Before the 2018 prom at Baraboo High School in Wisconsin, a group of teenage boys took their prom photo doing the Nazi salute and laughing.
However, this isn’t just an isolated event. It demonstrates that Americans are forgetting the Holocaust. According to a poll last year, 41% of Americans didn’t know what Auschwitz was, and 11% were “unaware” or “not sure” what the Holocaust was. For younger generations, these numbers were even higher with 66% of millennials not knowing what Auschwitz was and 22% not sure what the Holocaust was.
This is because of the diminishing number of Holocaust survivors and WWII veterans that people can interact with and learn about the Holocaust from. In 2017, there were only about 100,000 Holocaust survivors still living in the US, and this number will continue to decrease until there are no living people who saw the concentration camps with their own eyes. In addition, there is also a lack of education in American schools about the Holocaust as only nine states mandate genocide and Holocaust education.
For some, the only Holocaust “education” they receive is through pop culture, which scholars call “Holocaust trivialization–the minimization of one of the most profound historical evils through cheap and commonplace references to it.” Because of the use of Nazis in memes and video games, they seem less real–just a bad guy behind the screen.
If the Baraboo teens took Global Connections and knew what the Nazis represented, the terror they caused, and the 6 million people they killed, they would not be laughing.
The fact that they were “just kidding” in itself is worrisome. An investigation into 75 far-right groups showed that “ironic” anti-Semitic jokes and memes facilitated their radicalization. Investigative journalist Robert Evans explained, “It’s not uncommon for white supremacist, fascist and anti-Semitic beliefs to arise initially as the result of humor. Ironic memes gave this individual a chance to get used to the temperature before diving in.”
We need to do better, especially now that survivors are increasingly unable to share their stories.
I find the first photo of the boys all doing the Nazi salute while laughing extremely horrifying. It makes me sick to thing that people in our own country can think its ok to salute Hitler, which shows they support his actions and recognize his legacy of one to be proud of, and looked up too. Maybe they think its a joke, and know nothing of the Nazis other then the internet memes they see online. This furthers my concern that people are playing off the holocaust as a meme or a farce. The U.S. needs to require more schools to teach what we learn in global, not only for preventing future Hitlers, but to spread awareness of holocaust victims and their families who will suffer from this generations after the fact.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kiera, I think that the first photo is appalling and the fact that there were probably adults and other people there and no one said anything just honestly blows my mind. It is concerning how events like this probably take place every day in the form of 'jokes' which in this case is really just plain ignorance. Anyone who knows anything about the Holocaust and the tragedy the Jewish people had to go through would not be laughing or making jokes about the topic (or at least I hope not). However, I do think that since the statistics prove that younger generations have a decreasing level of knowledge about the Holocaust, proves that the US is not doing a good enough job at educating its citizens about a crucial part of WWII. The idea that everywhere people are being taught about WWII, but not the Holocaust, a huge event that impacted the war greatly, just doesn't add up.
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