Discussing the Nazi legacy with your kids (2 Viewers)

[Currahee Chris]

Hey fellas:

I purchased some more of the WW2 Time Life books this weekend at a wargaming show. One of the volumes I got is titled "The Nazis". I haven't read it yet but it discusses the rise of the Nazis to power. In the book, there are terrible pictures of brutality against the Jews and others like gypsys.

Now, this year, my eldest son, who is 11, did a fine paper on a gentleman who survived the holocaust. He seems really interested in learning more about that time period. I am considering showing him some of these pictures- albeit keeping some of the graphic ones censored of course but I think he is at an age and intellectually interested in understanding what the holocaust was about to where he should start to see or understand what it was about. I am working in Baltimore today and I drive by the Holocaust memorial they have here in the City- perhaps a trip to see it wouldn't be a bad idea.

So, what do you guys think or have done when approching this subject matter? I was exposed to their brutality when I lived in Nuremburg. My parents took me to one of the concentration camps when I was 8 or 9. As such, I have been a fan of WW2 ever since (and subsequently began to view my grandfather as a superman for fighting them). I think he is at an age where this subject matter is appropriate. I am just concerned, as he knows I am a huge fan of German WW2 infantry and armor that he might think I support those ideals, which I just find despicable.

I also want to make sure I walk the fine line of not making him feel like German citizens today are not like that and they are quite humiliated by that part of their history. I want to educate my kids into how Germany, post Versailles, really became a gross failure of human and democratic value and that they should strive to make sure it never happens again.

Again, any ideas or input here? Mods, I know this one might get explosive perhaps so feel free to delete if need be, I won't be put off.

Take care,
CC

 

[Combat]

Chris-
I used to work near the Holocaust Museum in Wash. DC. Nothing in the US beats that for education and information about the holocaust. I know they are very busy in the summer months - so you might want to go before then. Eleven is probably old enough to absorb most of the information although you may want to check their website or contact them regarding how they handle children.

 

[jazzeum]

Chris-
I used to work near the Holocaust Museum in Wash. DC. Nothing in the US beats that for education and information about the holocaust. I know they are very busy in the summer months - so you might want to go before then. Eleven is probably old enough to absorb most of the information although you may want to check their website or contact them regarding how they handle children.

Here is the address: http://www.ushmm.org/

 

[binder001]

As with many things in life, you have to judge what you son can handle as far as understanding or what might bother him too much. I can't say that I appreciated the holocost until I had my own family and could think of how I would feel if that happened to my family and all my friends.

You are right to remind him that it wasn't just the Germans. They just industrialized a very unfortunate trait in groups of people. Many civilizations have done things like this (and unfortunately still do). We all need to be aware of this human frailty and work to overcome it and work to never let this happen within our influence.

Gary

 

[DMNamiot]

Hi Chris,

As usual you bring up a very interesting point of discussion and I think one that many of us with kids wrestle with. I would take a few minutes to check with your son's teacher to see what the discussion in the classroom focused on as well as looking over the material they used to develop the class.

I also dont know your son but my nephew is 12 and will use what I know of him to say that I dont think the really graphic photos are a good thing for them to see at that age because quite frankly they will have problems processing this sort of information.

I didnt get exposed to this aspect of the war until I was in High School mainly due to the fact that we never got to the 20th century in US History prior to my sophomore year. But in HS we actually had a teacher who was a published author and had written a book on the Holocost so we had a very detailed class on it. Needless to say it was a very eye opening experience that coupled with things going on in the world at that time it was just the sort of dose of reality many of my classmates needed.

The museums are a good place to check out and since you live fairly close to DC you should go and see them. I hope this helps a litle.

All the best

Dave

 

[Currahee Chris]

Gentlemen,

thank you for all the good advice- I think your right Dave, I think contacting the teacher would be a good move. I really kind of shield my kids to a lot of violent and unsettling things so this one would be taking it to another level. Basically, this was a school project, the kids picked names off of a list provided by the teacher. I think my son took this guy because he wants to learn more of WW2.

Of course, I better clear this with my wife or I'll have a mess on my hands.

The Time Life books I am talking about are also pretty graphic- I mean, they are time life so their pictures are like that anyway.

Yeah, go to DC huh- your right, I do live close by but actually getting into the trailblazer, mobilizing my wife, 3 kids and then making arrangements for that 4 legged pathetic excuse of a dog of ours, starts to become a challenge worthy of launcing the Titanic. Not to mention dealing with the wonderfully courteous drivers of Northern Virginia, Maryland and of course the DC.

