Dillards 73: A Bitter Dill

[Eponine]

On 1/29/2019 at 1:16 PM, HarryPotterFan said:

The vast majority of what I learned about the Holocaust was from Hebrew school. It’s no surprise that a frightenly high percentage of millenials think that only 2 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. And schools really don’t go into depth about the atrocities Nazis committed. It’s so much more than gas chambers. How can we expect people to recognize evil or hate that lurks in every day people if schools refuse to teach it and teach the same damn American history each year? “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And schools are paving the way for that to happen.

This is really surprising and confusing to me - I'm a millennial (in my early 30s) and we started doing Holocaust studies in 6th or 7th grade and it continued all the way through 12th grade. I was assigned at least 4 (and probably like 6 if I'm remembering right - about 1 every year) Holocaust memoirs in school. I guess it depends on the area? I grew up in a school district that was probably a quarter to a third Jewish (mostly non-practicing and who had roots in the area before World War II) so maybe that made the difference. We literally went over it every year for 5 or 6 years in a row; there is absolutely no way anyone in my school district at that time would be ignorant of the Holocaust unless they were willfully blocking it out.

Truthfully, by my senior year I felt like we did Holocaust studies to the exclusion of other atrocities. I chose to take a class on 20th century totalitarianism in my senior year and it was the first time I had anything in depth on Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge, etc. And not everyone had to take that class, so I think the average kid in our district might think that once the Holocaust came to an end humans never did anything similar again. We also went over slavery repeatedly and in depth. It's genuinely surprising to me that a lot of people say they didn't learn about either of those school - and someone even had a Holocaust denier teacher! This thread is kind of blowing my mind, but no wonder Americans are ignorant of so many things, I suppose, if most teaching is lacking those basic studies.

[karen77]

2 hours ago, Blessings of the Corn said:

that's like when I tell people I'm from Washington. First I have to clarify that I mean Washington State, and then they just assume I mean Seattle. Sometimes it's easier to say Seattle even though I'm about an hour + north.

I get this all teh time too, so annoying!! 

My husband and I were in a hot tub at a hotel a few years back and some girl was chatting with us... asked us where we were from, said "washington" she went on about having been there, blah blah blah and it took me a second but realized that she was talking about D.C..... we never did correct her!

So, yeah, sometimes I just say "north of Seattle" works better. (I'm 1.5-2 hrs north, B'ham)

[ViolaSebastian]

I may have told this story before, but I was in a play in 2014, and most of the cast members were 20-somethings. One young man, who was probably 21 or 22, and I were having a discussion about genealogy one day as we worked on the set. He mentioned he'd like to have his family's done, and I told him that he might find information out that was disturbing or that he didn't like. He asked "like what?" and I used the rather classic example that he could find out an ancestor was a Nazi who worked at Auschwitz. He replied that he did not know what that was.

My head almost exploded. I ended up explaining it to him and I ended up giving my copy of Night to him. I hope he read it, but I doubt it. I just can't believe there are people out there, like this guy, who either wasn't listening or wasn't taught about Auschwitz, but there's at least one person. 

[Blessings of the Corn]

35 minutes ago, karen77 said:

I get this all teh time too, so annoying!! 

My husband and I were in a hot tub at a hotel a few years back and some girl was chatting with us... asked us where we were from, said "washington" she went on about having been there, blah blah blah and it took me a second but realized that she was talking about D.C..... we never did correct her!

So, yeah, sometimes I just say "north of Seattle" works better. (I'm 1.5-2 hrs north, B'ham)

Hiya, neighbor! Skagit Valley here  I lay claim to the Shupes, haha. In fact, I saw her leaving a local grocery store one day and I walked right past her.

[karen77]

2 minutes ago, Blessings of the Corn said:

Hiya, neighbor! Skagit Valley here  I lay claim to the Shupes, haha. In fact, I saw her leaving a local grocery store one day and I walked right past her.

