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Society distance[d] itself from the Holocaust, as though one could be infected by getting too close to such an eruption of evil, but it was like covering a volcano with cement. The basic questionsHow could it have happened? How could human beings do such things to each other within a civilized society? Why did no one interfere?remain unanswered. . . Yet I sense that another process is beginning, a movement toward a deeper understanding of the Holocaust as a human possibility' (Bar-On 5).

There is no shortage of information about the Second World War available to us. We study it in school, we have seen the documentaries and the monuments. Yet how often do we apply this knowledge to the contemporary world?

In school children are taught facts. They can tell you what years the war began and ended, and where the major battles were fought. I wonder, though, if they could tell us the most important lesson from the WarHow do we prevent that kind of brutality from happening again?

We obviously have not learned this lesson. The world is still at war. The Middle East is riddled with troops and terrorists; car bombs explode weekly, if not daily. Much of Africa is unsafe. We are all self-righteous with the knowledge of later generations, and appalled that no one stopped the Nazis sooner. Yet genocides occurred in Rwanda and Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

What we need is to change our thinking about the Holocaust. Rather than just learning about it, we need to feel about it and try to understand it as a human possibility.' It is not just the stuff of fiction. It was real.

Albert Einstein said that, He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him a spinal cord would suffice.'

I grew up knowing that my grandparents had been involved in the war. I have spoken to people who fought on both sides and heard their stories. But my daughter is only a year old. By the time she is old enough to learn these things, most of that generation will be gone. How can she learn the personal aspects of the war?

Literature is one great tool. Rather than just teaching us about a subject, it lets us live it vicariously through its pages. Obviously there are the true accounts, such as The Diary of Anne Frank, that children can read. Many children's authors have also used this time period as the setting for their stories.

Linda Newberry's books are particularly good because they interlink present-day stories with events and people from World War II. This helps children to identify with the protagonist, and consider the historical events in a new way. Both At The Firefly Gate and The Shell House use this method to great effect.

Perhaps if we try to not only learn about the war, but to ponder it as well, we can improve the world. If we truly consider what history has to teach us, we can create a safer, more tolerant future.

Sources

Bar-On, Dan, Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich, Harvard University Press, 1991 (1st edition paperback).

Einstein, Albert, www.quoteland.com, copyright 1997-2001.

Newbery, Linda, The Firefly Gate, Orion, 2004.

Newbery, Linda, The Shell House, Red Fox, 2003.

Learn more about this author, Keri Withington.
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