5605NG+Holocaust+Essay

Are We Ready?

What if someone knocked on your door and told you that you had to leave almost everything you had behind, and that the government was forcing you to be relocated? Except, you weren’t going to be relocated, you were going to be taken to a death camp to be killed. You wouldn’t like that, would you? Unfortunately, this is what many people had to go through during the Holocaust. Since the Holocaust can be a scary, violent, or touchy subject with some parents have petitioned that sixth graders shouldn’t learn about the Holocaust. I disagree; sixth graders should learn about the Holocaust.

One main reason sixth graders should learn about the Holocaust is so we can make sure nothing like the Holocaust never happens again. We need to do this because eleven million people died in the death camps, and planet earth can’t afford to lose eleven million more people. Unfortunately, events like the Holocaust have took place since it ended on May, 8 1945 in countries like Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. Events like this are called genocides. According to dictionary.com A genocide is the systematic extermination of of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. In the words of Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone: “The way you look around the world today, you wonder, has the world learned anything from the Holocaust?”

Sixth graders also need to realize the significance of the Holocaust. As I stated earlier, 11 million people died in the death camps. But did you know that 60 million people died from World War II? 60 million! Many people think just jews were killed in the Holocaust, but many other groups were killed as well such as, Gypsies, Asians, handicaps, homosexualls, and pretty much any other group the Nazi’s didn’t like. The Holocaust did change the world forever though. Many laws were passed because of the holocaust such as: a country cannot start a war out of aggression, the Nazi party and all of their allies, or supporters, were considered criminal organizations, the leaders of those organizations were arrested, and many more.

People who are against sixth graders learning about the Holocaust might argue that kids might get bad ideas after learning about the Holocaust, but it actually teaches valuable life lessons. It teaches us not to follow leaders who are leading poorly. My mom said: “Sixth graders should learn about the Holocaust so your generation knows not to follow a leader who’s not leading positively.” Did you know that if Nazi soldiers wanted to leave the Nazi Party they could without harm? These soldiers chose to kill all of those innocent people! It teaches us not to discriminate as well.

Even though some people may think that sixth grade is too young to learn about the Holocaust, we have the maturity and the knowledge to do so. If you teach a third grader this he might cry and get scared, but sixth graders have the maturity to handle this topic. We’ll have to learn about the Holocaust eventually? For the sake of the future, sixth graders should learn about the Holocaust.

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