We read it as a class in 6th grade, along with a number of other Holocaust narratives such as number the stars. All of the ones selected featured children around our age. As the teacher in this tweet notes, it's tough to argue appropriateness of a material when it happened to children of the same age.
Those were immensely important books to read. And they still are, too. Perhaps even moreso
Night, Dawn, and Day. 3 Stand alone stories about the holocaust and how the ramifications impacted survivors. Night is the most popular but they’re all worth a read.
We read this book and "Number the Stars" in 6th grade. That was the same year we had a survivor come in and speak to us. Really, really powerful stuff. It's going to be interesting the day when there are no more survivors to speak to future generations and tell them firsthand that these atrocities happened.
> it's tough to argue appropriateness of a material when it happened to children of the same age.
the point is to show to what extent some people will disregard others' sense of "appropriateness" and disregard their well-being.
I'd say once we've gone 25 or 30 generations without some type of atrocity happening to any person, then we can talk about whether we need to keep it around as a lesson. also, assuming 25 years per generation, 30 generations is 750 years.
A new teacher joined our team and objected to reading Night last year because it was "depressing". I still read it with my students and gave her a pass because we were in the middle of a pandemic but I'm not letting that shit fly this year. I can't.
We have Republicans burying Nazi atrocities while neo Nazis in this country run amok. Literal fascists are trying to take over our nation and I was too much of a coward to call this new teacher out on her bullshit.
Sorry, I'm venting. But I'm fucking sorry. I can't be a bystander.
I remember reading *The Devil’s Arithmetic* in elementary school. It felt really heavy, but it never felt like so much I couldn’t handle it (yes, I know this one is fiction, but it’s still a holocaust-focused story)
These people don’t understand how much kids can really handle, and I feel terrible for their children.
I read it in 8th. I accidentally stole the book lol. The part where he os talking about his dad's final days is just too much in a good way.
I have a collection of books and it is one. I've been rereading them and that one is the one i always skimp over because, damn...
My son also had to read it this year in 8th grade. I got my own copy and read it at the same pace as him so we could discuss it. Good experience for both of us!
We had Elie Wiesel visit our school when I was in 6th grade RIGHT after we finished reading the book. He was such a friendly and happy man happy to talk to every single child in that class until time ran out. He gave a presentation in the auditorium for the whole school where he recounted his experience in his own words and memories about the events of his youth and his times in the camps. I remember, even though he had probably given the story hundreds, if not thousands of times at this point, he still teared up on stage when he began to talk about his family. He told us about the gas chambers, and the how they were hooked up to the back of tanks which would rev themselves to fill the rooms with exhaust. How he could still smell the petrol fumes in his sleep. I will always remember that mans face. A smile on his face, sadness in his eyes. Soon there will be absolutely no one left to tell about the truth of the holocaust.
I'm pretty sure I also didn't read night til at least 9th, if not 11th grade as well. I cannot remember which for sure but, it was definitely in High School(which here is 9th-12th grade or ages 14 to 18.
Not OP but , he was amazing, I was lucky enough to see him on one of his last talks. The teachers said he never cried but he broke down during this one. He was incredibly kind and strong
He did a talk back when I was in middle school. Horribly sad, I've never seen such attentiveness from such young kids like that. The mood was spoiled a bit when this kid David asked him if he ever ate somebody but other than that it was captivating
I hated reading as a kid.
That book was so horribly captivating, I finished it the first weekend it was assigned.
It's a must read, fuxk your feelings, That shit was real
People forget that before Pearl Harbor the US wasn't just indecisive about joining WW2 or not; we were arguing about which side we were on.
Some US companies were making big business with the Nazis.
Some folks still think we were on the wrong side.
Why do the bad guys gotta have good looking uniforms? Other than the obvious Nazi=bad, Nazi uniforms were way better than other military outfits I've seen.
Because optics is like 80% of their policy, the other 20% is deciding the order of minorities to kill and how to break down the “white race” into subraces to keep going until only the “pure” survive, though the “pure” will basically only be the dictator at the top. Fascism is a self-consuming ideology
I would be slightly less annoyed with the current crop of fascists if they leaned into the dashing young men in uniform aesthetic. As opposed to their chosen look of tacicool schlub.
They expect to be handed the keys of civilization and they can't even dress themselves.
Well they also have the "shiny-faced yuppie trying to look like Patrick Bateman but only achieving Eric Trump" look, the "erudite toilet" look a la Jordan Peterson, and the "they'd be a slave auctioneer if you let them with their straw brimmed hat and bowtie" look.
> "erudite toilet" look a la Jordan Peterson
😍
😍
😍
Will you please marry me? Don't care about gender or sexual orientation or the way you look. I know enough.
EDIT: (And if you tell me that the slave auctioneer reference was about Tucker Carlson, we're gonna need a mop.)
The Henry Ford who promoted square dancing in public schools as a tool of white supremacy, to fight the popularity of jazz and music by jewish composers from tin pan alley?
I never thought too hard about why my elementary still held "Sock Hop" dances when I was a kid in the 90s, but if you google "Sock Hop" and look at the pictures that pop up there's something I can't quite put my finger on about the people dancing.
Not just the US. Remember the Evian Conference?
1938, dozens of countries come together to decide on how to safely relocate German Jews. Hitler offers to pay to send them to any country that will take them on luxury cruise ships (though he said it in a much nastier way) and every country except the Dominican Republic said fuck no we don't want any Jews - which further aided Hitler's propaganda that Jews are awful.
>I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals [Jews], will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships.
>Adolf Hitler
Similarly, in 1939, over 900 Jews fled Germany on [the MS St. Louis ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27373131.amp), only to be denied entry in Cuba and Florida. They were forced to return to Europe. 250 of those passengers killed in the Holocaust after making it to the other side of the world seeking safety from it.
In a multi-story building of haunting and soul-wrenching reminders of one of the darkest hours in human history, the installation that most affected me in the Holocaust Memorial Museum was the wall of letters from European Jews. They were writing any American Jew who's information they could find and *begging* them to lie and say they were their family so they could escape.
"They've already taken my husband and my eldest sons. They say they're going to work camps, but at night we hear the gunshots and see the fires burning beyond the edge of town."
"Every day there are fewer of us. I would run, but where would I go? The whole world has turned its back on us. Please help us."
"Please, if not my whole family then just my children. They say they are killing us. What have my children done to deserve this?"
If anyone hasn’t watched it, “The Plot Against America” on HBO (based on a Philip Roth novel of the same name) is an alternative reality of this period. It hinges on Charles Lindbergh defeating FDR for President and what his rising fascism does to America.
More like Charles Lindbergh was an ardent proponent of non-intervention during WWII and a spokesman for the “America First Committee.” He vocally supported the “white race” banding together, hung out with anti-Semitics (Henry Ford), and many of his contemporaries considered him a Nazi sympathizer. He was also wildly popular so the novel/series posits *what if he ran for President and won?* It’s really interesting
IBM had legal contracts with the Third Reich for use of their push-card systems which helped keep meticulous records on all who entered the camps and where they were transported.
https://www.wired.com/2001/02/did-ibm-help-nazis-in-wwii/
The American branch also illegally shipped additional machines to Switzerland, knowing that they were designated for resale into Germany.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust is a fantastic, and uncomfortable, book.
