How can you be 43 and not know who Hitler was and what he did?

[no_hypocrisy]

Last edited Mon Nov 21, 2022, 06:30 AM - Edit history (1)

My friend has a son who is 43. He is a single father (wife left him), only has a HS education, and is a driver for a transport company.

He was approached by coworkers in the warehouse who apparently are either Proud Boys or something like them. They started talking about nationalistic USA and were "envious" of his German heritage. They told him of all the good things Hitler (and Trump) did.

This guy is admittedly not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He listened. They sent him videos and texts and he looked at them. And he accepted it all without a filter.

It got to the point where he texted a photo of Hitler at Nuremberg to his aunt's husband, who is not only elderly and German, but grew up during the Nazi years in Germany. (He truly believed his uncle would be "pleased" with his interest in his German heritage.) The uncle's head flew off and really yelled at his "nephew".

His mother's father dropped out of HS at age 17 to enlist to fight the Nazis. (He was in the Second Battle of the Bulge.)

And when asked, the guy had no idea of Hitler, the Holocaust, the Nazi regime whatsoever. And I believe him. He IS that stupid.

And therefore, I wonder how he went K-12 without a single minute dedicated to Hitler, the Nazis, the concentration camps, the Jews, the Holocaust -- and what about his family? His father is the son of two German immigrants from the Twenties. His father said nothing to him?

This guy has transferred to a new location with a new warehouse, ironically in a region with a concentrated Orthodox Jewish demographic.

I don't get it. I just don't get it.

[Behind the Aegis]

1. "only has a HS education"

Asked and answered.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. I've been thinking about that, but

my parents (Jewish) didn't talk about Hitler and the Holocaust to me. In my K-12 experience, it was taught in Social Studies, History, and with news reels. Are textbooks scrubbed clean now?

[Behind the Aegis]

3. "Are textbooks scrubbed clean now?"

Depends on where you are. In some cases, yes, it is a footnote in history classes. Of course, there is also the shame some Jews have, self-loathing, that allows them to ignore what is happening or make excuses for it. The past few weeks have really exemplified that as well.

[hlthe2b]

13. Perhaps it is regional, but I've dealt with many who took whatever foundation and continued

learning throughout their lives so that they could go toe-to-toe in many areas of history or another topic with many who held doctorate degrees---especially those who were highly focused in a specific area.

Likewise, I've known many who graduated with some kind of degree who clearly learned nothing but brands of bourbon. Likewise many of the master's degree interns I've been asked to mentor in recent years or whose master's theses I've reviewed write at the sixth-grade level (or lower) and get passed along because no one has time to rewrite their entire work and what they did NOT learn in K-12 AND 4 years of "college" was insufficient to address the deficiencies themselves.

[JPPaverage]

14. So you're saying that "Only a H.S education"

Last edited Mon Nov 21, 2022, 01:12 PM - Edit history (1)

Makes him an idiot? Because if you are, that's why a lot of working class people turn away from the Democrats. My dad never finished high school, I "only" went to Junior College, and we were and are die hard Democrats. Union people, solid working class. And...we are typical British Isles heritage and know a lot about the holocaust. As a thinking, reasoning, and compassionate man, I hope it never happens again.

[reACTIONary]

22. +10 nt

[Ferrets are Cool]

27. This

[orthoclad]

28. THIS! This is why the working class

feels abandoned by the party, and THIS is how the oligarchy gets away with calling the left "elitists".

My father had ONLY a high school education. But back then, in interwar Europe, they taught calculus in grade school. So much for educational gatekeeping. How many modern college grads know calculus? He fled the Nazis and fought them, and taught me a love of learning, though he was ONLY a machinist.

There is a lot of disdain of people who work and get dirty, even from so-called liberals. A far cry from the days of FDR. How many of us fix our own plumbing, as opposed to calling a plumber? I hold multiple degrees, but I bought my first house as a weldor. And I call a plumber, because they KNOW MORE about their field than I do.

