When learning about the Nazis in school, were you taught they targeted Gays?

[helderheid]

Poll question: When learning about the Nazis in school, were you taught they targeted Gays?

[helderheid]

1. I watch the Amazing Race - last night they showed the teams in Auschwitz. 2 of the teams were gay. I

turned to my husband (who is from Holland) and asked him if he was taught about the Nazis targeting Gays in school. "Yes, of course. Gays, Gypsies and the Jews.". He was shocked when I told him that not only did I not learn about the Gays being targeted in school, but that I had only learned about it in the last couple years (I'm 32) - I learned about it from Democratic Underground. He was taught as a child what the significance of the pink triangle was - I only knew it was a gay symbol and had no idea what the significance was to the Nazis.

I think it's shameful this isn't being taught in our schools.

[Hamlette]

53. when we liberated the concentration camps we let everyone go but gays, they were made to serve

the remainder of their "sentences" in prison in England. This is true only for the concentration camps liberated by England and USA. The USSR let gays got with everyone else.

The justification was gays were under a "sentence certain" (they had been sentenced to 8 years in the camps) and jews etc were not under any court ordered sentence.

To be fair, my subject line is not completely accurate, we kept in prison others who were under sentence like murderers etc but there were very few of them so in reality the only ones we refused to "liberate" were gays.

Read Conduct Unbecoming if you want to be horrified by what we have done to gays over the years.

[helderheid]

65. I had NO idea!

:wow:

[Hamlette]

66. yeah, I remember reading that book and putting it down and screaming

The other absolute outrage from the book is many men put "homosexual" on their draft papers in an effort to get out of Vietnam. It worked for a short time but then the military made them prove it with live testimony from a shrink (!) AND 2 people you had had homosexual sex with. So, some people checked "gay" on the form but when told what they would have to do, said, well, no, I'm not really gay and served either because they were not gay (and had just put it on the form to get out of an immoral war) or they didn't want to go through the humiliation (and what if you'd not seen a shrink and what if you'd only had one lover...like they want us to have...sorry I'm starting to rant again)

Anyway, war ends, draftees come home, military goes through their applications and if they put "gay" and still were drafted, as happened countless times, they were dishonorably discharged and ineligible for any GI benefits including medical benefits.

So, go to war, make the ultimate sacrifice for your fellow citizens, get shot up, come home, your fellow citizens say "you are immoral so we won't help you now" and you get no medical coverage for your war wounds.

I start screaming just thinking of it!

It's a good (but long) book about gays in the military. Very interesting history. By Randy Shilts who died about the time the book came out. He also wrote the classic (and RIVITING read, even if you've seen the movie) And the Band Played On. And he wrote Mayor of Castrostreet which was also good but Band is his best with Conduct Unbecoming a close second.

[rebel with a cause]

67. I cannot believe you did not learn this in school.

I went to school in the fifties, early sixties and I was taught the nazis targeted the Jews, Gypsies, Gays, the mentally challenged, and certain christian groups in Scandinavian countries. Well, that is not quite true, it was not the Gay or mentally challenged we learned were targeted, those groups were called the homosexuals and the retarded. That was the fifties you know. ;-)

One thing about growing up in small town USA during that time, you learned about "The War", the nazis and the cold war. The fact that a lot of European immigrants lived in the neighborhood, and their children attended the school perhaps helped to inspire the teachers, but it was for sure one of the top things taught in our history and current events classes.

[Bluebear]

69. I went to a Christian school & they did not mention a word about homosexuals

not a word.

[Der Blaue Engel]

72. Same here

Also, Christians who were also rounded up for helping the Jews were given a LOT of attention; it was all about Corrie TenBoom and The Hiding Place. (Not a word about the Diary of Anne Frank.) They also reminded us constantly that it would be our fate very soon, since the ungodly were going to persecute us and we had to be strong and not deny Jesus when they tried to torture us into it.

Oh, and P.S., the Jews that died in the gas chambers all went to hell.

Christian school is fun. :sarcasm:

[Bluebear]

74. Ah yes Corrie TenBoom

We studied her but I know I didn't hear a word about Anne Frank until I saw the movie on late night TV.

[rebel with a cause]

78. I'm sure glad I didn't go to a Christian school

That would have been way too much. I don't think I ever heard of Corrie TenBoom. The Anne Frank story came out when I was in school, and my mother went and bought me the book. We discussed it in school also, and since everyone was reading the book, it became quite the topic. I was shown pictures of the dead in the concentration camps and those barely alive from the time I was in grade school. I think that is why it is so hard for me to be shocked by such things. Was never told the Jews were going to hell, although I am not sure where my father thought they would go. I do know that he said it was not fair for people to blame them for Jesus' death, and he thought it was wrong for those in the Bible to say his blood should be on on the hands of their children. Anyway, those were the old days.

