‘What’s the difference between a Jew and a Boy Scout?” a friend asked, with a broad grin on his face, as I sat down in my seventh-grade science class. “The Boy Scout comes back from camp!” He and everyone else at my table burst out laughing. Did my classmates even know what they were laughing about? Upset but unsure, I feigned a smile. I am ashamed to say I said nothing.
I grew up hearing about the Holocaust through the stories my grandfather, now 92, told about his perilous escape from fascist Italy as a teenager. He described the indifference he saw in the eyes of soldiers and civilians alike, the fear in his parents’ hushed voices as they planned to flee, how his heart pounded as he slid under a fence to reach Switzerland while holding his 3-year-old sister in his lap.
He escaped only hours before German soldiers showed up at his home in Milan to take his family to a concentration camp. When I look into his eyes as he recalls his frantic getaway, I see him reliving the history my friend had so unabashedly joked about.
My generation is the last one that will be able to talk to Holocaust survivors and people who experienced life in Nazi Europe. As this crucial connection to the Holocaust fades, so will our collective memory of it. When there are no more living survivors, Holocaust denialism will become easier and more mainstream.
I’m a junior in high school, and my formal education on this topic has consisted of one slide with a brief depiction of concentration camps and a short worksheet. If this is all I’ve been taught, it’s no surprise that Holocaust knowledge nationwide is severely lacking.
Almost 1 in 3 American adults say they believe that fewer than 2 million people were killed, and about 1 in 10 people aren’t sure the Holocaust even occurred. In a national survey, 11 percent of millennials and Gen Z report believing that Jews themselves created the Holocaust. To be clear: Two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was murdered.
Eighty years later, antisemitism is on the rise. As a Jewish-American, I’ve had to walk past security guards and a metal detector to enter my synagogue for fear of shootings. Swastikas have been painted on schools, Jewish centers, even a State Department elevator. When I recall the chants of “Jews will not replace us” by white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, Va., it chills me to my core.
Earlier this school year, one of my teachers made an offhand comment insinuating that because I was Jewish, I must have money. Last spring, someone dropped an antisemitic note on my family’s doorstep that called government officials “Jew-inspired communists.” Accepting stereotypes and making threats have the potential to turn into far worse.
I’ve heard so little about the Holocaust during my years in school that if I didn’t have intimate personal connections to it, I could easily put it in the back of my mind. My 10th-grade history class spent weeks elaborating on the way of life of ancient Mesopotamians and less than a day on the Holocaust. It’s hard to fathom.
Such gaps in education about the Holocaust make me afraid. I’m afraid that the collective ignorance and ongoing hatred of Jews will grow into something so much more. I’m afraid that I’m seeing seeds of civil unrest, and educators aren’t doing enough to stop it.
When my friend made that joke in seventh grade, I said nothing because I didn’t want to be ostracized for ruining his “funny” moment. I now recognize that his comment stemmed from ignorance. Each generation needs to be taught about the events and ideology that allowed the Holocaust to occur so that it can understand the horrifying consequence of unchecked hate and ignorance.
We need to make sure the lessons of the Holocaust outlive the last survivors.
Gabriel Ascoli is a junior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va.
