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teaching rebellion and still more rebellious older people putting up the War memorabilia as if there was no one to worhsip in hero worship. How about worshipping the real heroes? If Germany looks for a hero, how about Bach or the physicists? Why pick on a hero who invented no cure for the ills of the world other than mistaken identity?

If Hitler emphasized Aryan genes, he forgot to include the first Aryans, the Iranian people, the Hittites, and the Armenians. It's just a language group. The DNA says we all come from the same common ancestor. Mother Earth should be our heroine.

So let's stop making Hitler the school evil hero, and start showing what a Holocaust in history really means by showing how people survived the hate. It's not limited to Europe. There's not enough said about the Armenian Holocaust of 1914-1918...or Darfur. At least there are museums built to reveal how the Holocaust got started, and no museum strives to make Hitler or Mussolini the Anti-Hero.

I'm tired of children in school saying "Maybe they had it coming," when Hitler's victims are discussed. The children rant, "Nobody gets killed unless they did something wrong." You hear that when the Holocaust is not discussed enough. You get deniers. They need to be taught that innocence is a victim of jealous hate and how to prevent a Holocaust from befalling anyone anywhere.

Put Hitler on a scale where he belongs in history, not on a buzz-appeal, public relations pedestal. Then the children will ask, then who taught love? Kids need a hero. Schools should let kids read books about people who teach others how to care for one another. As far as schools, we should teach the Holocaust as it really happened, and show the videos of speakers who survived it. Imagine what it must feel like to be Hitler's relatives. Now imagine what it would be like in school to hear about people who hid survivors and saved people's lives as righteous humankind.

As my blonde, gray-eyed daughter toured Europe last year, stopping in Germany to walk along a street of shops looking to buy a tasty strudl or chocolate, she said, "Gee, Germany looks and feels just like any street in Branson, Missouri." I told her, "I wonder what it would have felt like at a concert in the days of Mozart and Bach. What would I have had to pay for a ticket to the opera?" Let's give school students the big picture with the details as well as the psychoanalysis of it all.
My great grandmas came from Sweden and Finland in the 1880s. In the name of love, please, please, teach the Holocaust in the schools the way it happened because the survivors have so many details that need to be video recorded.

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Bibliography and Resources (also on the Wikipedia Web site at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W illiam_Patrick_Hitler.)

Hitler Family Tree: Getting to know the Hitlers from the Daily Telegraph.
Author talks about 'the Last of the Hitlers' CNN interview.

Last Of The Hitlers on The History Channel
"The Hitler family tree", (2002) by Hal Bastin, accessed April 15, 2006

The Diocese of Rockville Centre - Holy Sepulchre Cemetery

Learn more about this author, Anne Hart.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

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