Hey!!

that's hilarious!!! now you know to keep an eye out

[Bobology]

8 minutes ago, ViolaSebastian said:

I may have told this story before, but I was in a play in 2014, and most of the cast members were 20-somethings. One young man, who was probably 21 or 22, and I were having a discussion about genealogy one day as we worked on the set. He mentioned he'd like to have his family's done, and I told him that he might find information out that was disturbing or that he didn't like. He asked "like what?" and I used the rather classic example that he could find out an ancestor was a Nazi who worked at Auschwitz. He replied that he did not know what that was.

My head almost exploded. I ended up explaining it to him and I ended up giving my copy of Night to him. I hope he read it, but I doubt it. I just can't believe there are people out there, like this guy, who either wasn't listening or wasn't taught about Auschwitz, but there's at least one person. 

My guess is that the young man had a vague notion of what Hitler did to Jewish people, but never connected "Auschwitz" to those things. I've come across folks like that, who had poor history teachers, slept through history, barely made Cs by studying the chapter questions or whatever, and just never did put it all together with names and dates. As they mature they begin to hear more and pay attention more. It sounds like I'm speaking for a friend, but sadly... In my defense I was really good in other areas!

[ViolaSebastian]

15 minutes ago, Bobology said:

My guess is that the young man had a vague notion of what Hitler did to Jewish people, but never connected "Auschwitz" to those things. I've come across folks like that, who had poor history teachers, slept through history, barely made Cs by studying the chapter questions or whatever, and just never did put it all together with names and dates. As they mature they begin to hear more and pay attention more. It sounds like I'm speaking for a friend, but sadly... In my defense I was really good in other areas!

I found out later, when I was discussing it, that he went to school with a crew member. She said that they definitely read Night and learned about the Holocaust in history class. This guy is....er.....exceedingly not bright. 

[Casserole]

3 hours ago, Eponine said:

This is really surprising and confusing to me - I'm a millennial (in my early 30s) and we started doing Holocaust studies in 6th or 7th grade and it continued all the way through 12th grade. I was assigned at least 4 (and probably like 6 if I'm remembering right - about 1 every year) Holocaust memoirs in school. I guess it depends on the area? I grew up in a school district that was probably a quarter to a third Jewish (mostly non-practicing and who had roots in the area before World War II) so maybe that made the difference. We literally went over it every year for 5 or 6 years in a row; there is absolutely no way anyone in my school district at that time would be ignorant of the Holocaust unless they were willfully blocking it out.

Truthfully, by my senior year I felt like we did Holocaust studies to the exclusion of other atrocities. I chose to take a class on 20th century totalitarianism in my senior year and it was the first time I had anything in depth on Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge, etc. And not everyone had to take that class, so I think the average kid in our district might think that once the Holocaust came to an end humans never did anything similar again. We also went over slavery repeatedly and in depth. It's genuinely surprising to me that a lot of people say they didn't learn about either of those school - and someone even had a Holocaust denier teacher! This thread is kind of blowing my mind, but no wonder Americans are ignorant of so many things, I suppose, if most teaching is lacking those basic studies.

I'm a late 20's millenial in the Northeastern US. We started in 5th grade, reading Elie Wiesel's Night. Read Dawn the next year. Diary of Anne Frank freshman (i think?) year. And that was only in English/Literature courses. My history courses were similar, with the most concentration in Freshman "World History." At the culmination of the Holocaust unit, we watched Schindler's List. At some point we did watch a Diary of Anne Frank movie, as well. It was definitely sprinkled in yearly in the curriculum starting from a relatively young age. 

[OldFadedStar]

4 hours ago, Blessings of the Corn said:

that's like when I tell people I'm from Washington. First I have to clarify that I mean Washington State, and then they just assume I mean Seattle. Sometimes it's easier to say Seattle even though I'm about an hour + north.

Yeah... I'm from Illinois but my hometown is about 45 minutes away from St Louis... so typically I just tell people now I'm from St Louis. 

[ViolaSebastian]

1 hour ago, Casserole said:

We started in 5th grade, reading Elie Wiesel's Night. Read Dawn the next year. 

Wow, that seems young for Night. Did your class handle it well? I read it as a sixteen-year-old and I'm still haunted by some of things he describes. 

