History does provide distance, but it does not erase the reality of what happened. Nor can changes in ideology or a desire for it to have been different. Yes, it is the nature of humans to harm one another, to be self-centered, and this leads to everything from petty grasping to the wars and atrocities that have never ended.
It is human nature, but it is not human destiny. We must not forget and that means we must educate about all of our history, not just a retelling but an analysis, an assessment of why it happened and what could have been done differently. History does not need to be an endless circle repeating itself, it should be a spiral, ascending, even if ever so slightly, to a better, higher level. This study was from last year:
“Thirty-one percent of Americans, and 41 percent of millennials, believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million. Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. And 52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/us/holocaust-education.html
Ignorance is not an excuse, it is an entry point for bigotry and hatred.
Holocaust Remembrance Day 2019. Not #LestWeForget but #LestWeReturn