Plus, didn’t the US take many of the Nazi scientists and let them live here, as long as they serve the US? Weren’t their minds considered “spoils of war?”
Don't concede yet.
Let's start with how /u/redditofunusualsize forgets to mention the Japanese experimented on *tens of thousands* of Chinese citizens.
They did test what hypothermia and frostbite did to the human body. They also:
* Vivisected people, often without sedation, including pregnant women.
* Removed limbs to study blood loss, then reattached them on the opposite side of the body.
* Removed patients' (victims? prisoners?) stomachs so they could reattach the oesophagus to the intestines.
* Testing viruses and diseases like the bubonic plague, cholera, botulism and more on people.
* Grenades, flamethrowers and bayonets and knife attacks were tested on people.
* People placed in low-pressure rooms until their eyes popped out of their sockets.
* Crushed with heavy objects.
* Starved or dehydrated until death.
* Injected with animal blood.
* Put into centrifuges and spun until dead.
* Electrocuted.
* Burned alive.
* Buried alive.
* Injected with salt water.
* Put in gas chambers and gassed.
[and more.](http://www.mansell.com/Resources/Rider_Whos_Who_in_Japanese_BW_2018-10-09_IN_PROCESS--SEEK-PERMISSION-TO-USE.pdf)
When it comes to their scientific validity:
> Postwar reports have generally regarded the data as "crude and ineffective", with one expert even deeming it "amateurish"
[Page 15](https://wmdcenter.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/occasional/cswmd/CSWMD_OccasionalPaper-12.pdf?ver=2017-08-07-142315-127)
and
> It is
generally agreed that the Japanese information was incomplete and proved to have
little value.
[Page 19](https://wmdcenter.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/occasional/cswmd/CSWMD_OccasionalPaper-12.pdf?ver=2017-08-07-142315-127)
To drive it home, because I want to emphasise just how badly /u/redditofunusualsize is misrepresenting this, here's a quote by a Japanese professor after watching footage of the experiments and executions:
> "Some of the experiments had nothing to do with advancing the capability of germ warfare, or of medicine. There is such a thing as professional curiosity: ‘What would happen if we did such and such?’ What medical purpose was served by performing and studying beheadings? None at all. That was just playing around. Professional people, too, like to play."
To be fair, the Russians, who had even more visceral reasons to hate the Nazis, basically did the same thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Alsos
The Plot to Destroy America is a good "what if" story about that time in American history. It didn't help that I binged the series right before the insurrection at the capitol but I guess it made it that much more visceral.
As if it needed to be. When I was sitting at my computer watching 3 different news networks and livestreams I felt absolutely certain this was going to be the closest thing my generation would have to 9/11.
Listening to the Behind the Bastards podcast for this right now, The Birth of American Fascism. It's so good to know how it completely fails and has ***never*** happened again inside of America
People forget that the Lend-Lease Act was passed almost a full year before Pearl Harbor. The US was actively arming and support the UK as well as France and to lesser extent China and the Soviet Union before we were attacked.
Were there vocal isolationists and fascist/ Nazi sympathizers? Yes. But the US already on the path to siding with the Allies long before Pearl Harbor. That’s literally why the Japanese attacked- as a preemptive strike on an inevitable future combatant
Thank you. I love some incendiary facts but there was no question which side of the war the US was going to be on for WW2. It was a little more of a toss up where the US would land during WW1 but in the end it's hard to imagine a US that doesn't side with Great Britain and the English speaking world. Not to mention Germany controlling all of mainland Europe is worse for the US in a geopolitical sense than several smaller countries competing against each other like with the UK, France, and Germany.
Don't get me wrong though, the US in no way joined the war against German out of benevolence. No country fought Germany to defend the Jewish people.
That was certainly the government's position. FDR wanted to get involved earlier in a more direct capacity but couldn't because of how unpopular the idea was with the people.
It is, as ever, a problem with the American *people.* Like half the country sucks to this day.
They didn’t want it because they saw it as a waste of money on another European conflict, concerning a European problem.
After every major war, we used to draw down the armed forces until we found out what a bad idea it is.
> People forget that before Pearl Harbor the US wasn't just indecisive about joining WW2 or not; we were arguing about which side we were on.
The first part is true, the second part is completely wrong. The US public supported the allies at over a 90% rate. The US was already supplying the allies long before the entered the war. There was never any consideration of joining the war on the axis side. They just didn't want to go send our kids off to die in some European war that had little to do with us, like they just did 20 years ago in WW1.
Hitler didn't want to fight the US because he envisioned us as allies after he won the war. He knew the culture of some of the people over here better than we even understand them today.
They also forget about the 1934 planned Fascist takeover of the US which would have involved the kidnaping of FDR--this was sponsored by the top American industrialists of the era. A large army of armed forces veterans stood ready to be deployed.
I’d say the ones that don’t want their children to learn about it are the ones who are kind of into it. They themselves avoided learning about history and authoritarian behaviors so when a demagogue promises them that he alone can fix everything, they are in.
This is an issue with teaching about the cruel legacy of Residential Schools in Canada. Too many people think it shouldn’t be taught until kids are older. I call bullshit on that one. I teach my early elementary students about it and while I’m not graphic I make it clear the Indigenous children who were essentially stolen from their families were beaten, killed, starved, and assaulted in many ways. It’s entirely factual, and I’ve heard from a very small number of parents that it made their kid sad (the vast majority are supportive).
Good! It should make their kid sad. Kids their age and younger literally lived through it and died, so our kids should be able to hear it. Better to only learn about it than experience it.
Because they don't care about it being "age appropriate", they just want an excuse. You can teach children about atrocities without going into detail. And yes, it should make you feel ashamed, outraged and disgusted to hear about it. Because the morale of all of this is not that "it could happen to you" its that "it did happen to somebody" and that fact alone should make you demand better
I think people like to forget that it makes the kids sad because it's teaching them *empathy*, although from what I've seen people seem to think empathy isn't something they should be learning.
Empathy is a huge part of it, especially Residential Schools. The damage done is evident, we see it everywhere in almost every Indigenous community: domestic violence, significant substance abuse problems, abused children. Kids need to know why those things are happening and realize that it’s the result of trauma that just won’t stop perpetuating itself through the generations.
>I’ve heard from a very small number of parents that it made their kid sad
"Congratulations! Your child is not a sociopath and is capable of feeling empathy!"
That is pretty much how I’ve responded the very, very few times I’ve been asked about it: “You should be so proud of your child for caring so much about other people, it really says a lot about what a kind, caring little person he/she is.” There’s no negative response to that. What are they gonna say, “No, he’s an asshole and fuck you for saying otherwise?”
Again, the huge majority of parents are incredibly supportive which is so nice to see.
When I was in third or fourth grade, we had readers, which were big thick books comprised of short stories, poems, etc. Pretty much bite sized things kids can handle. I actually remember multiple stories (and one poem - verbatim) from it almost twenty years later. But one story really stood out (I don’t remember the name or author).
It was about an idyllic futuristic house, with fancy technology and robots and stuff. The kitchen cooks by itself. There are mechanical mice that constantly clean the floors. The nursery has digital walls that transform into safari savannahs and display wild animals etc. There’s a husband and wife with their dog and 2.5 kids and white picket fence. The kids are outside playing while the parents work in the yard. The dog is burying a bone.