[Casserole]

10 minutes ago, ViolaSebastian said:

Wow, that seems young for Night. Did your class handle it well? I read it as a sixteen-year-old and I'm still haunted by some of things he describes. 

I don't remember any issues while we were reading it, but quite honestly, I don't think I totally grasped it until a few years later when I picked it up and reread it. 

[LiterallyBananas]

1 hour ago, OldFadedStar said:

Yeah... I'm from Illinois but my hometown is about 45 minutes away from St Louis... so typically I just tell people now I'm from St Louis. 

Which direction is your hometown from STL, if you don't mind me asking? I'm from the same region. I live in TX now, so I just tell people the same thing. 

[AreYouThereGothard?]

@Drala I’m from NE Ohio and can’t say I venture much into Cincinnati, but I will keep my eyes peeled for Touchdown Jesus. Thank you for enlightening us

@Hashtag Blessed @allthegoodnamesrgone @Alisamer all other pissed-off people I missed: That whole thing was huge tease. IIRC, Amazon folks said they wanted an airport, big university, and reasonable commute (to address your point, @Lurker, transportation within Columbus proper is fine, but you’ll definitely need a car to venture outside of it. Still, the main suburbs are tops 25 mins from downtown). So many midwestern and smaller bigger cities have that and could have brought the tech sector away from the coasts. Shoot, they could have brought it to Arkansas so people could have Walmart AND all the Amazon AND a Duggar could get a decent job (not ragging on Arkansas, it’s just, y’know, where the Duggars are). There’s nothing reasonable about an NYC/DC commute without the mass transit (NYC and DC folks, correct me if I’m wrong) and rent in NYC is more than my mortgage, interwebs, and landscaping combined. I’m baffled. 

-pulls out tambourine- all we are saaaaaaaying, is GIVE THE MIDDLE OF THE COUNTRY A CHAAAAAANCE

 

[NotQuiteMotY]

On 1/29/2019 at 9:26 PM, Topaz said:

I once went to the post office counter (in the UK) to send a letter to Yemen. The person serving me looked at the address and told me she didn’t realise that Yemen was a real country, she thought that it was made up for the episode of Friends where Chandler pretends to move there.

Another time I had a letter with an obviously non-English address that ended Tbilisi, Georgia and had to stop them adding USA to the end of it.

My sister worked for Royal Mail deciphering the postcodes that were not readable by machine. If there was one she couldn’t work out she had to flag it. She once flagged a letter addressed to Czechoslovakia (in the ‘00s) as she wasn’t sure whether to send it to the Czech Republic or Slovakia, and got pulled up by her supervisor who thought that they were still one country.

Regarding the country of Georgia, I worked at a job where we processed resumes, many of them submitted by an online form. For any address, wherever it was residential or a company/school, you had to select country and state from a dropdown menu. It was stunning how many people submitted forms starting that they lived and worked in Atlanta in the COUNTRY of Georgia!

9 hours ago, Hashtag Blessed said:

I’m pissed too. We really don’t even want Amazon here but stupid Cuomo doesn’t care. Other cities could actually USE the influx of cash and jobs. Instead they’re gonna push a bunch of working class people out of their neighborhood here for a big fancy campus that benefits no one but Amazon employees. Worse, they’re going to use up tax money to do it while our subway system is literally crumbling and desperately underfunded. 

Sorry to rant, but this has had me pissed off for a while now. I just saw a big anti-Amazon gathering in the city today and was tempted to join them. They should go to Ohio! Or Pennsylvania! Or literally anywhere else because we don’t want them.

Omg, I’ve heard so much about touchdown Jesus but I’ve never been shown a picture! That’s beautiful(ly bad). Amazing.

Um, a large chunk of PA doesn't want them either!

2 hours ago, Casserole said:

I'm a late 20's millenial in the Northeastern US. We started in 5th grade, reading Elie Wiesel's Night. Read Dawn the next year. Diary of Anne Frank freshman (i think?) year. And that was only in English/Literature courses. My history courses were similar, with the most concentration in Freshman "World History." At the culmination of the Holocaust unit, we watched Schindler's List. At some point we did watch a Diary of Anne Frank movie, as well. It was definitely sprinkled in yearly in the curriculum starting from a relatively young age. 

