5602ec+Holocaust+Essay

The Worst Twelve Years in History by Emily Caspersen

Leon Bass, a Holocaust survivor, once said, “I saw human beings, human beings that had been beaten, starved, they’d been tortured, they’d been denied everything-anything that would make anyone’s life livable.” How would you feel if you were a Holocaust victim? If you were one of the people Leon Bass was talking about? Lots of parents and teachers feel that sixth graders are too young to learn about the Holocaust and therefore shouldn’t read books on the topic. Sixth graders should learn about the Holocaust so something like it does not happen, it teaches kids our age lessons on equality and fairness, and so that we can respect those who survived and remember the ones who died.

One reason sixth graders should study the Holocaust is because something like this certainly should not happen again. Of course I don’t mean the Nazis are going to come back and all of that, but something like this could happen again. The Holocaust is responsible for killing about 11 million people- roughly six million Jews and about five million others. These people were all killed because of their beliefs or race. We really don’t want anyone else to suffer like this. Noah’s mom said “ So we can ensure that nothing like that ever happens again...”

Another reason that kids our age should learn about the Holocaust is that it teaches us lessons about equality and fairness. Genocides are still going on occurrently today. The word genocide means the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. A Holocaust survivor named Renee Firestone said, “I wonder whether the world learned anything. The way you look around the world today you wonder - What did we learn from the Holocaust?” Genocides are currently going on in Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eastern Burma, and Syria. Let’s say that Billy bullies Joe before he learns about that Holocaust, then when he learns how the Nazis killed all of the innocent people, he doesn’t bully him.

A third reason kids in sixth grade should learn about the Holocaust is to remember the dead and respect the survivors. We must remember the dead because they don’t have graves. Also, we must respect the survivors because they survived one of the world’s biggest genocides. They must be very capable people! Remembering the people who died in the Holocaust is extremely important and respecting the survivors is also important.

Even though sixth graders can be immature sometimes, most of them are ready to handle learning about the Holocaust. They might laugh a little bit, but for all we know, one of them might cause an even bigger genocide than Hitler did if he or she did not learn about the Holocaust in sixth grade. Is it really worth not teaching these kids about the Holocaust just because it is depressing? Children in sixth grade should learn about the Holocaust so that something like it does not happen, it teaches us great lessons about fairness and equality, and so we can respect the survivors and remember the dead.


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