We must have solidarity with the proletariat against the oligarchy. They're steadily beating us.

[TigressDem]

33. Depends on the High School and what Reagonomics did to it here in the US.

I grew up in California and at 18 didn't realize HOW impactful Reagan's stupidity would be. I had not realized that all the horrible that happened to California schools was his doing along with Howard Jarvis and Prop 13 in 1978.

Prop 13 took away arts in the schools as unnecessary. It began the road to take away "free JR College" (The AA degree basically at a community college) for residents of California. It went from one of the BEST examples of public education to a piece of crap for people who couldn't afford the price of admission.

SOME of my education about the Holocaust was from the Diary of Ann Frank, which was not only something we read, but we watched a movie and even old news reels about the camps.

Schindler's List would be the more recent equivalent. I was never a WWII buff, but it seemed like learning about that part of history wasn't simply a part of school but a part of the whole American conversation. The idea of denying the Holocaust seems insane to me because there is so much "proof" and LIVING BREATHING PEOPLE WHO SURVIVED IT.

But my Dad was in Korean Conflict and I don't know the extent of that terror because he went there and came back not wanting to talk about it like a lot of soldiers do.

[OldBaldy1701E]

37. That is the accepted dialogue about those who did not go into crippling debt.

And, after spending 16 years in Land Surveying watching college kids mess everything up because they have zero experience, and working in a school for almost ten years and having to correct their idiotic mistakes while they earn many times what I did because they had a nice framed piece of paper that, I thought, meant that they were 'better educated' than I was.

Reality has a way of exposing the posers.

Also, after seeing the educational model that is commonly used, I do not wonder why some kids have no idea about the Holocaust. When the only concern is being able to memorize things and repeat them, it is no wonder that they have no idea what to do with such knowledge. Educators are quick to grade on by rote repetition, but few seem willing to discuss how to apply it to the students lives. Which is why there is no connection and why we get dangerous idiots like the two recently caught plotting to attack a synagogue. Without empathy, there is no understanding. With empathy, there is no corporate level greed. Wonder why they don't teach this stuff?

[raging moderate]

49. No! They are saying it's not his fault he didn't know.

When college-graduated Democrats say that somebody has only a HS education, they mean that maybe this person has not had the chance to learn about things like Hitler and his nazi thugs. This is not meant to blame people who did not go to college, only to blame their HS administrators, or maybe their HS teachers, who were supposed to tell them the basic things they needed to know, which would surely include the Holocaust where at least 11 million people of ALL ages, even infants and children, (including at least 6 million Jews) were herded into cattle cars with no food or water for days and crammed into death camps to be either horrifically gassed and burned to death or else slowly and sadistically tortured to death. Not to mention that Hitler's nazi regime treated all working class people as if they had no real rights except the right to worship Hitler with much the same fervor shown by Trump's worshippers.

I come from a long line of poor men and women who wanted to go to college but mostly had to work their heads off just to feed themselves and their families. My mother spent her few leisure hours educating herself, reading library books about history and geography and philosophy and math. And she shared what she learned with us and urged us to go to college. I was the first in my line to get a bachelor's degree, and then a master's degree (in a helping profession, speech therapy). Believe me, I know both sides of it. Yes, there are a few Democratic college graduates who are disdainful of working class people, but not many. Most Democrats have family histories full of working class people, and they are proud of these ancestors. That is why they are Democrats.

[PatSeg]

50. Most of the people in my family

only had a HS education and we are all very much aware of Hitler and the Holocaust. The stories have been a part of popular culture for decades - movies, TV shows, books, and magazines/newspapers. Growing up, one did not even need to hear about it in school, as we were exposed to it everywhere.

I am truly astounded that someone at the age of 43 never heard about Hitler and the Nazis. One would have to have been living in a bubble. That is absolutely alarming.

[IronLionZion]

51. My rural public high school taught us about the holocaust and WW2

Germans might be avoiding that topic but Americans should have learned it in school.

