Today I received a chain email with this text:
It is a matter of history that when Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps, he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead. He did this because he said in words to this effect: 'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the track of history some b*stard will get up and say that this never happened'
'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing'
Edmund Burke
This week, the UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offended' the Muslim population who claim it never occurred.
This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it. is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.
This e-ma il is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the
six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian peoples looking the other way!
Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.
This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide!
Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.
Don't just delete this. It will only take a minute to pass this along .
let's cover the world and remember because we cannot let it ever happen again.
Whenever I get something like this, something that seems so absurd that it can only exist as an internet rumour, I do a quick check to see if anyone has debunked it. It turns out that this rumor has, indeed, been debunked. It isn't true. No such ban exists. But most rumors have a grain of truth in them. This one doesn't have a grain, it has a big ugly chunk of truth at its heart.
2 comments:
I think this has been a bit overplayed (though it is last year's news over here). Apparently there was one school in a heavily Muslim area in the north of England:
The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.
What the Dail Mail doesn't say is that the Holocaust isn't a particularly ordinary subject for GCSE history coursework. It is always covered in Key Stage 3 (the equivalent of the middle school years) as a part of the National Curriculum. At GCSE, there are a very wide range of modules that history departments can choose to teach. While my head of department has chosen to include Germany 1918-45 as a module, our courseworks are taken from a unit of selected topics in American history 1919-90.
It was the same department "that deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3". There's not a Muslim within 25 miles of my school and we don't teach the crusades because there's simply not enough time. We only get the 39 weeks of Year 7 to teach everything from 1066 to 1485. With an introduction to history (and teaching simple things like chronology), the Conquest, Henry II and Becket, John and Magna Carta, the role of the medieval Church, castles, and such, the Crusades get left behind.
wow! 39 weeks to teach 400 years. Its like those tours I sometimes see advertised: "Visit all the capitals of Europe! 6 days and 5 nights! Only $2,999 (+air travel)!
You are right. There isn't enough time to teach the crusades. Now that I've given it some thought, I suppose that would require a whole academic year.
Thanks for enlightening me Sol. And thanks for reading my blog.
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