Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Emergence of Holocaust Education in American Schools, by Thomas D. Fallace. 2008

Open-Ended Inquiry, Huh? Holocaust as Indoctrination: Just Who is Teaching the Holocaust in Accordance With Predetermined Answers?

This book includes interesting information. For instance, 120 million Americans saw SCHINDLER”S LIST. (p. 113). Not mentioned is the fact that it presented the totally false accusation that Poles cheered the deaths of the Jews (the mendacious Goodbye Jews! scene).

THE JEWISH MONOPOLIZATION OF THE TERM HOLOCAUST

Author Fallace writes, “Finally, there has been a great deal of public debate surrounding the definitional uniqueness of the Holocaust. Does the Holocaust refer solely to the murder of Jews, or does the term include the other victims of Nazi persecution such as Gypsies (Roma), homosexuals, Russian POWs, Poles and other Eastern Europeans?” (p. 78).

The author does not go far enough. The second-class status, of all non-Jewish genocides, relative to the Jews’ Holocaust, is now reflected by the very terminology that we use (e. g, Cambodian Holocaust, Armenian Holocaust, Black Holocaust, Irish Holocaust). It implies that non-Jewish genocides are imitation Holocausts, while the Jews’ Holocaust is THE Holocaust.

JEWISH INFLUENCE

Fallace comments, “The uniqueness claim emerged as the Holocaust shifted to the center of both the Jewish consciousness and educational agenda.” (p. 78). No kidding.

HOLOCAUST PREEMINENCE: NO WAY THAT THE HOLOCAUST CAN SIMULTANEOUSLY BE JEWISH SPECIFIC AND “UNIVERSAL” AT THE SAME TIME

Dressing up the Holocaust in an Orwellian garb of “universalism”, done to deflect arguments about its usurping of the mantle of victimhood, does not work. Although author Thomas D. Fallace does not put it this way, he makes it obvious that this is the case. He writes,

“Teaching of the Holocaust as history had curricular problems as well. On one end of the spectrum, it was clear that placing too much emphasis on Jewish victimization would belittle the suffering of other ethnic groups. On the other hand, attributing the Holocaust to an ‘ecumenical evil’, as William Styron had suggested, would deemphasize the uniqueness of the Jewish experience under the Nazis. Such a universal approach, historian Yehuda Bauer argued, was historically inaccurate. The New York City curriculum made an AWKWARD COMPROMISE by studying the Holocaust through the lens of genocide.” (p. 42; Emphasis added). Awkward indeed!

VICTIMHOOD COMPETITION: THE FIGHTING IRISH VS. THE JEWS

What about teaching on the Irish potato famine (otherwise known as the Irish Holocaust)? A Jewish Holocaust survivor tried to belittle the genocide of the Irish by suggesting that “‘The Irish could get on ships and emigrate, not the Jews.'” (p. 106). [Tell that to the millions of Irish that starved.]

An assemblyman complained that teaching about the Irish Holocaust would open the floodgates of mandated ethnic history in the classroom. (p. 106). In other words, Jews count, and others don’t.

I have heard the following: Calling it the Irish famine is like calling the Jews’ Holocaust the “Jewish Oxygen Famine of 1939-1945”. Well said!

THE OLD SAW: PROMOTING TOLERANCE

In this book, as in so many others on this subject, we hear, over and over again, the bromide that would have us believe that the Holocaust must be taught in order to promote tolerance. Lost in all this is the irony of the fact that the Jewish-monopolized Holocaust is ITSELF a form of intolerance. We are supposed to be teaching tolerance by promoting a form of intolerance of non-Jewish genocides in the classroom! Why can’t the Cambodian Holocaust be employed to “teach tolerance”? Or any and all genocides?

GERMAN GUILT DIFFUSION: SHIFTING THE BLAME FOR THE HOLOCAUST FROM GERMANS AND ONTO POLES

The built-in Polonophobia and anti-Christian character of Holocaust education are long-standing. Author Fallace refers to the 1983 New Jersey THE HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE: AS SEARCH FOR CONSCIENCE–A CURRICULUM GUIDE, as follows, “But they did receive criticisms from other groups, including Polish Americans, Turkish Americans, Armenian Americans, the homosexual community, and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. The Polish Americans objected to the way that the curriculum allegedly portrayed Poles as [what else?] anti-Semitic and as supportive of the Jews murders [what else is new?] The Catholic group protested the depiction of Pope Pius XII and the inclusion of certain articles that implied the Church’s role in the Holocaust.” (p. 86).