[murielm99]

4. Schools here have holocaust week, or

even holocaust month. The kids are taught about the Holocaust. The materials are good in most of the schools.

[sanatanadharma]

5. Educated after Reagan began the great republican disintegration of the USA

Educated after Reagan began the great republican disintegration of the USA.

[TigressDem]

34. + 1000 Prop 13 / California 1978 began the attack on education

more in post up thread.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. Back Story

My friend (father of "the guy" ) is the son of German immigrants who came to the US before Hitler in the Twenties.

He was raised in the Fifties and the Sixties. His family never mentioned Hitler and/or the Holocaust, save for telling him not to talk about it. They were vicariously ashamed of being German. Yes, they knew Hitler was evil, that the Nazis sent my friend's uncle to the Eastern Front to die for speaking against Hitler in German. But they just would not talk about it.

When I met my friend in the Seventies, *I* was the one who educated him on the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazis, Hitler, the camps for Jews and non-Jews, everything. A Jew educating a German. And he accepted it all with gratitude because now he knew.

BTW, my friend is a progressive liberal. Not at all the Trump-Humper. Trump sickens him like he does me.

[TigressDem]

35. Just goes to show that old saying, "We are only as sick as our secrets." IS STILL TRUE.

Germans were hated along with Hitler at that time, so keeping a low profile was self defense. I think the REICH wing knows that and actively recruits to "fill in that gap of knowledge with their propaganda".

Still, his kid dodged a metaphorical bullet because Grandpa flipped his lid.

I see blacks and Native Americans supporting tRump and it boggles my mind. HOW CAN THEY NOT KNOW? They have discrimination in their face on a daily basis. HOW CAN THEY NOT KNOW?


SOMETIMES knowing the truth is SO PAINFUL that parents try to spare their kids.

[elias7]

7. When I was aged 13 or 14, my father had me read Treblinka

[femmedem]

8. I can imagine thinking it was too horrific to ever mention to a kid

and trusting that he'd learn in school.

And I can also imagine it not being part of a school curriculum for the same reason. I'm not sure I learned about it in school--maybe from documentaries on TV? I remember watching Hogan's Heroes for a long time and not connecting it to anything like the Holocaust.

And I can imagine Florida passing a Never Say Nazi bill.

[multigraincracker]

9. Schools could add more info on WWII and the Civil War.

Born in the deep South, I sure see a lot of Confederate flags on trucks up here. Most of those, when asked, have never been south of Ohio.

[SouthernDem4ever]

19. Stupid is as stupid does

as Forrest would say.

[Ferrets are Cool]

30. I've lived in the deep South all my 66 years...

Most of those trucks wearing confederate flags will vehemently state that the Civil War was NOT about slavery, but rather economics. I've heard it many, many times. The others do it just to OWN the Libs.

[multigraincracker]

31. Slavery was the economy of the South.

The slave owners, except for a few officers, didn't do much of the fighting.

[sop]

45. I've been hearing that Civil War "economic" argument since I was in elementary school in Florida.

For many southerners it is/was an article of faith the Confederacy was simlpy trying to protect their "way of life" and "southern heritage." Schools glossed over the slavery part of the Civil War to maintain their illusions of "southern pride."

[Ferrets are Cool]

56. Yup

[IronLionZion]

53. I've lived in the cold north my whole life

and the people with absolutely no confederate heritage fly that flag because they are idiots and to own the libs.

[oldsoftie]

10. Where did he go to school? I'm not buying his claimed ignorance.

A lot of people will use that as an excuse. I grew up going to schools in the South; 3 different states. I knew exactly who Hitler was by the 4th grade.
Oh, "only a HS education" is no excuse for anything either; knowledge or success.

[no_hypocrisy]

11. A rural region of Passaic County in New Jersey.

[oldsoftie]

16. Well that makes even LESS sense! I fully expected a state down south

Where we weren't exactly 'leaders" in public education "back in the day"

[SouthernDem4ever]

21. I tend to agree

You have to be a real Ostrich with your head buried in dirt not to know.