 

[Currahee Chris]

I probably should have called this thread "Discussing the WW2 Legacy with your kids" as I hold the Japanese 100% accountable for their actions in dealing with US, Dutch, and UK POWs as well- as well as the atrocities they committed in Nanking and Korea.

 

[Currahee Chris]

I dunno, I guess I have to wonder why I would need to show him or anyone else for that matter, pictures of these events. It isn't like my old man took me back to his bedroom and reached behind his nightstand for his "Secret stash" when he had the "Birds and the Bees" talk with me. Why should this be any different??

 

[UKReb]

A difficult subject to discuss with youngsters but absolutely necessary. The Holocaust is a blot on modern mankind although unfortunately genocide continues almost unabated today across the world especially in Africa.

Why do I believe it necessary to inform our children? Primarily the fascination the world has for anything Nazi/SS/Gestapo. Try browsing the net there are literally thousands and thousands of web-sites and worringly not just historical. Nazism is big big business with the selling of militaria, uniforms, helmets, flags, insignia, weapons, decals, medals, SS daggers and replicas of all the above.Yet none of those web-sites refer to concentration/death camps or the holocaust.
I have a friend in the publishing business who told me once that if you want to sell a "man's magazine" in Europe (not the pin-up type) put a swastika on the cover and it will sell ten-fold. Go into any book-shop in the world and you will find hundreds of tomes on the Nazis & Co.

Even our hobby! the most popular series for any toy soldier manufacturer and collector is WWII and everyone one of them produces German troops/AV's. There is indeed a worldwide fascination that continues to grow for all things associated with The Third Reich.

Now is all the above harmful- not too sure- but it needs to be balanced with the full history of Nazism and a realisation of what that snazzy black uniform with it's death head insignia, designed by Hugo Boss, really stood for- especially the fear and death it wrought on millions of innocent people that suffered the full horror of the Holocaust.

We know the history and you owe it to your kids, to ensure they understand the truth behind this apparent fascination with a deadly regime.
Reb

 

[Currahee Chris]

Very well put UK- very well put indeed.

I was unaware of the Hugo Boss association until I perused the book I got this weekend.

 

[Currahee Chris]

Well, last night I had the talk with him. We were en route to his Boy Scout meeting. No need for pictures. He was pretty composed but perhaps I laid it on a bit thick because after about 10 minutes, he was crying and pretty upset. I immediately backed off and told him it was ok. I even felt myself getting a bit emotional. I think I got my point across.

One of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me was a deep sense of respect of peoples of all cultures. We traveled extensively- me being an army brat and all and then going in the service myself. How many kids can say, before they are 9 that they saw the Pope in Rome, walked the Eagles Nest and saw Mount Fuji. Unfortunately, I feel American schools, and I give them high marks for trying, just aren't able to fully educate the kids on some of the more applicable points of other cultures. A lot of that has to do with the size of the US- Our country easily covers as much land as France, Germany and a host of other smaller European nations. Europeans (and Africans) are able to see the cultural differences more transparently than we are here in the States.

I made sure I communicated to him the roots of Nazism and how it was born out of desparation and drew some similarities between the situation then and now (though I won't elaborate for fear of dredging up current events).

I felt as if I did my son a big favor. I explained to him that intolerance was the root of the evil of Nazism and that he should take a stand against intolerance today where he sees it- we have plenty of it here in the States and I provided him some examples of modern day intolerance.

I did feel bad that he ended up in tears, but it took him only a few minutes to recover. I felt like the end justified the means and I did him a big favor. In the end, I encourage all of us who are fans of history to communicate to those in our family or friends the evil of the periods we are interested in. I think to be silent on the issue, may, in the end, lead them to believe that we actually support unfavorable ideologies. After all, as UK pointed out, they are kids and they see all these beautiful or "cool" looking tanks and they are naturally drawn to it. They fail to see the swastika and understand what that means.

CC

 

[Gideon]

I learned about the holocaust at an early age by asking some older friends of the family "what's that on your arms?" They were kind about it and spoke in general terms. Enough for me to realize somewhat the gravity of what happened.

I learned much more about it at age 11 and throughout highschool from my classes and those same family friends who shared their experiences with me because they did not want the memory to die.

