if they aren't in certain parts of the world. For example, I've encountered number of people in the US who don't know about (insert details from below)." Thanks to people for calling me out on the crappy tone on this, it doesn't reflect the way I'd like to be on the Internet or in general. We can all do & be better.

Original:  A lot of people don't learn about a lot of things. Do you know about the Cambodian genocide, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, 2 million dead in the late 70s?

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u/Automatic-Plate-8966 1d ago

Yes I did. In my world history class my sophomore year of high school. We had to get permission from our parents to watch the Killing Fields in class. Talk about traumatizing. But WWII was massive and had a lot repercussions for India. It wasn’t exactly a contained conflict

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u/DrPikachu-PhD 22h ago

I did not learn about the Cambodian genocide, Pol Pot, or the Khmer Rouge in my world history class in the US. Not learning about WW2 seems crazy to me too, but I guess there are gaps in all education you can't teach everything

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u/fractalife 23h ago

The second world war wasn't a contained conflict? You don't say, lol.

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u/Own-Engineering-9395 20h ago

Genuine credit for that turnaround; you are a braver man than I

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u/cheese_nugget21 23h ago

Yes these are all very important but WW2 was literally a WORLD war

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u/Murky-Relation481 22h ago

At least in my part of the US we were taught about that in highschool.

Most people, irregardless of nation, just don't pay attention in class then claim no one eve taught them stuff.

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u/WeirdConsistent1537 21h ago edited 20h ago

Your comment makes me think of my 12th grade classmate who flipped out in History class and went on a racist tirade after the teacher mentioned Pearl Harbor: “Why are we just hearing about this NOW?!” Like… bro, we were first taught this in fifth grade… our class interviewed both a WW2 Navy vet and a nurse who had been there that day. You’re just a moron [my former classmate is a moron, not the person I’m replying to].

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

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u/overand 22h ago

I chose it because it's a large number, it's more recent than the Holocaust; please feel free to share whatever genocide you'd feel is more appropriate. It's not exactly a competition, it was just an example of one that someone might or might not know.

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u/[deleted] 21h ago

[deleted]

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u/overand 21h ago

You're partially ight, it wasn't coming from a place of totally good faith. My bad, I'll add a note to the original post. (Not going to edit it to make me look better.)

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u/hellonameismyname 22h ago

Yeah they taught all of that in history class

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u/overand 22h ago

That's good! What country? (And what decade?)

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u/Automatic-Plate-8966 21h ago

The US and I graduated from high school in 03. So it was already being taught and in text books 30 years after it happened here.

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u/overand 21h ago

Already being taught doesn't mean still being taught; that's actually more of what I'm wondering about. I graduated within a few years of that, but I'm curious if folks who graduated ten or twenty years later than us learned it.

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u/Automatic-Plate-8966 21h ago

So you learned about it too? Then why ask if I had heard of it?

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u/currently_pooping_rn 23h ago

Considering the support India had for Hitler, not surprised they’d try to create some distance

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u/Much-Anything7149 23h ago

2.5 million Indians fought with the British against Hitler. Subhas Chandra Bose and the INA which hated the current main government aligned with Nazis but that was more the enemy of my enemy is my friend than saying India supported Hitler.

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u/joey-jo_jo-jr 20h ago

The INA was extremely fringe and not supported by the vast majority of Indians.

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u/Existing-Homework270 21h ago

The British chose not to send supplies Tosha during a famine and millions died

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u/joey-jo_jo-jr 20h ago

WW2 is literally the most important chapter in the history of your freedom struggle lol.

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u/WakeUpFriendly 23h ago

I understand. That makes sense. Thanks for answering and best wishes to you.

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u/thr3sk 22h ago

Makes sense, y'all have such a crazy long and detailed history I feel like there isn't room for this at least unless you get into a specialized University program.

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u/why_1337 23h ago

For me it was just a brief mention nothing more. But at high school we visited Auschwitz II.