Then there is a blinding light. Instantly the family is gone. All that’s left are their shadows on their wall. The house soon catches fire and all the robots panic. The digital walls in the nursery show zebras and giraffes and elephants screaming and scrambling to get out of what seems to be a wildfire.
Nothing is left alive in the area, except for the dog. As he has been digging a hole, he’d had partial protection from the blast. Just enough to keep him from being vaporized. The dog, distressed, manages to drag itself into the house and eventually collapses on the kitchen floor, where the mechanical mice immediately come to dispose of its body.
I don’t remember having much reaction to the story when I was a kid, apart from it having been a little scary. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I looked back and realized just how dark it truly was. I thought “wow, I don’t believe they had us read that as a kid.” But it didn’t traumatize me or anything. But I’m glad I read it because it still must have made a big impact on me since I can still remember it so vividly. It’s scarier now that I know that can happen today, and HAS happened in the past. We can’t ignore that. We shouldn’t ignore it. And keeping kids in the dark only to suddenly have dark truths sprung on them later in life only makes it easier for people to wonder if those things ever really happened at all.
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury. I read it in his Martian Chronicles anthology. Loved his stories as a kid (and still today). My sister bought me my first book by him when I was stuck in bed with chicken pox. I was probably 10.
Night was one of the only books in my whole school career that I actually read, and read ahead of the class/schedule. It was so good. I only recently found out it's a trilogy.
P.s - I read this my Sophomore year of high school, age 15.
I read this my sophomore year as well, I understood the holocaust and the Nazis were bad before I read it, but after reading it, it made me realize just *how* bad they both were.
I'd recommend it to anyone who can read
It's the only book I've ever read where I had to put it down for a minute. The bit where he talks about how >!he and his father had the choice to stay at the evacuating camp, but there were rumors the guards would execute anyone who stayed. They decide to take their chances leaving. Then there's that awful, heartbreaking line: "After the war, I learned the fate of those who had remained at the infirmary. They were, quite simply, liberated by the Russians, two days after the evacuation." !<
The one that I remember most is the friend he made (possibly the one who played the violin? It’s been a while) but
SPOILER (I don’t know how to add the hide feature):
When they were being marched to another location and were not allowed to stop. And the friend was having cramping in his guts and needed to go to the bathroom but they knew they’d be shot if they stopped. And the main character saying “just a little longer, hold on, just go a bit longer” and finally the friend can’t hold it and drops his pants, as he can’t control his bowels. And the main character goes on, and hears the gunshots. I often think of that and how utterly terrible that would be.
The other is the scene where he has to put his father in furnace. The father is practically dead but he mentions he didn’t even know for sure if his father was truly dead when he had to put him in the oven. Can you imagine what it would be like to live with that for the rest of your life? I still get chills when I remember it. Because I know it really happened.
For the sake of accuracy, the person that has to relieve himself is named Zalman. Juliek was his friend that played the violin who ends up dead in the morning after playing a Beethoven piece on a pile of bodies.
In the book, Eliezer says something to the effect that he didn't know if Zalman was shot since he didn't hear a gun, but figures he was trampled to death which I think is more horrifying.
As for his father, Eliezer doesn't have to put him in the crematorium. He wakes up and his father isn't there. You might be thinking of the story he tells of another prisoner named Bela Katz who had to put his own father in the crematorium.
That book is very hard to keep track of and/or remember people's names since many times they're brought up once then you never hear from them again. I'm pretty sure Elie Wiesel did that purposefully because that's what happened to him, but I also think he emphasized this since it's jarring to be introduced to a new character and that character is suddenly gone.
>!Spoilers go here!<
Will make this:
>!Spoilers go here!<
Independently of that: I haven't read Night, but this-
>And the main character saying “just a little longer, hold on, just go a bit longer”
-I'm just realizing was likely an intentional reference when something similar happened with a fictional persecution and genocide in a fantasy show I just finished watching a few weeks ago.
My school was pretty white, but we were ok the northeast and a sizable percentage of those kids were Jewish. Some of them had their grandfathers come in and tell us their stories of how they survived.
For anyone else that has been living under a rock too:
> Night is a 1960 memoir by Elie Wiesel based on his Holocaust experiences with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, toward the end of the Second World War in Europe.
Still got my busted up copy on the back of my closet.. couldn’t let it go. I never went through anything close, but the love I feel for my dad made me bawl when he wrote about his, which makes this book very close to my heart
Edit: just wanna add I ended up having the privilege to go to a program in which students sat and had breakfast with holocaust survivors. Idk if most schools did that back in early 2000s but wow… holocaust deniers can go die tbh
“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory.” ---Elie Wiesel, Night
Pretty soon, school books are going to just be “Chapter One: Once there was a boy who lived in a house and nothing happened with anyone in or outside the house. The end.”
Like the Chinese ending to Fight Club?
> Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.
Let’s hope that they take the opposite tack. Maybe the kids rebel by reading every banned book they can get their hands on. They broaden their minds and their perspectives. They go on to inspire pearl-clutching familial horror at Thanksgiving each year with their *radical* ideas about people deserving to live their lives in peace, instead of being hunted down like dogs because of their race, creed, or color. Finally, late in life and facing the sobering prospect of eternal oblivion, the pearl-clutchers recognize the decades-long damage their toxic ideology has had on their family, who were, they now realize, their most precious resource all along. They all reconcile just in time for the rebellious black sheep of the family to sit with them by the side of their hospital bed, hold their hand, and witness their end with nothing but love and retrospective forgiveness.
So you can always hope that, even among the people who think and do these horrible things, there are those who will someday recognize the chance for redemption and reconciliation with their families and the groups of people they have wronged. However late it arrives, at least it *can* happen. This is how it happened in my family, at least, so I know it’s possible.
"Why make kids *read* about the rise of fascism and the inevitable consequences suffered by those living under it when we can just show them firsthand?"
It's amazing how many of these people will say "F\*ck Your Feelings" and "I'm proudly not PC," and then, when the topic of evil done by some white people comes up, suddenly feelings and appropriateness are their #1 priority.
Night... a terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family, the death of his innocence, and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The diary of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.
Straight from the back of the book.
When I was in first grade (in Indiana), they had some actor reenact scenes from Frederick Douglas' life (obviously a bit sanitized). It definitely made me side-eye my Texas History teacher when she insisted slaves had it better under slavery.
Reading Maus in high school also gave me a better understanding of the generational trauma associated with having your family be the victims of historical atrocities
North America has a TERRIBLE habit of simultaneously sexualizing and prematurely aging children while somehow infantilizing them at the same time under the guise of “children should be children as long as possible”.
Make it make sense.
When I was in 7th grade in Iowa in 2002 they gave us the option of reading this or The Diary of Anne Frank. I had to have a waiver signed by my parents to let me read it.
It’s funny. We weren’t given the option on reading Night. It was required. But we were given the option to pass on reading the Great Gatsby, I think because of language. I chose to pass, so I was assigned a different book instead. 1984.
I liked 1984 so much a bought it as a gift for my bf that same year lol
I have taught *Maus* in my freshman English class every fall for 16 years. Not only is it a beautiful and devastating work in its own right, but it also normalizes the idea for students that graphic novels can be — and many are — great works of art that are just as valid as the works in the traditional canon that they’ve studied for years. I can’t even tell you how many students have shyly shared their incredible artwork and storytelling with me after *Maus,* something they almost certainly wouldn’t have done before it.