Early 30s millennial here. I don't remember doing much in middle school about it, though I assume we must have touched on it, but in high school we did. It was mentioned in more than one history class, obviously, plus covered in at least two English classes I can think of. 

[OldFadedStar]

42 minutes ago, LiterallyBananas said:

Which direction is your hometown from STL, if you don't mind me asking? I'm from the same region. I live in TX now, so I just tell people the same thing. 

Straight east. Good old Madison County. 

[neurogirl]

@Beermeet people in ND definitely say "ya know", "you betcha", "fer sure", and weirdly, "oh fer fun/oh fer cute."

[Smoochie]

8 hours ago, Drala said:

I'd completely forgotten about the fire that destroyed TD Jesus.  I never drive I-75 any more, so it's still there in my head.  It appears the church replaced TD Jesus with "Hug Me Jesus"

 

Live in Canada now, but my father and his family are from Northern KY, so drove past this many times.  LOL the new one is such a let down, not near as big.  

I'll never forget when it burned down, my nephew texts me and said Jesus is on fire, it's on the news and I knew immediately what he was talking about.   I still crack up about lightening striking it ... you know, all about building and worshiping false idols.

[backyard sylph]

On 1/29/2019 at 9:26 PM, Beermeet said:

@HarleyQuinn  Um, can you guys step it up, please?  I think I can speak for us states that are not ND when I say, we need you to. What if there was no southern or NY/NJ accents?  Do. Your. Part.  ???

I lived in New Jersey for 11 years, first on the shore and then near Princeton, and almost never heard anyone who sounded like the people in movies. When they did it usually turned out they were from Staten Island originally, or sometimes Brooklyn. 

[CarrotCake]

I think even here in Western Europe there are probably young people that do not know the words Auschwitz or Holocaust without context. This does not mean they don't know about the horror of WW2, which are mentioned all the time still. 

It also doesn't help that we have a small town here that is called Austerlitz (with a well known touristic attraction). As a kid I thought for a while that the concentration camp was actually in the middle of the Netherlands and people still lived there. 

[Eponine]

2 hours ago, CarrotCake said:

I think even here in Western Europe there are probably young people that do not know the words Auschwitz or Holocaust without context. This does not mean they don't know about the horror of WW2, which are mentioned all the time still. 

It also doesn't help that we have a small town here that is called Austerlitz (with a well known touristic attraction). As a kid I thought for a while that the concentration camp was actually in the middle of the Netherlands and people still lived there. 

That's really interesting! I think it's opposite where I grew up - we didn't do a whole lot on the actual war parts of WWII, we mostly focused on the Holocaust. I'm not sure my peers would know what else to say about the war other than the Nazis lost and the Holocaust happened, and maybe a bit about Normandy. I find it fascinating to see what kids are taught and what schools focus on in different areas!

[Topaz]

2 hours ago, CarrotCake said:

It also doesn't help that we have a small town here that is called Austerlitz (with a well known touristic attraction). As a kid I thought for a while that the concentration camp was actually in the middle of the Netherlands and people still lived there. 

When I first read about the Napolenic wars I read the battle of Austerlitz as the battle of Auschwitz and got quite confused. Good to know I’m not the only one who has done that.

[Alisamer]

I remember focusing a little more on the holocaust in college, where I had a history professor who was very, very good.

Literally all I remember from history class in high school is the teacher from a one-stop-sign town in the boonies who talked about "Austria-Hungria" a lot. I feel like I have a decent grasp on western history, but can't remember dates to save my life! 

I honestly think seeing Hamilton actually helped me "get" some of the early US history better than I had before - instead of old rich white stuffy guys on currency they became the scrappy rebellious immigrants that's more like what most of them were - real people who had real lives and sometimes did stupid things. 

