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

Understanding and Teaching Holocaust Education, by Paula Cowan and Henry Maitles. 2017. SAGE Publications Ltd, London and California

Doctrinaire Holocaust Supremacy in Holocaust Education: All Other Genocides Marginalized. De-Judaization of Holocaust? Scrupulous Judeocentrism

The authors of this book make some revealing comments and some whoppers. I focus on some of them.

WHY HOLOCAUST EDUCATION IN THE FIRST PLACE? THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Cowan and Maitles strike a raw nerve as they raise the following unwelcome issue, “It is far more likely that due to alternative perceptions of Jews and the Holocaust that schools will teach the Holocaust cautiously. One of these perceptions is that Holocaust Education encourages young people to be sympathetic to Jews, and to Israel, and that Holocaust Education is promoted by Jews for this specific purpose. This may be underpinned by ignorance, prejudice or political and/or racist ideology. Nonetheless, it emphasizes the controversial nature of school-based Holocaust Education.” (p. 27).

The bitter reaction of the authors to this forbidden truth speaks volumes. Maybe the dumb goyim are finally catching on. It also leads to other uncomfortable questions, such as “Why do Jews enjoy the special right of having classroom attention and sympathy for their genocide, while other victims of genocide do not?”

I thought that the West’s schools were bastions of pluralism, diversity, and inclusion. Evidently, when it comes to genocides, they are anything but.

HOLOCAUST EDUCATION ITSELF IS NOT ENOUGH. IT MUST SCRUPULOUSLY REMAIN STRONGLY JUDEOCENTRIC

But wait. It gets even better. So what that the Holocaust rules the classroom? That is not good enough for some gatekeepers of Holocaust supremacism. Cowan and Maitles repeat the following farcical complaints, “Is it easier to teach the Holocaust when Jews are not the principal victims?...Has de-Judaization of the Holocaust contributed to the popularity of Holocaust Education, or has the mainstreaming of Holocaust Education contributed to the de-Judaization of the Holocaust?” (p. 144).

De-Judaization of the Holocaust, huh? You can’t make this stuff up! It is like complaining that water is not wet enough.

And why is “education” in Holocaust education capitalized by the authors? Is it a subtle Orwellian message on Holocaust self-importance?

GENOCIDE-RECOGNITION INEQUALITY: NON-JEWS CANNOT POSSIBLY HAVE SUFFERED AS MUCH AS THE JEWS

Not done yet, Cowan and Maitles make these revealing comments, “Yet if the common understanding of the Holocaust is that Jews suffered in the same manner as other people such as homosexuals, communists [Communists] or Jehovah’s Witnesses, then fundamental truths of the Holocaust are being ignored.” Other than Holocaust supremacism, exactly what other “fundamental truths of the Holocaust” are being ignored?

HOLOCAUST EDUCATION ITSELF IS NOT ENOUGH. THE HOLOCAUST MUST BE ETERNALLY SPECIAL, ESPECIALLY IN THE CLASSROOM

The authors trot out this standard Holocaust supremacist talking point: “That the Nazis wanted to kill every Jewish living in Europe, and indeed extended this policy to North Africa, is a fundamental feature of the Holocaust, that according to Bauer (2002) makes it an unprecedented historical phenomenon. Teachers and educators who neither recognize this, nor the distinctive treatment of the Jews as victims of Nazism, in their understanding of the Holocaust, are marginalizing the Jewish experience in the Holocaust.” (p. 143).

Note how teaching one particular interpretation of the Holocaust is deliberately equated with teaching the Holocaust itself. And no one has ruled that an inferred total genocide is one iota more significant than “only” a partial genocide. Nor is it even true in the first place. The Nazis left 2-3 million European and North African Jews, within their easy reach, still alive. In fact, the Nazis did not even bother to kill most of the Danish Jews that were already in German captivity. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/05/29/danish-ss-danish-jew-rescue-iconoclasm-coming-to-terms-with-the-past-danish-complicity-in-the-holocaust-not-only-jewish-star-star-wearing-myth-persists-for-holocaust-overattention-rather-than-hon/

AUSCHWITZ VISIT BACKFIRES: IT EXPOSES HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY

Cowan and Maitles write: “When Cowan accompanied a schools’ visit to the ABMM [Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum], she heard a conversation between two girls when returning to the bus, in which one commented that the guide had been talking a lot about the Jews, and asked her friend why they should be doing this as it wasn’t only the Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. Her friend agreed with her that the guide should not be talking so much about the Jews.” (p. 144. Emphasis in original).

From the mouths of babes… Sometimes students are wiser than their Holocaust-indoctrinated teachers.

HOLOCAUST ORWELLIAN LANGUAGE: “MURDERED” VERSUS “DIED”: DEATH CAMPS VERSUS “ORDINARY’ CONCENTRATION CAMPS

The authors make this seemingly-bizarre comment, “Educators need to exercise caution in their use of ‘died’, ‘murdered’, and ‘killed’. The word ‘died’ is only accurate if it is used in a suitable context that explains the death. For example, ‘people died in Bergen-Belsen from the typhus epidemic’ is accurate, but ‘millions of people died in the Holocaust’ is inaccurate.” (p. 83). We get it, and Orwell must be turning over in his grave. The German murder of non-Jews by indirect methods (starvation, overwork, and disease), in “ordinary” concentration camps, is not as significant as the German murder of Jews by direct methods (e g., gas) in the “extermination” camps.

THE DE-GERMANIZATION OF THE NAZIS YET AGAIN

The authors continue to play word games. They twist themselves into pretzels in attempting to dichotomize Germans and Nazis. (pp. 74-76). If we thus favor the Germans, then we also have to favor the Japanese. So I guess that we cannot call it the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor any more. After all, not every single one of the 100 million Japanese had boarded planes and bombed Pearl Harbor.

At least the authors are self-consistent in their German-whitewashing nonsense. They write, “Henio would have started school on 1 September 1939, the day that the Nazis invaded Poland”. So WWII began when a political party had launched an invasion of Poland! I never knew that before.

THE DOUBLE GENOCIDE BOGEYMAN: HOLOCAUST EDUCATION AND THE MINIMIZATION OF COMMUNIST CRIMES

Cowan and Maitles repeat the following complaint, “In 2008, the European Union designated 23 August as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. This Day’s intention is the promote vigilance against totalitarianism, yet equating Stalinism and Nazism obfuscates the memory of both the Holocaust and the Second World War…This Day perpetuates a newly created notion of the equalization of the evils of Nazism and communism [Communism] under Stalin, and encourages acceptance of the ‘double genocide‘ model. This is not conducive to Holocaust remembrance, memory, and commemoration.” (p. 68).

Which is why Holocaust supremacists hate it. The message is clear: Only Jewish suffering needs to be remembered, and others’ sufferings, if mentioned at all, had better not infringe on the sacrosanct Holocaust.

FINALLY TELLING IT LIKE IT IS: HOLOCAUST EDUCATION MARGINALIZES ALL OTHER GENOCIDES

Authors Cowan and Maitles conclude, “Yet paying more attention to the Holocaust than other genocides can convey to young people that the genocidal crimes against the Jews are more important than, for example, the genocidal crimes against the Tutsis in 1994, or since 2003, to the Darfuri.” (p. 145).

No excrement, Sherlock!