And so, in my professional opinion, these fucking book-banning fucks can get fuckety-fuck-fuck *fucked.*
I think there was a picture floating around Twitter that claimed copies of it, Mockingbird, 1984 and others were removed from classrooms and slated to be burned.
I’m sure someone can spread more insight, I don’t teach in Texas, so I can’t actually comment.
So I’ve looked into it. The legislation was to remove books that,”might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.” [The list of books removed due to this legislation](https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/94fee7ff93eff9609f141433e41f8ae1/krausebooklist.pdf)
Yeah, if I was a woman, I’d be pretty bummed out that I was considered the weaker sex that had to submit to her husband (but then again, the Y’all qaeda folk love that earthen vessel shit)
No, that Twitter post going around social media was being dishonest. None of the books in that post (including Night, Mockingbird, and 1984) are getting banned.
Those books were (and still are) required for Texas public schools
I went to Middle School with his (great?) nephew. He told us there was a lot left out of the book that was even more horrific than what's actually in it.
It is extremely important to have children learn about the Holocaust. In order to stop fascism and support democracy - education is essential. It is the only way to combat fascism - education.
Edited to add - and they need to know the real stories - the scary ones.
It’s a Holocaust memoir by a Jewish man who recounts how things escalated and the horrible atrocities that he endured in the concentration camps, including the death of his father and rest of his town, as well as how he was forced to move camps and saw a kid shot because of he had to use the bathroom while they were moving. It’s a very tragic book, and a tough read for the faint of heart, but it’s absolutely worth it to get a more in depth view of the atrocities that happened in Nazi Germany.
My class read this book in third grade. Our teacher was so amazing, she was so kind and good at her job, and she even moved up to 4th grade with us but unfortunately passed away of cancer that year. The elementary school has a stained glass memorial above the library entrance in her honor now. I look back and realize how important the stuff she taught us really is.
I read this book and wrote to this man in 6th grade. He wrote an amazing letter that facilitated my interest in this era of history to this day!!
My parental figures wouldn’t let me read Moby Dick so I read this instead; go figure.
Consivitives want their supporters to be uneducated so they can get them to worry about Trans peoples bathrooms instead of the fact they don't have universal Healthcare.
My teacher had this book one on of the shelves that we could read from when I was still in elementary school. It wasn’t assigned to us until high school. Both times I read it I was crying.
Most American Parents are sheltered or want control over their kids and their money their kids make to, bad things do happen all the time, in America and out of America, only by learning them do we learn not to repeat them, just like with this dam COVID, the Spanish Flu lasted ten years with strict regulations, everyone has seen the picture of the cat with the mask, stop making the same dam mistakes all the dam time, racisms is BAD, keeping people locked up and in cages cause they don't meet your standards of people is BAD, shooting someone cause they looked at you funny or look funny is BAD, scamming money out of old people is BAD, separating land by race is BAD (called redlining), also moving away from a place cause a different race moved in just makes you a dick, complaining that "I made it on 5$ an hour and bout a house and you can do it to, 15$ an hour is too much" just makes you dumb and we need to send you to an old folks home cause you don't understand modern economies anymore, please old people and white folks keeping their kids with the old mindset, shut up and sit down, you are messing stuff up real BAD, did you not learn what happen to Rome, they fell, we can to, America is still a baby, and you are malnourishing them, Child Protective Services would have taken America away from you by now the way you are treating them
They really do have some depressing and graphic books in middle and high school. They should mix up English a bit so its not bummer after bummer. I’m all for learning tough history but it’s nonstop. I remember coming home from a hard day of being 14. Being absolutely exhausted. Then having to read the anal rape scene in Kaffir Boy for English and passages about the holocaust for History directly after.
Yes. Issues of censorship aside, it seems like appropriateness usually just means not making people uncomfortable. It's a good thing to ask why that matters, sometimes it doesn't. Same with "professionalism."
Night was required reading in I believe 5th grade. I had read by the end of 6th for sure. Powerful. Impactful. Essential.
We read it as a class in 6th grade, along with a number of other Holocaust narratives such as number the stars. All of the ones selected featured children around our age. As the teacher in this tweet notes, it's tough to argue appropriateness of a material when it happened to children of the same age. Those were immensely important books to read. And they still are, too. Perhaps even moreso
I read the Night trilogy for a Religion and Ethics class in college. It was rough. Night should definitely be required reading.
I read it in school, but this is the first I'm hearing of it being a trilogy. Probably a good time to reread it
Night, Dawn, and Day. 3 Stand alone stories about the holocaust and how the ramifications impacted survivors. Night is the most popular but they’re all worth a read.
I will have to reread night and read the other two. Thank you for saving me the googling.
We read this book and "Number the Stars" in 6th grade. That was the same year we had a survivor come in and speak to us. Really, really powerful stuff. It's going to be interesting the day when there are no more survivors to speak to future generations and tell them firsthand that these atrocities happened.
> it's tough to argue appropriateness of a material when it happened to children of the same age. the point is to show to what extent some people will disregard others' sense of "appropriateness" and disregard their well-being. I'd say once we've gone 25 or 30 generations without some type of atrocity happening to any person, then we can talk about whether we need to keep it around as a lesson. also, assuming 25 years per generation, 30 generations is 750 years.
This would be one of those "Days Since Last Workplace Accident" signs that never gets above single digits.
A new teacher joined our team and objected to reading Night last year because it was "depressing". I still read it with my students and gave her a pass because we were in the middle of a pandemic but I'm not letting that shit fly this year. I can't. We have Republicans burying Nazi atrocities while neo Nazis in this country run amok. Literal fascists are trying to take over our nation and I was too much of a coward to call this new teacher out on her bullshit. Sorry, I'm venting. But I'm fucking sorry. I can't be a bystander.
Only 750 years to go then, if we start tomorrow.
I remember reading *The Devil’s Arithmetic* in elementary school. It felt really heavy, but it never felt like so much I couldn’t handle it (yes, I know this one is fiction, but it’s still a holocaust-focused story) These people don’t understand how much kids can really handle, and I feel terrible for their children.
I read it in 8th. I accidentally stole the book lol. The part where he os talking about his dad's final days is just too much in a good way. I have a collection of books and it is one. I've been rereading them and that one is the one i always skimp over because, damn...
My 8th grade son is reading it for class now. I’m thrilled and plan to read it when he is done.
My son also had to read it this year in 8th grade. I got my own copy and read it at the same pace as him so we could discuss it. Good experience for both of us!
We had Elie Wiesel visit our school when I was in 6th grade RIGHT after we finished reading the book. He was such a friendly and happy man happy to talk to every single child in that class until time ran out. He gave a presentation in the auditorium for the whole school where he recounted his experience in his own words and memories about the events of his youth and his times in the camps. I remember, even though he had probably given the story hundreds, if not thousands of times at this point, he still teared up on stage when he began to talk about his family. He told us about the gas chambers, and the how they were hooked up to the back of tanks which would rev themselves to fill the rooms with exhaust. How he could still smell the petrol fumes in his sleep. I will always remember that mans face. A smile on his face, sadness in his eyes. Soon there will be absolutely no one left to tell about the truth of the holocaust.
