How should we teach our children about the horrors of the Holocaust?

How do we teach the Holocaust to a generation so removed from the past?

They have to know what happened.”

“We can never forget.”

“Children today are so coddled. They need to appreciate how lucky they are, and what some Yidden endured for being Jewish.”

“If my grandmother could go through Auschwitz as a teenager, how can my teenager be too young to hear about Auschwitz?”

“Teaching about the kedoshim keeps their memory alive — how can we forget their lives and deaths?”

T

hese perspectives sound all too familiar to parents and educators who are given the task of educating our children about the darkest period of the past century, the Holocaust.

“I have two kinds of students in my classroom who need pushback when we begin to learn about the Holocaust,” explains Sara Lobell*, a middle-school Bais Yaakov teacher. “There are the girls who lean forward, enthusiastic, and tell me that they love learning about the Holocaust. ‘Are you going to tell us all the details? Is it going to be really scary?’ To them, the Holocaust feels so removed from their lives that they see it as some kind of spooky story, a gory tale.”

The second kind of student has the opposite reaction. “I have girls who raise their hands and ask if they can leave if they’re uncomfortable, who say that they’re afraid they’ll get nightmares, who will even ask their parents to call the school and be excused from the unit.”

Complex questions arise as the years go on. Can children really relate to the Churban of Europe, 80  years on? Will they be traumatized by learning about the horrors? And don’t today’s kids have enough stress in their lives, with an uptick in anti-Semitism and a barrage of frightening and sometimes graphic news from Eretz Yisrael? Do we really need to pile on the fear?

For Rabbi Shmuel Yaakov Klein, executive school consultant at Torah Umesorah, there is no doubt that the answer is yes. We have a mandate to teach about the suffering Yidden underwent at the hands of Hitler and his machinery of evil. “The reasons for Holocaust education were spelled out by the Novominsker Rebbe ztz”l. For our children to understand the reality of the Jewish experience, they must learn sensitivity to the agonies Yidden have suffered.” If they can’t carry that yoke of our ancestral pain, they won’t have the same empathy and involvement with Klal Yisrael’s destiny.

Rabbi Klein invokes the Torah’s command of zechor yemos olam, remembering what came before us and learning the lessons of the past. “In an approach also emphasized by Rav Dovid Schustal shlita, learning about times of Jewish suffering gives us an understanding of middas hadin. We need to ‘be matzdik the din,’ accept the idea of Divine reward and punishment, as listed in the Rambam’s Thirteen Principles of Faith.”

Rabbi Yonasan Roodyn is a kehillah rav and educational director of the Jewish Futures Trust. He has led close to 70 trips to Eastern Europe with JRoots, many for chareidi teens through the chizuk organization Klal Chazon. He is a strong advocate for Holocaust education.

In his view, children can understand the concept of “bad people killing Yidden” from a relatively young age, and it is best to let them grow up with this awareness. “Even my little kids know that I go to Poland, where Yidden used to live, and where they were killed al kiddush Hashem. The Alter Rebbe explained the pasuk, ‘Chanoch lana’ar al pi darko, gam ki yazkin…’ that if you tell children truths while they are young, they will unpack them in depth as they grow older. The facts of anti-Semitism are the truth.”

Rabbi Roodyn paraphrases Rav Yitzchok Hutner: If we only teach children about the sweetness and the light of Judaism and not the tochachah [rebuke and punishment], then those who later encounter the inevitable challenges or darker side of life will fail to cope. By explaining that a part of being a Yid has always been experiencing hatred, we give them perspective and resilience. “On Seder night, we tell children about the shibbud. On Chanukah and Purim, we discuss Antiochus and Haman. We don’t hide our emotions on Tishah B’Av. This gives our children resilience. A teen who has never heard of Jew hatred will experience a shock to his system when he inevitably encounters it. Although, at the same time, it goes without saying that to dwell excessively on hatred and hardship is obviously harmful.”