[oldsoftie]

46. Unfortunately "willful ignorance" seems to be a "thing" these days too.

Not knowing something because you don't WANT to know. And that covers a lot of people & topics

[3Hotdogs]

29. I taught in two N.J. high schools. WW II and Holocaust was not part of curriculum in either

school. One was middle-upper middle suburban. I left in 1987. The second was inner city. I retired in 2006.

In the suburban district, there was one year of U.S. I. That went from Columbus to Appomattox. US II went UP TO WW II. But there were electives and one was Minority Studies. I taught that. We read, "The Confessions of Nat Turner," Uncle Tom's Cabin." "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee." Japanese internment was studied. Curriculum ws left to the individual teacher. I think I did a good job.


The urban school.... Semester courses. U.S. I and II. God knows we tried. I don't recall any of the topics included in those classes.


I guess the state of education was explained for me when, one day, some asshole from the N.J. Department of Ed. comes in to observe the school. This wanker, in his written evaluation, criticized the history curriculum because this was Admiral Perry Day and it was not mentioned over the school intercom. FUKKIN ADMIRAL PERRY. Now I'm sure he was a great leader and human being......

[hlthe2b]

12. That he didn't learn in school is abysmal, but I am quite certain I knew the truth of Hitler and

the Nazis from my parents, much of it from the earliest age possible. While I know it was taught in school, I am certain I already had some foundation--even in first grade and the details over the years. If, this guy had a grandfather who had fought Nazis at the Battle of Bulge and elsewhere--how is that possible that THEY did not discuss it? I think THAT question is a good one as well.

[Orrex]

15. I graduated from high school in Pennsylvania in 1989

The only time Hitler or the Holocaust was formally discussed was when we read Elie Wiesel's Night in Honors English. Certainly we had no in-depth discussion in any history class, which tended to stop at around the Spanish/American war.

My father was a history buff, and Patton was one of his favorite films (I believe it's the first film I ever saw, at the drive-in as an infant), so he talked about the subject fairly often. I also had friends who'd lost family members in the Holocaust, or whose families fled Europe to escape it. And occasionally it came up unofficially in discussions at school, like when a teacher talked about their trip to Europe, etc.

That's not to excuse your son's friend, but if he had only a HS education then I'm guessing that he didn't take any Honors courses, and he didn't have the opportunity to pursue the subject further in college.

[bucolic_frolic]

17. I encountered someone with a Masters who had never heard of Bastille Day

I mean it's celebrated worldwide particularly by those of French descent, and it's mentioned on the news annually. It's the French 4th of July so to speak. Some people are self-absorbed.

[SouthernDem4ever]

20. Let's hope the Masters wasn't in History

If so, that college needs a checkup.

[SouthernDem4ever]

18. I remember hearing about it from school, but mostly parents and news orgs

I know the holocaust was touched on in school but my outside information sources such as family ( my family isn't jewish ) and Network News of the 60's and 70's devoted much more time to the subject to make sure everyone understood what happened. What a difference a half of a century can make that can water down people's perception of history when their only news source is unchecked social media, mush rushballs and fux nooze. In the last 20 years the History Channel was a good source of information with shows devoted to the subject.

[Catherine Vincent]

23. He serks attention like many others (on the right)

I simply ignore them.

[David__77]

24. Patient political education is needed.

I’m such cases, not antagonism. The towering crimes provide a powerful education.

[dembotoz]

25. towards the back of the book and the class never reached it

History is always taught the same. french explorers, spanish explorers, chris columbus..blah blah blah. Every year every class the teacher would run out of time...Along comes May and just starting the civil war.
Every damn year....I would see the chapters in the text but we never got to them.

was there a reason? uncomfortable truths? I lived in Milwaukee which was rather german. In jr high and high school i learned German not Spanish. Conspiracy? I doubt it.