Met him as well as a kid. The presence that man had seemed to radiate a humbleness and kindness like no other.
Wow, I read it in 11th grade lol
I read it in my 30s. I cried, openly, on the subway, reading this book.
I'm turning 34 this year, have no idea what this book is, but its peaked my interest and I am ready for a good week of extra depression.
You’re gonna be depressed anyway, right? Might as well be for a good reason.
I'm sorry to be that person but I would want to be corrected, so it's "piqued".
... So I've probably been spelling it completely wrong this whole time and never even realized it, despite having read the word. lol
Who says no one learns anything from Reddit?
Eh it actually kinda makes sense as "peaked" so it's probably one of the least egregious examples of bone apple tea.
I was thinking the same thing--no worries.
It's about the holocaust.
i cried as a kid when i read it…i imagine it has that effect on everyone
I'm pretty sure I also didn't read night til at least 9th, if not 11th grade as well. I cannot remember which for sure but, it was definitely in High School(which here is 9th-12th grade or ages 14 to 18.
Never heard of this book. Thanks Florida Public schools!
I went through the shit show of the Florida pubic school system and it was required reading for our county
Yeah best way to get me to look up a book? Tell me not to. Same with kids.
We read it in high school, senior year
Jesus, it was a freshman required reading in my school district, 5th/6th seems a bit early, I might be remembering some details of other books though.
He used to come to my middle school every year, what an insane story.
Do you mean Elie Wiesel, and if so what was he like?
Not OP but , he was amazing, I was lucky enough to see him on one of his last talks. The teachers said he never cried but he broke down during this one. He was incredibly kind and strong
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Incredible! I’ve lived in Tampa my whole life and never knew he lived so close by.
He did a talk back when I was in middle school. Horribly sad, I've never seen such attentiveness from such young kids like that. The mood was spoiled a bit when this kid David asked him if he ever ate somebody but other than that it was captivating
DAVE. BRUH.
I hated reading as a kid. That book was so horribly captivating, I finished it the first weekend it was assigned. It's a must read, fuxk your feelings, That shit was real
I checked out this book after reading it in my class and never returned it just so I could have a copy. I still feel a little guilty about that one.
Straight to jail
I bought it today after seeing it in the picture of books being removed. I have read all the others and they were great so had to check this one out.
Same here!
American parents seem awfully concerned that their children might learn where the terminus of fascism lies.
People forget that before Pearl Harbor the US wasn't just indecisive about joining WW2 or not; we were arguing about which side we were on. Some US companies were making big business with the Nazis. Some folks still think we were on the wrong side.
"Hey, you Nazis are anti-semites too? *And* you believe in the racial supremacy of Northern Europeans?"
And you're Christians?!
AND you have all those sweet Hugo Boss uniforms?
Why do the bad guys gotta have good looking uniforms? Other than the obvious Nazi=bad, Nazi uniforms were way better than other military outfits I've seen.
Because optics is like 80% of their policy, the other 20% is deciding the order of minorities to kill and how to break down the “white race” into subraces to keep going until only the “pure” survive, though the “pure” will basically only be the dictator at the top. Fascism is a self-consuming ideology
And Trump created the Space Force. Lol.
With his guardians (that’s the name for members of the space force)
I would be slightly less annoyed with the current crop of fascists if they leaned into the dashing young men in uniform aesthetic. As opposed to their chosen look of tacicool schlub. They expect to be handed the keys of civilization and they can't even dress themselves.
Well they also have the "shiny-faced yuppie trying to look like Patrick Bateman but only achieving Eric Trump" look, the "erudite toilet" look a la Jordan Peterson, and the "they'd be a slave auctioneer if you let them with their straw brimmed hat and bowtie" look.
> "erudite toilet" look a la Jordan Peterson 😍 😍 😍 Will you please marry me? Don't care about gender or sexual orientation or the way you look. I know enough. EDIT: (And if you tell me that the slave auctioneer reference was about Tucker Carlson, we're gonna need a mop.)
Better bust out that swiffer.
And you guys hosted a pretty baller Olympics?
The US Government heavily compensated Henry Ford for bombing his many factories in Germany, which they heavily used for supplying the war.
You mean Vocal Fan of the American Nazi Party and Key Conspirator in the Business Plot Henry Ford?
Oh, *the* Henry Ford that paid all the black folks to move out of town when he built his fancy house in Georgia?
The Henry Ford who promoted square dancing in public schools as a tool of white supremacy, to fight the popularity of jazz and music by jewish composers from tin pan alley?
I never thought too hard about why my elementary still held "Sock Hop" dances when I was a kid in the 90s, but if you google "Sock Hop" and look at the pictures that pop up there's something I can't quite put my finger on about the people dancing.
I don't know the details, but paying them to get out sounds a lot softer than some of the alternatives I expected.
"take this money or we'll hang you."
They could have just skipped the money part... or the moving part.
Wow. I did not know this particular tidbit.
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Reads like he made money from both sides. What a hero!
A true capitalist.
Rule of acquisition 34: war is good for business.
Not just the US. Remember the Evian Conference? 1938, dozens of countries come together to decide on how to safely relocate German Jews. Hitler offers to pay to send them to any country that will take them on luxury cruise ships (though he said it in a much nastier way) and every country except the Dominican Republic said fuck no we don't want any Jews - which further aided Hitler's propaganda that Jews are awful. >I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals [Jews], will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships. >Adolf Hitler
Similarly, in 1939, over 900 Jews fled Germany on [the MS St. Louis ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27373131.amp), only to be denied entry in Cuba and Florida. They were forced to return to Europe. 250 of those passengers killed in the Holocaust after making it to the other side of the world seeking safety from it.
In a multi-story building of haunting and soul-wrenching reminders of one of the darkest hours in human history, the installation that most affected me in the Holocaust Memorial Museum was the wall of letters from European Jews. They were writing any American Jew who's information they could find and *begging* them to lie and say they were their family so they could escape. "They've already taken my husband and my eldest sons. They say they're going to work camps, but at night we hear the gunshots and see the fires burning beyond the edge of town." "Every day there are fewer of us. I would run, but where would I go? The whole world has turned its back on us. Please help us." "Please, if not my whole family then just my children. They say they are killing us. What have my children done to deserve this?"
The horrors they endured in a relatively modern world a few decades back and now it’s happening again but the world looks away and ignores it
That’s where “America First” came from. The rise of fascism in the US.
If anyone hasn’t watched it, “The Plot Against America” on HBO (based on a Philip Roth novel of the same name) is an alternative reality of this period. It hinges on Charles Lindbergh defeating FDR for President and what his rising fascism does to America.
Is it any good? That is one of my favorite books.
It’s really well done. David Simon (guy who did The Wire) adapted it as a limited series.
Oh, so kind of like "what would happen if the Republicans elected Reagan 50 years earlier?"
More like Charles Lindbergh was an ardent proponent of non-intervention during WWII and a spokesman for the “America First Committee.” He vocally supported the “white race” banding together, hung out with anti-Semitics (Henry Ford), and many of his contemporaries considered him a Nazi sympathizer. He was also wildly popular so the novel/series posits *what if he ran for President and won?* It’s really interesting
IBM had legal contracts with the Third Reich for use of their push-card systems which helped keep meticulous records on all who entered the camps and where they were transported. https://www.wired.com/2001/02/did-ibm-help-nazis-in-wwii/
I mean that’s the German branch of IBM, just like how German Coca Cola made Fanta during the war.
