The craziness of the Holocaust has consumed my mind for the last few weeks. Mostly because, I've taught it 3 different times over and over. I have looked at pictures, read books (fiction and non-fiction), and had several discussions about the impact it has had on history. In doing all this, I became overly interested in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a fiction book that was recently made into a movie that came out today on DVD that I went and bought (just to make a long story short). So I completely know what happens in the movie because I've already the book and I really know what happens in the end because I have read it to students about 10-15 times in the last few weeks. I have to be honest... I am a "the book is almost always better" person and in this case, it rings very true. The book is detailed... you get inside Bruno's thoughts in a way that you can't in the movie. The movie is very similar but it misses some important things that make the ending significant.
One of the things I have talked about with my kids is the fact that we stopped and looked at history with the Holocaust and said never again, but now we are looking back over the last 20 years and seeing that the same thing has repeated itself. In another book I read about the genocide in Rwanda, it said that if the rebels in Rwanda would have continued killing at the rate they were over the time period of the Holocaust during World War II, that more people would have been killed in Rwanda than was killed in the Holocaust. Unbelievable! The fact has blown my mind over the last week as I have shared it numerous times! Yet, what did the world do? Pretend that it wasn't happening to them and continue to move on? Definitely! We become unconcerned if it doesn't directly affect us. I love the quote from a pastor during the Holocaust that you have probably read before. He lists all the groups of people that were taken during that time period and he comments that he never spoke up because he wasn't one of them. When it came down to the end and the Nazis came for him, there was no one left to speak up. Unfortunately, in the day and age we live in, people will continue dying until we decide to do something about it. I can't just sit here anymore and soak in history. We have to be the ones to change it.
So you're wondering what encouragement I can give you for today? Do something! Go be...
-Melissa
