The issue of Critical Race Theory (CRT), especially with reference to education in the U.S., has been and continues to be highly contentious. (If you’re not familiar with the arguments on both sides of the debate, I recommend reading the explanation from Education Week. Click here to go to the article.) As I understand it, advocates of CRT promote teaching young people about the reality of longstanding, systemic, and ongoing racism in this country. Among other things, opponents of CRT say doing so will make white students feel singled out, demonized, and guilt-ridden.
What does CRT have to do with the Jews? A lot. Not educating young Americans about the true history of racism in America is comparable to not teaching young Germans about the Nazi regime and the horrific crimes it committed. It’s in the same league as denying or minimizing the Holocaust. Not teaching full and accurate history to German youngsters because it might make them feel ashamed of their national identity would be doing both them and the entire world a grave disservice.
The debate over CRT brings to mind the well-known aphorism by writer and philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Similar sayings are: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” and “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it” Not repeating the mistakes of the past is the operative idea.
One hopes all American youngsters are taught about the Holocaust in school. Important universal truths can be derived regarding the nature of dictatorial regimes, bigotry and hatred, and the depths to which human beings are capable of sinking. Of course, the guilt is on the part of the Nazis, the German people of that era, and the many non-Germans back then who collaborated with the Nazis in murdering six million Jews plus an enormous number of other innocent civilians. The United States was one of the heroic nations that fought and defeated the Nazi regime.
However, our educational system should also teach the story of the S.S. St. Louis, the ship carrying 900 mostly Jewish refugees fleeing oppression and death at the hands of the Nazis. After the ship was denied entry by America and other countries, it was forced to return to Germany, where the vast majority of passengers lost their lives in the gas chambers.
Educators should also teach about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s refusal to bomb concentration camps and railroad tracks in Germany — despite pleadings by American Jewish leaders — which could have saved a multitude of lives. And then there’s the matter of the German-American Bund, which held a massive pro-Nazi rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden.
Just as all of that should be taught in American schools, so should the long history of reprehensible treatment of Black, Brown, and Asian Americans be taught. Every country — the United States included — has things about which to be proud of and things about which to feel shame and regret. Contrition, reconciliation, and forgiveness cannot take place in the absence of the truth. And moving forward, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
— Lenny Giteck, Publisher and Editor
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