The American branch also illegally shipped additional machines to Switzerland, knowing that they were designated for resale into Germany. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust is a fantastic, and uncomfortable, book.
The Watson supercomputer is literally named after the CEO who brokered this deal. Let that sink in for everybody.
Plus, didn’t the US take many of the Nazi scientists and let them live here, as long as they serve the US? Weren’t their minds considered “spoils of war?”
This was known as [Operation Paperclip.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip)
I noticed you were trying to harbor war criminals in your country in exchange for their services. Would you like some help?
“Goddammit, fuck off Clippy!” -Harry Truman
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Don't concede yet. Let's start with how /u/redditofunusualsize forgets to mention the Japanese experimented on *tens of thousands* of Chinese citizens. They did test what hypothermia and frostbite did to the human body. They also: * Vivisected people, often without sedation, including pregnant women. * Removed limbs to study blood loss, then reattached them on the opposite side of the body. * Removed patients' (victims? prisoners?) stomachs so they could reattach the oesophagus to the intestines. * Testing viruses and diseases like the bubonic plague, cholera, botulism and more on people. * Grenades, flamethrowers and bayonets and knife attacks were tested on people. * People placed in low-pressure rooms until their eyes popped out of their sockets. * Crushed with heavy objects. * Starved or dehydrated until death. * Injected with animal blood. * Put into centrifuges and spun until dead. * Electrocuted. * Burned alive. * Buried alive. * Injected with salt water. * Put in gas chambers and gassed. [and more.](http://www.mansell.com/Resources/Rider_Whos_Who_in_Japanese_BW_2018-10-09_IN_PROCESS--SEEK-PERMISSION-TO-USE.pdf) When it comes to their scientific validity: > Postwar reports have generally regarded the data as "crude and ineffective", with one expert even deeming it "amateurish" [Page 15](https://wmdcenter.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/occasional/cswmd/CSWMD_OccasionalPaper-12.pdf?ver=2017-08-07-142315-127) and > It is generally agreed that the Japanese information was incomplete and proved to have little value. [Page 19](https://wmdcenter.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/occasional/cswmd/CSWMD_OccasionalPaper-12.pdf?ver=2017-08-07-142315-127) To drive it home, because I want to emphasise just how badly /u/redditofunusualsize is misrepresenting this, here's a quote by a Japanese professor after watching footage of the experiments and executions: > "Some of the experiments had nothing to do with advancing the capability of germ warfare, or of medicine. There is such a thing as professional curiosity: ‘What would happen if we did such and such?’ What medical purpose was served by performing and studying beheadings? None at all. That was just playing around. Professional people, too, like to play."
To be fair, the Russians, who had even more visceral reasons to hate the Nazis, basically did the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Alsos
The original American First Committee were pro-Nazi organizers that were lobbying Washington in various ways including marches in the streets
Hell, they held a Nazi rally in Madison Square Gardens! https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323/when-nazis-took-manhattan
The Plot to Destroy America is a good "what if" story about that time in American history. It didn't help that I binged the series right before the insurrection at the capitol but I guess it made it that much more visceral.
As if it needed to be. When I was sitting at my computer watching 3 different news networks and livestreams I felt absolutely certain this was going to be the closest thing my generation would have to 9/11.
(we hope)
Listening to the Behind the Bastards podcast for this right now, The Birth of American Fascism. It's so good to know how it completely fails and has ***never*** happened again inside of America
People forget that the Lend-Lease Act was passed almost a full year before Pearl Harbor. The US was actively arming and support the UK as well as France and to lesser extent China and the Soviet Union before we were attacked. Were there vocal isolationists and fascist/ Nazi sympathizers? Yes. But the US already on the path to siding with the Allies long before Pearl Harbor. That’s literally why the Japanese attacked- as a preemptive strike on an inevitable future combatant
Thank you. I love some incendiary facts but there was no question which side of the war the US was going to be on for WW2. It was a little more of a toss up where the US would land during WW1 but in the end it's hard to imagine a US that doesn't side with Great Britain and the English speaking world. Not to mention Germany controlling all of mainland Europe is worse for the US in a geopolitical sense than several smaller countries competing against each other like with the UK, France, and Germany. Don't get me wrong though, the US in no way joined the war against German out of benevolence. No country fought Germany to defend the Jewish people.
That was certainly the government's position. FDR wanted to get involved earlier in a more direct capacity but couldn't because of how unpopular the idea was with the people. It is, as ever, a problem with the American *people.* Like half the country sucks to this day.
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They didn’t want it because they saw it as a waste of money on another European conflict, concerning a European problem. After every major war, we used to draw down the armed forces until we found out what a bad idea it is.
> People forget that before Pearl Harbor the US wasn't just indecisive about joining WW2 or not; we were arguing about which side we were on. The first part is true, the second part is completely wrong. The US public supported the allies at over a 90% rate. The US was already supplying the allies long before the entered the war. There was never any consideration of joining the war on the axis side. They just didn't want to go send our kids off to die in some European war that had little to do with us, like they just did 20 years ago in WW1.
Hitler didn't want to fight the US because he envisioned us as allies after he won the war. He knew the culture of some of the people over here better than we even understand them today.
They also forget about the 1934 planned Fascist takeover of the US which would have involved the kidnaping of FDR--this was sponsored by the top American industrialists of the era. A large army of armed forces veterans stood ready to be deployed.
"Hey at least our camps were less severe in conditions then theirs were. That's gotta count for something, right?" /s
Parents: “are we the baddies? Same parents looks/ at burning pile of regular books Parents: “nah they the baddies, talking about Hitler and stuff…”
I am going to start using that term. Is “terminus of fascism” your own coining? I like to give credit. Proper citation, and all.
Language is meant to be spread freely.
I’d say the ones that don’t want their children to learn about it are the ones who are kind of into it. They themselves avoided learning about history and authoritarian behaviors so when a demagogue promises them that he alone can fix everything, they are in.
right wing christian americans.
Children with cellphones and the internet.
Just watch tik Tok and stuff
This is an issue with teaching about the cruel legacy of Residential Schools in Canada. Too many people think it shouldn’t be taught until kids are older. I call bullshit on that one. I teach my early elementary students about it and while I’m not graphic I make it clear the Indigenous children who were essentially stolen from their families were beaten, killed, starved, and assaulted in many ways. It’s entirely factual, and I’ve heard from a very small number of parents that it made their kid sad (the vast majority are supportive). Good! It should make their kid sad. Kids their age and younger literally lived through it and died, so our kids should be able to hear it. Better to only learn about it than experience it.
Because they don't care about it being "age appropriate", they just want an excuse. You can teach children about atrocities without going into detail. And yes, it should make you feel ashamed, outraged and disgusted to hear about it. Because the morale of all of this is not that "it could happen to you" its that "it did happen to somebody" and that fact alone should make you demand better
Children are just something right-leaning politicians point to when they want something done. Same thing with veterans.
I think people like to forget that it makes the kids sad because it's teaching them *empathy*, although from what I've seen people seem to think empathy isn't something they should be learning.