How did i learn? Born in 53 so there were still tons of ww2 movies...Some accurate, some not.
The big time bad guys were the russians...still are i guess. Some ww2 history would be brought in the explain all that.
My parents generation never really talked much about it. at least not while the kids were around.
Found out later as an adult that a family friend who endured the interment camps was actually a BIG time war hero. I never knew.

Advance another 50 years.....America gains more history to be taught. More stuff to be taught is same amount of time....
Hell they don't even show war movies anymore on memorial or veterans day....

could a kid make it thru high school being ignorant? Sure, why not.

[keroro gunsou]

52. Another Wisconsin education survivor here

Granted I was educated in private schools in tighty-whitey Waukesha county, my middle school from 6th to 8th nothing but US history, with at least one quarter each year devoted to Wisconsin history. There was the option to read “off book” historical topics like European, Asian, or Mezo-American history, the teachers encouraged it. When we got to the world wars, more emphasis was added on the world history of the conflict, not just America’s role in it, so we did touch on Hitler and the Holocaust. High school was 50/50 US and world history, but if you wanted to focus on one over the other, there were classes to do it. Independent projects were a big deal at my high school, especially in the AP classes.

We spent a full half of a semester on the Civil War my sophomore year, whereas my cousins in Texas barely spent a week on it when they were in high school. Fortunately, my cousins were smart enough to do research on their own, encouraged by their parents and me… and they suffered for it grade wise and socially.

My only complaint was some of the instructors were, as for a lack of a more polite way to say it, Christian zealots and tried to frame their lessons as a way to prove that their brand of Catholicism was the one true religion and everyone else were godless heathens. And they graded as such, much to mine and my parent’s annoyance. Whatever.

The subject of history, much like education as a whole, is a fucking joke in this country. We need national standards to educate and not indoctrinate obedient little drones/future republican voters.

[dembotoz]

59. given all the crt bullshit you would trust national standards?

i currently live in a wow county. Watching my school board i suspect they would really like to hang a velvet painting of jesus giving us the constitution in the school lobby.

[keroro gunsou]

60. If left in the hands

Of actual educators, yes. Politicians, not so much. The reality is, we missed our chance to impose national education standards, and now, the process will be so politicized it is almost giving the Reich-wing a brand new slap of red meat culture war bullshit to read their ignorantly intolerant base. I honestly don’t know when that tipping point was, but if we had those standards in place, Republicans, especially the recent crop of crazy motherfuckers wouldn’t even be elected city dog catcher. In fact, they might return to some sense of sanity and be a proper loyal opposition party. In my family, the crazy outnumbers the sane republicans so much that I can blame their lack of a proper education rather than abject stupidity. The republicans in my family that I consider sane are both highly educated and vote mostly on their pocketbook, not the culture war/religious wedge issues. Whether or not I can trace that to their actual education is still debatable, but for as long as I have been able to discuss politics with them, they focused on traditional republican issues in terms of taxes and government spending. They are pro-choice black sheep like me, not that we mind.

[raging moderate]

57. Yes. I have seen this happen.

Eventually, I learned to read the end of the history book on my own time. But then, my mother had already talked to us about some of the events described there, so I was set up to be interested in them.

[Joinfortmill]

26. It's been a long time since HS for me but

I don't think we had more than 2 sentences on the holocaust in World History. He might not have even taken World History or even Sociology. I got my education about WWII from movies, books and sometimes the news. My Dad was in WWII and saw the concentration camps first hand. So, yes he actually could have missed most of this history.

[twodogsbarking]

39. Everything you said. Same experience. I have been ranting about it for years.

[Ferrets are Cool]

32. Maybe there needs to be a popular video game that illustrates the reasons for WWII and

has bits of history sprinkled in unobtrusively. Maybe then they would learn about Hitler.

[mollie8]

36. Kids now

My grandson is a freshman in high school. We were talking this weekend and he said, "school is useless, they want to keep you ignorant." (He goes to a school in a rural community in NC.)

