{"id":409,"date":"2009-06-24T10:28:09","date_gmt":"2009-06-24T17:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=409"},"modified":"2009-06-24T10:28:09","modified_gmt":"2009-06-24T17:28:09","slug":"why-history-is-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=409","title":{"rendered":"Why History is Important"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>I was recently browsing in a book store, and couldn’t help overhearing the conversation between a mother and her teenage daughter right next to me.\u00a0 The daughter was looking for a new book to read, and her mother was offering guidance on the titles she thought would interest her daughter.<\/p>\n

The daughter picked up Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

That’s an amazing book<\/em>, I thought to myself.<\/p>\n

But when the teenager showed it to her mother, the woman said, “Oh…\u00a0 Um, that’s about the Holocaust.”<\/p>\n

The daughter looked down at the book.<\/p>\n

“Do you know about the Holocaust?” the mother asked.<\/p>\n

“No,” the daughter said.<\/p>\n

“You don’t want to,” the mother said.\u00a0 She took the book from her daughter’s hands and placed it back on the shelf.<\/p>\n

I was speechless.\u00a0 I may still be, but I’m going to attempt to gather my thoughts and respond to this experience here because it involves both history and literature, and those are two subjects I’m pretty passionate about.<\/p>\n

History first.\u00a0 I know that most everyone has heard the saying that “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”\u00a0 But sadly, that’s become a white-noise aphorism in spite of that fact that it is very, very true.\u00a0 Making sure that no one remembers the Holocaust is a precondition<\/em> to perpetrating it, or something like it, again.<\/p>\n

We cannot allow those events to be forgotten.\u00a0 Understanding how Hitler was able to marshal an entire nation and incite such violence and hatred is critical if we are to safeguard our society against such men in the future.\u00a0 Hitler’s genocidal campaign against the Jewish people and his war against Europe did not spring up overnight.\u00a0 Those “final<\/span><\/a>” atrocities represented the culmination of years of calculation, strategy, and propaganda.\u00a0 The record of Hitler’s social, political, and military agenda offers us a thorough list or warning signs if we choose to look at it.\u00a0 Averting our eyes from it because it is uncomfortable is simply not an option.\u00a0 But that is exactly what the mother in the bookstore chose to do.<\/p>\n

\"NightWhich brings to me literature.\u00a0 One of the greatest books I read in high school was Night<\/em> by Elie Wiesel<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 In my English class, we were given a list of books to choose from and, unlike the mother in the book store, my parents encouraged me to read Night<\/em>.\u00a0 They took me to the bookstore and bought me my own copy.\u00a0 Night<\/em> became a defining book in my development, one of the greatest lessons I have ever received on the potential for evil in this world, and our potential to rise above it.<\/p>\n

I must put aside the fact that a teenage girl did not know about the Holocaust (the failings of our education system could be the subject of innumerable blog posts).\u00a0 What concerns me more was how her mother saw this very wide gap in her daughter’s knowledge of the world and chose not to fill it in, but to protect it.\u00a0 And assuming the best intentions, that’s probably just what that mother thought she was doing – protecting her daughter.\u00a0 She undoubtedly wanted to shelter her child from at least some of the ugliness and brutality that exist all around us.\u00a0 But what would happen if an entire generation of children knew nothing of the Holocaust?\u00a0 The irony, of course, is that The Devil’s Arithmetic <\/em>is about a modern girl who is taken back in time to bear witness to the events of the Holocaust so they will not be forgotten.<\/p>\n

Contrary to how it might sound, I am not saying that this mother should<\/em> have bought Yolen’s book for her daughter.\u00a0 It is a parent’s right to determine what their child is ready for.\u00a0 I know I certainly would have made a different decision, like my parents did for me.\u00a0 What better way to introduce the Holocaust to a teen than a YA novel written by one of our greatest living storytellers?\u00a0 But that teenage girl is not my daughter.<\/p>\n

What I am saying is this: that mother absolutely should<\/em> have found a way to educate her child.\u00a0 A different book perhaps, if she did not find The Devil’s Arithmetic<\/em> appropriate for some reason.\u00a0 But she should have done something.<\/p>\n

I know from my own experience how enlightening books can be, especially in dealing with some of the harsher aspects of life.\u00a0 The Holocaust was and is something so evil as to be incomprehensible to me, but Night<\/em> helped me to at least partially grasp those events.\u00a0 More importantly, Night<\/em> helped me to understand what I could learn from those events without living through them, myself.\u00a0 That is the power of books, and at times, the history they contain.<\/p>\n

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I was recently browsing in a book store, and couldn’t help overhearing the conversation between a mother and her teenage daughter right next to me.\u00a0 The daughter was looking for a new book to read, and her mother was offering guidance on the titles she thought would interest her daughter.
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