Thread by @ifyoutickleus

When we were kids (and I don't think it's much different now) Holocaust education was non-existent. We knew the details from our parents and from grandparents (the few who had them) but it was all one big muddle. I knew my father had been in Auschwitz and contracted typhus later

but the stories he told were of stealing food, making a complaint to Mengele, reciting a gemore on the way to the gas chambers from which he was de-selected while others were making confessions and other heroics. We of course knew the 6 million number but the rest was a blur

A meshulach would turn up from Israel, Chacham Shalom they called him though he was an Ashkenazi, and it was said that he fought with Tito as a partisan, so I learned that some fought the nazis, though not how and where. As a teen I turned up in Israel in the '80s...

where the talk amongst the lads was of Mered Ghetto Warsaw and the tales of Isser Harel on capture of Eichmann. But not how the Warsaw Ghetto ties up with the Hungarian Jews and the different methods during different periods in various countries. And then we had the rebbe stories

The Satmarer and his beard, the Belzer and his clouds plus our school cook who jumped off a train promising if she survives she'll serve schoolkids and the many other legends. But what was missing was the magnitude of it all, not that it's comprehensible even now

'Six million flies off the tongue too easily and we had no geography or context. My father spoke of Munkatch Ghetto and we knew of ghettos in the middle ages so what exactly was different? We heard of Warsaw but not of Kovno or other ghettos while Babi Yar was a foreign word

But still we breathed the Holocaust in our blood because it was everywhere around us. The guy who it was said saw his parents being shot, the kitchen manager in yeshive who would only hand out yesterday's bread and when challenged would retort, 'In Auschwitz we had not even this'

The violent rebbes in cheder, the boy who retorted to an adult who slapped him, 'Hitler yemach shemo, because if not for Hitler you wouldn't have hit me, the parents who wouldn't talk to their children about their experiences, the adult conversations we couldn't follow,

the sobbing at Yizkor (which as an orphan myself I stayed inside), the list of murdered brothers and sisters in books and on walls, the peek in the intro to Minchas Yitzchok which was one of the only seforim on shul shelves to tell the story, and which is just one single story

But the full picture eluded us. I once interviewed an elderly man about his experience and an adult grandson who was present asked him if he ever saw Hitler. Instead we debated Hitler's webfeet and whether he took his socks off and whether you may even utter his name

The suffering was told but so were we told of the suffering at the destruction of the Beis Hamikdosh and when the cheder rebbe told the legend of Reb Amnon and Unesane Tokef a boy put his head down crying and couldn't be consoled. To us it was all one and the same

To us it wasn't about a modern society turned crazy and the convulsion of Europe and how and why, about demagogues blaming Jews for defeat and the collapse of Weimar, the trope of turning on minorities in times of trouble, but rather one long continuum of golus...

and preparation for the golden age of moshiach, which Rebbe foresaw what, which holy book portended of what is to come, whose blessing saved whom. If Esau hates Jacob what difference does it make who could be saved? If they won't get you one way they'll get you another.

Missing also was the emotional trauma which the survivors couldn't and wouldn't speak of because it was so raw and because the world wasn't ready to listen. And missing also was our own trauma of being raised by that generation of parents, family, teachers and shul members

These are difficult subjects with no simple or single answer. But when a few years ago I was chatting to a typical chasidisher lad who'd been to cheder and yeshive and who had just returned from a visit to Auschwitz and his verdict was "Overrated" I knew we have failed somewhere