I was doing volunteer work when I was 18 for a national serivce organization. Most of my team mates were minortiy. When they found out I am Jewish, they ridiculed me. Instead of filing complaints, I called for an office day and brought in tapes of "World at War" - the episodes which covered the holocaust - they had never learned about this - mostly about their own peoples enslavement and suffering. It was a positive experience and put us on equal footing again.

At age 11, I beleive many children are old enough to have a pretty thorough conversation about the darker side of humanity. Not all kids, but I found myself being asked a lot of really interesting questions by kids when they came into the store and saw the soldier displays. As long as the parents were willing to let me speak openly (I always asked) I found that they would understand just fine and be very thoughtfull about it.

 

[Currahee Chris]

Way to go brother- you handled all of that with class

 

[Gideon]

You should have seen the look of shock on their face. There was footage of emaciated bodies being bulldozed into graves. One person commented how I look like some of those people - well - my family is German, Austrian and Polish Jewish, so yeah - I kind of look like them. They just had no idea.

The images are hard for an 11 year old to see for sure but the conversation can begin. Though, just on regular television, 11 year olds and younger are exposed to so much violence - who knows.

 

[Currahee Chris]

So an update on this old thread

My eldest son is 19 now and moving on with the world. However, my daughter is 14 and starting to ask questions. She is studying German for her third year now (8th grade) and really enjoys it immensely. It has been interesting to see a lot of fiction geared towards children in her age bracket- one book called "The Book Thief" sheds a new light/perspective on the plight of the common German in WW2. She has read that book several times and watched the movie (very good mind you). Her and I read The Book Thief together several weeks ago and they discussed Stalingrad. She didnt know what that was all about. I took a moment to talk to her about it and shared some articles on it and even showed her the FL figures (which she thought were excellent lol). I told her "it was the absolutely most brutal theater of war in the history of humanity." That seemed to spur her interest and she has taken a real interest in learning about Stalingrad and particularly the role the Germans played. Friday night she emailed me a very cute picture of a German officer in Stalingrad sitting down having lunch and he had his softcap on his German Shepard- who was sitting next to him. As most girls at that age, she loves dogs and horses and she sees all these pictures of Germans riding horses and playing around with German Shepards I think it makes it hard for her to reconcile that these guys who were animal lovers like her were commiting dangerous atrocities against the Russian populace.

It is interesting that since I started this thread in 2008, it seems like here in the States there is a bit of an effort to paint a more balanced picture of the Germans in WW2 than has ever been previously portrayed imo. She is still fully intent on studying German as that was the first class she registered for as she starts HS this fall. She asks me all sorts of questions from when I lived there and what I know about Germany in the world wars. Two weekends ago we went to the Smithsonian Museum of History and her and I looked at quite a bit of the Nazi material there. Heck she even enjoys listening to the German metal bands I listen to and loves that she now knows what they are saying. lol.

Guess it's going to be one of these situations I keep an eye on. Just interesting to see in this short span of time it seems like there is an effort out there to paint a different picture of the nazi movement than I ever grew up under.

 

[Napoleon1er]

I just happened upon this thread, and it really hits home for me. Up until 6th grade, the Holocaust was not something that we discussed or even mentioned in my house. With Jewish Russians on my mother's side and Jewish Hungarians on my father's side, it is a given that there was a lot of loss on both sides, even though specific names were not known (now that I know more, I can say that this was because the people who knew the name were also killed.) At around six, my parents showed me a swastika and explained that it was evil, as was the word Hitler and Nazi. My parents were pretty loose with language, but those three things joined the C-word and racial/ethnic slurs as the only things that were absolutely off-limits to say/write.
When I was in 6th grade, I got a book on kids in the Holocaust. I read it in a few days. For weeks, I lay away at night, thinking of gas and dead bodies burning. Every minute I was not thinking of something else, my mind wandered to the castle in Germany were they killed the disabled. Quotations from the book haunted me. I hid the book from my parents like it was pornography, because I did not want them to talk about it with me. Then one day my father mentioned it and asked me about it. I opened up and told him everything- I think I even cried. He reassured me and told me it would never happen again. He told me I could come to him whenever I need to, but I did not think about the Holocaust for a few years.
When I was going through my plebe period in military high school, we were not allowed to use our computers for anything but school. When I was done my homework and feeling depressed about the lack of contact with my parents and being a plebe, I would read about the Holocaust. I read a lot. In the four years since then, I have fully come to terms with what my grandparents' siblings went through in the camps. In my travels and my reading, I have learned a lot more about evil and the contrast between its terrible power and its banality.
Last year, I interviewed the U.S. Army officer who ran Buchenwald after its liberation. That experience tied together all of my previous thoughts on the Holocaust. Two months ago, I was in the Negev desert late at night, alone. There was an overpowering wind and it was freezing. Before I hiked back to the tent where my friends were partying, I played the famous recording of Jewish inmates at Bergen Belsen singing HaTikvah. The final lesson I learned about the Holocaust is that it failed.
-Sandor