[NoMoreRepugs]

38. If the RePutinicans and Shitstains like DuhhSantis have control

the prospects for more bible indoctrination and less actual history being taught are a certainty IMO.

[Demobrat]

40. I graduated from HS without knowing anything about WW2

or the Holocaust. I went through the Chicago public school system. Must have skipped that class.

[ramapo]

41. Ignorance is celebrated

Some think it a badge of honor

[Harker]

42. As troubling as it is to think of an adult being ignorant of the Nazi regime...

it's the ones who know about it in detail and approve that worry me most.

[Ohioboy]

43. Someday it will be 43 year olds not knowing what slavery was in America

The Margorie Taylor Greenes of the world are working hard on that one.

[Ray Bruns]

44. Too much college football. Not enough fancy book learnin.

[The Jungle 1]

47. We should attack the issue. The issue is education.

Is it wrong to call an uneducated man stupid?
I worked in a large manufacturing plant for many years. Worked with an old Pennsylvania Dutch man. He had very little education. We made thousands of different parts. He could look at a print one time and remember every dimension.

Keep something in mind the right does not want people who have good cognitive thought skills. The right is actively working to destroy education in this nation. They do not want us to study our real history.

Some real American history.
Thirty-eight Native Americans were hanged on Dec. 26, 1862, as ordered by former President Abraham Lincoln, after the 1862 Dakota War. They were Sioux. Their bodies were dug up and used for medical experiments. Dr. William Mayo was responsible!
During the Vietnam war American soldiers walked around the compound with necklaces of ears. There were scalps taken.
Columbus was a filthy pedophile who worked also slaves to death. We should not be celebrating his filthy history.
None of that gets taught in school and I bet the vast majority of Americans do not know this history.

Just for the record I have no support for anything fascist hitler did. I just wish the family would have sat this man down and given him a history lesson.

[Marcuse]

48. My elementary school showed newsreels of emaciated bodies being bulldozed into a pit. Never forgot.

[Desert_Leslie]

54. Heads on Desks

I was fortunate enough in high school during the '70s to take "advanced" classes. We had great teachers. Students were really interested and engaged.

I took just one "nonadvanced" class. In the junior year of high school, all students took US history. During my US history class, I was really stunned to see students (nearly always guys) with their heads on their desks, sound asleep -- something I had never seen before. Even the teacher seemed bored to death. He droned on giving dry lists of dates and events.

My lifelong love of history was sparked by a college professor who sat on the edge of his desk and made world history come to vivid life. I'll never forget him talking about the Horde sweeping through Central Asia. Just wow.

I am not trying to fault teachers. Each and every one deserves a huge raise and all our gratitude.

We have so many great story tellers. We need a huge increase in history-based story telling. Instead of Batman #8 and Marvel #13 (Zzzzz ...), let's tell the HUMAN stories. Let's tell them every night on TV. Let's have multiple TV series bringing HISTORY to life.

(Sigh.) I know. I'm preaching to the choir here.

[Chainfire]

55. Education is not failing over the details of past events, it is failing because it doesn't teach

people to think for themselves. Education is not providing kids with a functioning bullshit meter. The Far right has used that to their advantage. For years they have pounded lies into the heads of people to the point that an exciting lie trumps a boring truth. The "Q" bunch illustrates that perfectly.

I started school in the late 1950s. There was not a lot of formal education about the WWII era, because our fathers lived it and they knew what Nazis were, and they universally despised them. Formal education today is being diluted by the informal education that comes from places like Fox or Twitter; unfiltered BS is given the same weight as a well documented study and the young people have not learned to separate the wheat from the chaff. Any talking head is an "authority."

It is hard for me to believe that anyone, who is not a sociopath, who knows what the Nazis were all about, could actually celebrate them, for the whole rotten system was the definition of evil.

[Texaswitchy]

58. Boomer here ...

We all family members who served in WW2.

In Texas schools we had World History and American History classes.

We all knew about Hitler.

The younger generation may not have similar history classes.

Still there was History Channel on cable.