Now that I think of it, a LOT of my US history knowledge that is actually in working memory comes from Walt Disney World. Between the American Adventure and Hall of Presidents, most of the highlights are at least touched on, enough that I can picture the scenes from the show and then remember the more in-depth stuff from school from there.

[CarrotCake]

44 minutes ago, Eponine said:

That's really interesting! I think it's opposite where I grew up - we didn't do a whole lot on the actual war parts of WWII, we mostly focused on the Holocaust. I'm not sure my peers would know what else to say about the war other than the Nazis lost and the Holocaust happened, and maybe a bit about Normandy. I find it fascinating to see what kids are taught and what schools focus on in different areas!

Here it is more focused on daily life during the war. When I was a kid most of the classmates had grandparents that lived during the war so we learn a lot about how life for Jews (and other groups) was gradually getting more difficult, how people start to help them out but also how people disappeared on trains (so everyone will know about concentration camps but not specifically Auschwitz). We also learned a lot about the Dutch famine during the final year of the war, how life was living on food ration and finally how we were liberated by the Allies.

We did learn about the rise of Hitler, the politics during the war, D Day etc. but this was only in class while the stories about daily life live much more. So if you would ask my peers about WW2 it will be mostly about those stories.

[Fun Undies]

Thread drift ftw - I got a couple of stories!

Story One:

When we decided to move back to America, we told our German neighbors we were moving to the city of Columbia (SC), America.  The night before, we had a little going away party, and they were talking about Spanish, and if we thought it'd be hard to learn, etc. . . . and we realized, they thought we meant Colombia, South America   But that's an easy enough mistake if you don't know major cities of all the states!

Story Two:
Though I obviously learned basic geography of the United States, I was honestly horrible and remembering them all!  I met a MN boy in SC, and he asked me to move with him (we're happily married now <3).  Well anyways, he asked me if I knew where MN was, and I'm like, "Oh of course!" (thinking, um, somewhere in the middle - since it's part of "MIDwest", right?!).  After our date, I drove to the library (before smartphones), grabbed a geography book, and traced my finger all over the middle, slowly going up and finally spotting Minnesota, and then squealed, "That's next to CANADA?!"  Yeah, geography fail.

Story Three:

Thinking I was totes adorbs, I shared a video of some actors who were doing what I *thought* was a MN accent, and talking about the cold weather.  Show it to my (then boyfriend), and he rolls his eyes, and says, "That's Canada babe."  And I was like, "What?  Wait, there's a difference between the two accents??" . . . I mean after 10 years in Minnesota, I can definitely tell now, but yeah, I'm lucky my man was patient with my regional ignorance

Extra: As for obscure states, I'm on board with the "Keep forgetting we have a state called Delaware." 

And as for Americans learning about the Holocaust, I moved from Germany when I was 12 - and I *think* my German school was going to start teaching about it in the next grade.  When I moved to SC, I learned about it when I was 13/14, but mostly from the Diary of Anne Frank (and watching the theater production in the classroom).  Then it wasn't really discussed much more till I was a junior, and there wasn't a big focus on the Holocaust, as much as an "overall" WW2 review.  I remember learning more from the books my parents had in their library, and going to my local library. 

BUT boy oh boy, when we covered the Civil War in 12th grade, the boys who SLEPT through history before, sure perked up, and knew all the details of dates, and places and I'm like, "What.is.happening??" - learned later, most of them had done civil war reenactments with their families since they were little.
 

[Cheetah]

13 minutes ago, Fun Undies said:

Thread drift ftw - I got a couple of stories!

Story One:

When we decided to move back to America, we told our German neighbors we were moving to the city of Columbia (SC), America.  The night before, we had a little going away party, and they were talking about Spanish, and if we thought it'd be hard to learn, etc. . . . and we realized, they thought we meant Colombia, South America   But that's an easy enough mistake if you don't know major cities of all the states!
 

Not quite the same thing but made me think of it... my SIL once took a flight (might not have been direct) from San Jose to San Jose.  Nothing like reusing the same names over and over throughout the "New World".    Now that I'm on that roll I guess including this coming weekend I'm going / have been to Portland 3x within a year... not all the same Portland.