Regarding letters published recently in the Times-Union from a gentleman questioning the practice of teaching public school children about the Holocaust: The Holocaust was not a religious event linked to any specific ethnic group - German, Jewish or otherwise. Historically speaking, it was an event that changed the world and also touched thousands of American troops who, directly or indirectly, had to deal with the aftershocks of what had occurred in Europe under Hitler's World War II regime.
So, all in all, the Holocaust is really part of our collective history, not a religious experience that should be outside the purview of American public schools.
Even more important to the next generation is an awareness of the fact that the Germans had no monopoly on genocide. We've seen far too many other examples throughout modern history - from Armenia to Croatia, Somalia and Iraq. So, what we really need to do is teach our children well about all these holocausts and man's inhumanity to man and perhaps - as others have pointed out - find a way to keep it from happening again.
Whether we're Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, Obama-ites or tea partiers, Jews or Jehovahs, Baptists or agnostics, adults or high school students, we all need to keep our political filters on alert for these types of political swings and for Neanderthal thinking like Mr. Young's whenever it surfaces because much of it is beneath the Times-Union readership's collective dignity.