IRONIC ACCUSATIONS OF THE PREVENTION OF OPEN-ENDED INQUIRY AND OF INSTILLING PREDETERMINED ANSWERS

Parts of this book stress that teaching about the Holocaust should not be a list of facts to memorize, repeat on a test, and then forget. It should be all about the use of independent thinking. Sounds nice, but is that so?

This section of my review focuses on how Jews control the narrative. Author Fallace surveyed the studies of Simone Schweber. (pp. 148-149). She had critically zeroed-in on the Holocaust as understood by what she had called fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Jews. [Note that “fundamentalist” is a prejudicial buzzword in academia.]

Simone Schweber complained about a Christian teacher, Ms. Barrett, focusing on how Christians could be persecuted just as Jews had been, “instead of focusing on the role of Christians in orchestrating or tolerating the persecution of German Jews.” (p. 148). This is a clear “Have you stopped hitting your wife?” premise, as it implies the correctness of the predetermined answer (in fact, standard Holocaust meme) that Christians and Christianity are to blame for the Holocaust. This entrenched bias, in turn, is a manifestation of the PEDAGOGIKA WSTYDU (politics of shame) in action.

Schweber then turns her attention to the teaching of the Holocaust, by Mrs. Glickman, at an Orthodox Jewish school. (pp. 148-149). Schweber complains about students arriving at the “predetermined conclusion” that the Holocaust was the outcome of God’s unfathomable will. In doing so, Schweber is herself tacitly promoting the predetermined conclusion that “God’s unfathomable will” is an unacceptable conclusion, and that one of the “correct” predetermined conclusions is the atheistic one–that continued belief in God, in the face of the Holocaust, is untenable.

Finally, all the complaints about “open ended inquiry” and “predetermined conclusions” are deliciously ironic because the shoe is so very much on the other foot. The so-called “open ended inquiry”, of today’s Holocaust education, must scrupulously avoid taboo topics such as: The long history of German supremacism and barbarism, the racist aspects of Jewish thinking and the centuries of hatred that it provoked, and the objectionable conduct of influential Jews in Weimar Germany.

Thus, standard Holocaust education is indoctrination, not only because of its inordinate focus on Jewish victimhood, but also because it stifles open-ended inquiry about the causes of the Holocaust.

ENLISTING THE POWER AND PRESTIGE OF THE HOLOCAUST TO ADVANCE  LEFT-WING AGENDAS

Author Fallace complains that the fundamentalist teachings of the Holocaust were not promoting multiculturalism or inspiring social action. (p. 148). These are leftist code words, and their use implies that “proper” Holocaust education should promote the left-wing agenda.

——-

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM IN LEADING ENGLISH-LANGUAGE NEWSPAPERS

Is this a zero-sum game? Well, it is close enough:

[In Canada, UK, and the USA. Based on search of the PROQUEST NEWSTAND database, covering July 3, 2007–July 3, 2017. Using these respective keyword combinations: (Roma or Romani or Sinti or Gypsy or Gypsies) genocide; (“Great Famine” and Ukraine) or Holodomor; Armenian Genocide; “Holocaust” or Shoah]:

MENTIONS OF THE GENOCIDES APPORTIONED:

NEWSPAPERS….GYPSIES….UKES….ARMENIANS…..JEWS

Toronto Star………..16………..30……….103………..1,357

Globe and Mail……..14………..39 ………103………..1,369

Montreal Gazette…..11………..14…………95………..1,876

——-

The Sun……………….3………….0…………24………..1,235

Daily Mail……………10………….7………….50………..2,392

Evening Standard……3………….2………….18………….630

——–

Wall Street Journal…..0………….3………..110………..1,098

New York Times……..32………….8………..245………..4,654

USA Today …………….5………….0………….23………….365

NOTE: The virtual monopoly of Jews and the Holocaust is even more severe than appears from the table above. This, in the case of the Canadian newspapers, owes the skewing effects of the large numbers of politically-active Ukrainians in Canada. The Armenian genocide is also more prominent than seems because of the “bump” in publicity surrounding the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide (2015) and the ongoing Turkish-counterclaim controversy.