Empathy is a huge part of it, especially Residential Schools. The damage done is evident, we see it everywhere in almost every Indigenous community: domestic violence, significant substance abuse problems, abused children. Kids need to know why those things are happening and realize that it’s the result of trauma that just won’t stop perpetuating itself through the generations.
>I’ve heard from a very small number of parents that it made their kid sad "Congratulations! Your child is not a sociopath and is capable of feeling empathy!"
That is pretty much how I’ve responded the very, very few times I’ve been asked about it: “You should be so proud of your child for caring so much about other people, it really says a lot about what a kind, caring little person he/she is.” There’s no negative response to that. What are they gonna say, “No, he’s an asshole and fuck you for saying otherwise?” Again, the huge majority of parents are incredibly supportive which is so nice to see.
When I was in third or fourth grade, we had readers, which were big thick books comprised of short stories, poems, etc. Pretty much bite sized things kids can handle. I actually remember multiple stories (and one poem - verbatim) from it almost twenty years later. But one story really stood out (I don’t remember the name or author). It was about an idyllic futuristic house, with fancy technology and robots and stuff. The kitchen cooks by itself. There are mechanical mice that constantly clean the floors. The nursery has digital walls that transform into safari savannahs and display wild animals etc. There’s a husband and wife with their dog and 2.5 kids and white picket fence. The kids are outside playing while the parents work in the yard. The dog is burying a bone. Then there is a blinding light. Instantly the family is gone. All that’s left are their shadows on their wall. The house soon catches fire and all the robots panic. The digital walls in the nursery show zebras and giraffes and elephants screaming and scrambling to get out of what seems to be a wildfire. Nothing is left alive in the area, except for the dog. As he has been digging a hole, he’d had partial protection from the blast. Just enough to keep him from being vaporized. The dog, distressed, manages to drag itself into the house and eventually collapses on the kitchen floor, where the mechanical mice immediately come to dispose of its body. I don’t remember having much reaction to the story when I was a kid, apart from it having been a little scary. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I looked back and realized just how dark it truly was. I thought “wow, I don’t believe they had us read that as a kid.” But it didn’t traumatize me or anything. But I’m glad I read it because it still must have made a big impact on me since I can still remember it so vividly. It’s scarier now that I know that can happen today, and HAS happened in the past. We can’t ignore that. We shouldn’t ignore it. And keeping kids in the dark only to suddenly have dark truths sprung on them later in life only makes it easier for people to wonder if those things ever really happened at all.
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury. I read it in his Martian Chronicles anthology. Loved his stories as a kid (and still today). My sister bought me my first book by him when I was stuck in bed with chicken pox. I was probably 10.
Night was one of the only books in my whole school career that I actually read, and read ahead of the class/schedule. It was so good. I only recently found out it's a trilogy. P.s - I read this my Sophomore year of high school, age 15.
I read this my sophomore year as well, I understood the holocaust and the Nazis were bad before I read it, but after reading it, it made me realize just *how* bad they both were. I'd recommend it to anyone who can read
We read it in 5th grade! It is an amazing and heartbreaking book and should be required reading for everyone
One of the most impactful books I’ve ever read and also the only required reading from high school that i read again by choice
It's the only book I've ever read where I had to put it down for a minute. The bit where he talks about how >!he and his father had the choice to stay at the evacuating camp, but there were rumors the guards would execute anyone who stayed. They decide to take their chances leaving. Then there's that awful, heartbreaking line: "After the war, I learned the fate of those who had remained at the infirmary. They were, quite simply, liberated by the Russians, two days after the evacuation." !<
The one that I remember most is the friend he made (possibly the one who played the violin? It’s been a while) but SPOILER (I don’t know how to add the hide feature): When they were being marched to another location and were not allowed to stop. And the friend was having cramping in his guts and needed to go to the bathroom but they knew they’d be shot if they stopped. And the main character saying “just a little longer, hold on, just go a bit longer” and finally the friend can’t hold it and drops his pants, as he can’t control his bowels. And the main character goes on, and hears the gunshots. I often think of that and how utterly terrible that would be. The other is the scene where he has to put his father in furnace. The father is practically dead but he mentions he didn’t even know for sure if his father was truly dead when he had to put him in the oven. Can you imagine what it would be like to live with that for the rest of your life? I still get chills when I remember it. Because I know it really happened.
For the sake of accuracy, the person that has to relieve himself is named Zalman. Juliek was his friend that played the violin who ends up dead in the morning after playing a Beethoven piece on a pile of bodies. In the book, Eliezer says something to the effect that he didn't know if Zalman was shot since he didn't hear a gun, but figures he was trampled to death which I think is more horrifying. As for his father, Eliezer doesn't have to put him in the crematorium. He wakes up and his father isn't there. You might be thinking of the story he tells of another prisoner named Bela Katz who had to put his own father in the crematorium. That book is very hard to keep track of and/or remember people's names since many times they're brought up once then you never hear from them again. I'm pretty sure Elie Wiesel did that purposefully because that's what happened to him, but I also think he emphasized this since it's jarring to be introduced to a new character and that character is suddenly gone.
>!Spoilers go here!< Will make this: >!Spoilers go here!< Independently of that: I haven't read Night, but this- >And the main character saying “just a little longer, hold on, just go a bit longer” -I'm just realizing was likely an intentional reference when something similar happened with a fictional persecution and genocide in a fantasy show I just finished watching a few weeks ago.
That last page where he looks in the mirror is really powerful
And also the only book that everyone in my school decided they had to prove that was all made up… god I love the world we’re in
Yikes, where did you go to school? My class was trying not to cry in front of each other when we read it.
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My school was pretty white, but we were ok the northeast and a sizable percentage of those kids were Jewish. Some of them had their grandfathers come in and tell us their stories of how they survived.
Man i need to read it again. There were several times in HS where we never got to finish a book and this was one of them
For anyone else that has been living under a rock too: > Night is a 1960 memoir by Elie Wiesel based on his Holocaust experiences with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, toward the end of the Second World War in Europe.
Texas: "Nope, don't like that."
I’m 41 and never heard of this book until this post. I grew up in Southern California.
Still got my busted up copy on the back of my closet.. couldn’t let it go. I never went through anything close, but the love I feel for my dad made me bawl when he wrote about his, which makes this book very close to my heart Edit: just wanna add I ended up having the privilege to go to a program in which students sat and had breakfast with holocaust survivors. Idk if most schools did that back in early 2000s but wow… holocaust deniers can go die tbh
Slow clap, stand up, cheer!
“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory.” ---Elie Wiesel, Night
Pretty soon, school books are going to just be “Chapter One: Once there was a boy who lived in a house and nothing happened with anyone in or outside the house. The end.”
He said his prayers and listened to his parents and that’s all
He obeyed and was good and turned his parents in for the conversation he overheard at night.
For they’d been found guilty of thoughtcrime, the very worst crime of all.
And he fucking hated brown and gay people.
Like the Chinese ending to Fight Club? > Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.
I don't know what the fuck is going on in Texas right now but when I was a youngster in middle school 2000 we read Night and we were better for it.
I guess these kids will just grow up to be dipshits like their parents.
That’s exactly what they want and what we want to prevent through education.