 

[Al Fisher]

Being an octogenarian I well remember WW2 . . . and that is why I buy neither Nazis or combat troops for my collection. My dad was on active duty for nearly six year, my future father-in-law was KIA, my uncle went through Europe to the camps, and the older kid I worshiped was severally wounded. (Both he and my father-in-law earned the Silver Star in combat.) I clearly remember the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor, D-Day as well as many other events. Yes . . . not all Germans were bad, but enough of them were so that I cannot understand why in the world anyone would want to collect them. (Yeah, I know the excuse . . . pretty uniforms and terrific equipment!) Those that purchase such items surely have no feel for history and the trauma forced on so many millions of humans. Sorry if I hurt anyone's feeling, but this is the way I feel.

Bosun Al

 

[Currahee Chris]

Thanks for the stories fellas, yeah Al, Im with you man. I remember how guilty I felt when I bought my first German WW2 set from KC some time ago- like I had spit on my grandfathers grave almost. Ultimately though, he saw me play with plastic WW2 soldiers, to include nazis, and never batted an eye (probably cause the US always won!!! {sm4}). I think this is a question all collectors have to ask themselves and acclimate themselves to- how comfortable are we with nazi material (or any really negative regime throughout the history of humanity). I'm an avid collector of Romans yet in no way do I even wish to celebrate what they did- it's a supplement to the enjoyment I get from reading history.

From my perspective, it has been interesting to see where the collective conscious has us going over the last 10 years. There does seem to be a move towards understanding and reconciliation.

 

[nysoldiers]

This is a touchy subject.
Unfortunately you cannot redact the tyrants and brutality out of history. We teach and study history so we can avoid the same mistakes and be on the lookout for the miscreants and their vile agendas.
I remember a college professor saying that "hate is easy, it takes no intelligence, logic or research."

Many, like myself, will not purchase a figure of Hitler or his henchmen. I won't purchase the Liebstandarte range either as personally I find it offensive. I do, however, have German military figures in my collection.
You cannot frame the war without all its combatants and showing the bad guys being defeated seems to justify collecting both sides.
I don't have a Stalin figure nor Mao, Tojo, Mussolini and Pol Pot. But I do have Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Atilla, Saladin, Darius, Santa Ana, The Mahdi, etc...all of whom might be labeled notorious murderers by those who opposed them.

Getting back to the thread. I have talked with survivors of the Holocaust and American and British veterans who liberated the concentration camps. I have also seen the Holocaust museum in Israel. It is hard to understand how this could have happened in recent history.
Very tough to explain to young children, I doubt they could comprehend this inhumanity.
I think it should be taught in High School and college although the younger generations still have a problem comprehending this period of history. Maybe a trip to Auschwitz or other camps would make an impression, books and movies probably don't.
I have been to Germany many times for business and touring and I find it hard to believe that this society could have perpetrrated some of the greatest crimes to humanity in history. It is a lesson that we must always keep our guard up and confront evil at the outset.
Hopefully mankind will evolve to a point where we won't have to worry about a "Nazi type regime" again but it seems a long way off!

A Postscript.....I don't blame the younger German generations for the sins of their fathers (grandfathers). They are a remarkably energetic and productive society. They don't ignore their past but they do move forward with a positive attitude and a willingness to learn from their history.

 

[Hoverbug]

Not to detract from the seriousness of the topic, but I had a formative experience with the Time-Life WWII series. In 1978, at age 8, I was fairly fascinated by WWII (my first movie was going to see Patton at the drive-in with my parents at 3). My parents received a Time-Life ad in the mail for the series offering a trial issue (which if you didn't subsequently cancel would result in your being subscribed to the series). Unbeknowst to my parents, I filled out the form and sent it in thinking there was no harm if it was a free issue. My parents were a bit baffled when the volumes started arriving, but they were forgiving and figured if I was that interested in it, they would pick up the tab. I do remember the volume in question being rough, but I don't think it caused any lasting damage.