(Jewish Group) OH lawmaker draws backlash...teach Holocaust from the perspective of a German soldier

[Behind the Aegis]

Ohio lawmaker draws backlash after suggesting schools should teach the Holocaust ‘from the perspective of a German soldier’

A Jewish lawmaker in Ohio is deriding legislation to restrict race education in the state’s schools as the “draconian Holocaust censorship bill” after one of the bill’s Republican sponsors suggested that it is appropriate to teach about the Holocaust from the perspective of the Nazis.

State Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur, who co-sponsored the bill, made the comments when explaining to a local news station why she believes that “divisive concepts” should be taught from multiple points of view.

“Maybe you’re going to listen to the perspective of someone from Poland when they were undergoing similar displacement, or when they were being incorporated into the war and to some of these camps. Or maybe you’re listening to it from the perspective of a Jewish person that has gone through the tragedies that took place,” she said, describing how a hypothetical lesson that complies with the law could unfold. “And maybe you’ll listen to it from the perspective of a German soldier.”

Fowler Arthur also mischaracterized how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and why they were murdered in her remarks, originally made to News 5 Cleveland in early March but not publicized by the station until Tuesday.

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[jmbar2]

1. If done right, this is not a bad idea

There would be value in teaching why the German people and soldiers participated in the Holocaust, how propaganda, racist teachings, and information control influenced their decisions, and how they reconciled their behavior after the war.

And how they were tried at Nuremberg.

[harumph]

2. I don't have a problem with an honest representation

from a German soldier's perspective BECAUSE it will be an indictment
of their behavior and that of the German nation at that time.

[Behind the Aegis]

3. The issue would likely become about an "honest representation".

What is being proposed sounds less like historical accuracy and more about "bothsiderism". I agree with you that opposing perspectives should be taught, but how and when, becomes important.

[Chainfire]

4. They just as well use Mein Kampf as a textbook.

I have read scores of the stories of German "soldiers." Nearly every one will end claiming that they never knew and were just shocked to find out what happened to the Jews at the end of the war. I don't believe it, never have and never will. There is no way to keep a secret that big. They knew.

Just growing up in the Nazi society they saw how Jews were treated and saw the progression of mistreatment. The ones who fought through Ukraine knew that the Jews had not been relocated there.... When you empty cities of a population, load them up like animals packed into freight cars and ship them away, never to be seen again, it is not too damn hard to figure out what was happening. Those who didn't know, just didn't want to know.

The other common tread of German "soldiers," including some in the SS, is that they were never Nazis, they never liked Hitler and that they were all choirboys. Over the last 60 years I read the stories of the soldiers on all sides of WWII, I have read those stories to find out what went on on the battlefield, I have spent a lifetime trying to figure out how people can be so cruel to other people. (I am no closer than when I began) So, no, the German soldier's stories have no place in the classroom because the stories are all based upon lies or based on something that they claim they knew nothing about...

If you want a real honest perspective of what the holocausts looked like from soldiers, take the words of the Americans who liberated the camps. They were sickened, horrified and outraged. When they saw the camps they realized what they, and their comrades, had sacrificed their youth for.