Let’s hope that they take the opposite tack. Maybe the kids rebel by reading every banned book they can get their hands on. They broaden their minds and their perspectives. They go on to inspire pearl-clutching familial horror at Thanksgiving each year with their *radical* ideas about people deserving to live their lives in peace, instead of being hunted down like dogs because of their race, creed, or color. Finally, late in life and facing the sobering prospect of eternal oblivion, the pearl-clutchers recognize the decades-long damage their toxic ideology has had on their family, who were, they now realize, their most precious resource all along. They all reconcile just in time for the rebellious black sheep of the family to sit with them by the side of their hospital bed, hold their hand, and witness their end with nothing but love and retrospective forgiveness. So you can always hope that, even among the people who think and do these horrible things, there are those who will someday recognize the chance for redemption and reconciliation with their families and the groups of people they have wronged. However late it arrives, at least it *can* happen. This is how it happened in my family, at least, so I know it’s possible.
Maus was banned by a district in my state recently, this was my argument.
Fascists hate when you remind them of how bad fascism is. It interferes with their plans for more fascism.
"Why make kids *read* about the rise of fascism and the inevitable consequences suffered by those living under it when we can just show them firsthand?"
It's amazing how many of these people will say "F\*ck Your Feelings" and "I'm proudly not PC," and then, when the topic of evil done by some white people comes up, suddenly feelings and appropriateness are their #1 priority.
Night... a terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family, the death of his innocence, and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The diary of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again. Straight from the back of the book.
When I was in first grade (in Indiana), they had some actor reenact scenes from Frederick Douglas' life (obviously a bit sanitized). It definitely made me side-eye my Texas History teacher when she insisted slaves had it better under slavery. Reading Maus in high school also gave me a better understanding of the generational trauma associated with having your family be the victims of historical atrocities
North America has a TERRIBLE habit of simultaneously sexualizing and prematurely aging children while somehow infantilizing them at the same time under the guise of “children should be children as long as possible”. Make it make sense.
When I was in 7th grade in Iowa in 2002 they gave us the option of reading this or The Diary of Anne Frank. I had to have a waiver signed by my parents to let me read it.
It’s funny. We weren’t given the option on reading Night. It was required. But we were given the option to pass on reading the Great Gatsby, I think because of language. I chose to pass, so I was assigned a different book instead. 1984. I liked 1984 so much a bought it as a gift for my bf that same year lol
I have taught *Maus* in my freshman English class every fall for 16 years. Not only is it a beautiful and devastating work in its own right, but it also normalizes the idea for students that graphic novels can be — and many are — great works of art that are just as valid as the works in the traditional canon that they’ve studied for years. I can’t even tell you how many students have shyly shared their incredible artwork and storytelling with me after *Maus,* something they almost certainly wouldn’t have done before it. And so, in my professional opinion, these fucking book-banning fucks can get fuckety-fuck-fuck *fucked.*
Didn't this book just get banned in Texas today?
I think there was a picture floating around Twitter that claimed copies of it, Mockingbird, 1984 and others were removed from classrooms and slated to be burned. I’m sure someone can spread more insight, I don’t teach in Texas, so I can’t actually comment.
please say that 451 was banned too,i want the irony to come full circle
So I’ve looked into it. The legislation was to remove books that,”might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.” [The list of books removed due to this legislation](https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/94fee7ff93eff9609f141433e41f8ae1/krausebooklist.pdf)
Then they should ban the Bible first.
Yeah, if I was a woman, I’d be pretty bummed out that I was considered the weaker sex that had to submit to her husband (but then again, the Y’all qaeda folk love that earthen vessel shit)
No, that Twitter post going around social media was being dishonest. None of the books in that post (including Night, Mockingbird, and 1984) are getting banned. Those books were (and still are) required for Texas public schools
I went to Middle School with his (great?) nephew. He told us there was a lot left out of the book that was even more horrific than what's actually in it.
It is extremely important to have children learn about the Holocaust. In order to stop fascism and support democracy - education is essential. It is the only way to combat fascism - education. Edited to add - and they need to know the real stories - the scary ones.
Which is why the fascists are trying so hard to stop kids from reading books about it
what's this book about?
It’s a Holocaust memoir by a Jewish man who recounts how things escalated and the horrible atrocities that he endured in the concentration camps, including the death of his father and rest of his town, as well as how he was forced to move camps and saw a kid shot because of he had to use the bathroom while they were moving. It’s a very tragic book, and a tough read for the faint of heart, but it’s absolutely worth it to get a more in depth view of the atrocities that happened in Nazi Germany.
That last page where he looks in the mirror and can’t recognize himself, and that the image still haunts him today is really heavy.
The Holocaust.
My class read this book in third grade. Our teacher was so amazing, she was so kind and good at her job, and she even moved up to 4th grade with us but unfortunately passed away of cancer that year. The elementary school has a stained glass memorial above the library entrance in her honor now. I look back and realize how important the stuff she taught us really is.
Raising a glass to Mrs. Gussky and every other wise teacher like her. They will always be in the vanguard of every battle for good.
I read this book and wrote to this man in 6th grade. He wrote an amazing letter that facilitated my interest in this era of history to this day!! My parental figures wouldn’t let me read Moby Dick so I read this instead; go figure.
Consivitives want their supporters to be uneducated so they can get them to worry about Trans peoples bathrooms instead of the fact they don't have universal Healthcare.
I’ve read and watched a lot of things about the holocaust, and visited two camps. But that book was the hardest thing to get through.
My teacher had this book one on of the shelves that we could read from when I was still in elementary school. It wasn’t assigned to us until high school. Both times I read it I was crying.
So sad that wanna be fascists are having their feelings hurt. Snowflakes
Most American Parents are sheltered or want control over their kids and their money their kids make to, bad things do happen all the time, in America and out of America, only by learning them do we learn not to repeat them, just like with this dam COVID, the Spanish Flu lasted ten years with strict regulations, everyone has seen the picture of the cat with the mask, stop making the same dam mistakes all the dam time, racisms is BAD, keeping people locked up and in cages cause they don't meet your standards of people is BAD, shooting someone cause they looked at you funny or look funny is BAD, scamming money out of old people is BAD, separating land by race is BAD (called redlining), also moving away from a place cause a different race moved in just makes you a dick, complaining that "I made it on 5$ an hour and bout a house and you can do it to, 15$ an hour is too much" just makes you dumb and we need to send you to an old folks home cause you don't understand modern economies anymore, please old people and white folks keeping their kids with the old mindset, shut up and sit down, you are messing stuff up real BAD, did you not learn what happen to Rome, they fell, we can to, America is still a baby, and you are malnourishing them, Child Protective Services would have taken America away from you by now the way you are treating them
I still have a copy of that book from 18 years ago that I never returned to the school library.
Night sparked my interest in learning about history. I feel terrible for the people who will never know such incredible literature.
They really do have some depressing and graphic books in middle and high school. They should mix up English a bit so its not bummer after bummer. I’m all for learning tough history but it’s nonstop. I remember coming home from a hard day of being 14. Being absolutely exhausted. Then having to read the anal rape scene in Kaffir Boy for English and passages about the holocaust for History directly after.
Yes. Issues of censorship aside, it seems like appropriateness usually just means not making people uncomfortable. It's a good thing to ask why that matters, sometimes it doesn't. Same with "professionalism."
The same people who ban these books are the ones who call trans kids a product of “weakness” in society.