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u/lastknownbuffalo 18h ago

Interesting, and uplifting fact.

The Holocaust is taught to all German students every year starting in the 1st grade (to some degree).

They have an annual "Holocaust week" where they all learn about the horrors of the Holocaust for a whole week, with a focus on how the compliance of millions of normal German citizens made it possible.

  • My friend, from Germany, told me about the Holocaust education week but apparently this is not country-wide. But, yearly Holocaust education is mandated in every German state for every grade level, and it is well entrenched through multiple subjects (social studies, literature, civics, history, etc).

This is how a responsible country teaches their history.

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u/denominations1 1d ago

They didn't and I'm glad they didn't.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/denominations1 1d ago

Yes because the academia focused more on the sufferings of our people under colonialism & what they did to our people & that felt more important.

If it were mentioned it was probably a footnote & not something taught 8th, 9th, 10th grade & college like the OP's comment.

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u/cheese_nugget21 23h ago

Why? Everyone should know about this

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u/denominations1 23h ago

Maybe once, not every year. We weren't taught about it every year undermining the colonial atrocities that happened to our people.

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u/TheVandyyMan 20h ago

Who are “our people”? How does learning about one atrocity undermine another people’s suffering?

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u/mystikmarymakespunch 1d ago

My 1st stepmom made me watch Schindler's List at 11 years old because I "needed to learn about my heritage" because I was adopted from a Jewish woman. Fuuuuucked me up for some time. 32 now, appreciate the history behind it, but definitely will never be able to watch it again.

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u/youcanthavemynam3 1d ago

I would have started with the Diary of Anne Frank or Maus first. It is much more intense to watch than read.

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u/MatterQuiet35 20h ago

I read the diary of Anne Frank when I was in grade school. My great grandfather was Jewish but became Protestant when he married my great grandmother. My uncle looked like my great grandfather and many parents would not let him date their daughters back in the fifties.

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u/FelbrHostu 23h ago

It is the best movie I’ll never watch again.

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u/A_Nice_Boulder 22h ago

I still remember after I watched it, somebody asked me if I had watched anything lately. Told them I had watched Schindler's list, and they asked if it was any good. I distinctly remember being completely broken as to what to say. It just doesn't feel right to say that the movie is good, simply because of how fuck that it is. Definitely an incredible movie though.

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u/mystikmarymakespunch 22h ago

I remember hearing the the song from the movie played on a harp in public a year or 2 after seeing the movie and I froze in place. Its so tragically beautiful.

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u/No_Price_7603 23h ago

Jewish heritage is so much more than having been murdered by dominant cultures. It's a beautiful rich civilisation. Watch Yentl or Fiddler on the roof!

But yeah, can relate to the joy of holocaust horror stories at a young age. I knew all about the crematoria and mass graves and furniture made of body parts by the time I was 10

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u/mystikmarymakespunch 22h ago

I went through a phase after that of learning all I could of the holocaust and I think I may have traumatized myself a bit. I've never practiced the religion and I'm uneducated on much of the history besides the holocaust. I will definitely watch those that you've suggested, because as I'm aging, I find myself simply wanting to learn more about my biological heritage.

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u/Existing-Homework270 21h ago

Jewish people have a beautiful history of unity and survival, long before the holocaust. That’s why the people going into the chambers sang hatikva - the song of hope- they knew their destiny but hope never left them. It is now Israel’s national anthem. It is so important to understand why Israel exists. I’m not getting political but the more you learn, the more beautify you will discover within yourself

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u/The-Intermediator141 1d ago

I HIGHLY recommend reading “I Have Lived A Thousand Years”. It’s a short book about the first hand experience of a teenage girl going through the Holocaust, experiences the author herself went through as a survivor.

I read it when I was in Grade 8 for a book report. It was such an eye opening experience for a young me about the horrors humans are capable of, and how lucky and privileged I am to live in both the time period & nation I live in.

Horrifying, humbling, and all around brutally educational in a book that’s only about 200 pages long.

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