[spoony]

116. I went to a Lutheran school, and

never heard any of those things, about Jews killing Jesus or God abandoning the Jews to the Holocaust or any of that. I had a great education and yes, I did learn about the other groups persecuted by Nazis. Private schools aren't all the same.

[rebel with a cause]

76. Oh, my gosh,

the Christians didn't tell you the wickedness of it. ;-) I guess going to a Christian school is different than growing up in a "Christian" environment. Like I have said too many time, my father was a minister and I grew up in the church literally. Our Sundays were church services divided by an afternoon of bible discussions at some church members house for much of my childhood. No wonder I am so twisted. ;-)

[FVZA_Colonel]

102. Haven't some fundamentalists recently written books with titles like

'The myth of the Pink Triangle' in order to discredit the idea that gays suffered under Hitler, and put forth the idea that every single Nazi was also a homosexual?

[MadMaddie]

89. I learned through my own study...I went to HS in San Antonio TX

during the early 80's.They glossed over WWII...there was mention of the Holocaust but not of all of the other victims...

By not teaching the facts of History....the world is doomed to repeat another attrocity...

And now with no Child Left Behind there is no time to teach the kids World history like it should be...they have to learn to fill in the bubbles to pass these ridiculous tests..

[rebel with a cause]

98. Teaching to a test is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned.

But that is prop ably the only way bush has ever learned anything. ;-)

It is better to teach something that will stay with a child the rest of their life than to teach them something they only have to remember till after the test. I had teachers who did that and they made it an easy class to pass, but the ones that really cared about what they were teaching were the ones that made learning interesting, challenging and fun. That is what I mostly had when I was a kid, people who had dedicated their whole life to teaching and that was what they would do until they died. Of course, that may have been because jobs for women were so limited back then. :)

[MadMaddie]

99. I completely agree with you..

[DemReadingDU]

96. I went to a Catholic school, and we weren't taught

that the nazis targeted anyone but Jews

[rebel with a cause]

105. I wonder if the Christian schools did this because their

focus was so centered on religion, and why they did not mention gays was because of the questions it might have raised. The teachers in my schools were mostly older women who had devoted their lives to teaching. They were either bitter and hated us kids, I had several of those, or they were some of the best teachers you could ask for. The younger teachers, those just coming in, worked hard to get their foot in the door, and they were the ones that brought in the fresh ideas. If one of these young ones happened to be a man, all the girls fell in love. :)

When we were told who the Germans targeted, they never said anymore than who they were. If you knew what a homosexual was, good for you, if you didn't, then that was your problem. I think someone had to tell me, probably one of my sisters, because we knew what the Bible said about them but did not know the term for them. Like I said this was the fifties and sixties. It did not come out until the late sixties that my uncle was one. ;-)

This was also during the time that many of the information about the concentration camps was coming out, so magazines were brought to school for us to look at. "The Diary of Anne Frank" came out, and we had lessons on her story. Also many of the people in our area were immigrants from Europe and some of them had escaped from the push of the Nazis. We also had a Jewish man and woman move in down the street that had escaped from a concentration camp, so knowing this, the children had an interest in what had happened to them. I think all of these things together is why we were taught what we were. Because we were lacking in a lot of other things that we should have been taught. In grade school it was algebra and science. In high school it was anything that was new or motivational. Civil rights was unheard of and diversity was something found somewhere else.

[spoony]

115. I saw that too

and when they teared up I couldn't help but do the same. It was a remarkable, powerful thing you don't expect from a reality show. But, they have done that sort of thing before. In fact Uchenna and Joyce (sp?) were once at a slave port in Africa, with this doorway that the slaves stepped through and it was the last time they touched African soil. It was similarly quite moving.

I do love that show.

[displacedtexan]

2. Yes. I was also taught how they targeted the Christians...

... who were appalled by their policies.

Anyone who spoke out against them was a target.

[ThomWV]

3. I Was Never Taught A Damned Thing About Nazis

In school in the 50's and 60's there wasn't a single word ever said about the second world war in any class I ever took.

Looking back at that now it seems awfully odd, but its true. No history class, no nothing. Everything I know about WW-II came from relatives who served, jingoistic television, or my own reading.

[endarkenment]

Indeed - I just posted the same. Nothing Nada Zilch. nt.

[NewJeffCT]

23. Just the opposite for me

We'd have American history every 3 years - Junior year of high school, 8th grade and 5th grade. I graduated high school in 1985, so my junior year was 1983-84.

Each time, it seems, we went from the beginning to the end of WW2 when the school year ran out. We never learned much about Korea or Vietnam.

[LeftyMom]

36. Here too.

If we covered anything that happened after the Great Depression, we did it in a rush over the last two weeks of school. We also had NO modern history that wasn't US-focused.

Edit: well, we had some discussion of the civil rights efforts of the 50's and 60's, usually coinciding with MLK day and black history month. For women's history, if it was mentioned, it was always suffragettes (and always the non-violent US version, though the militant UK ones were way more interesting I later found out) and never a discussion of feminism in the modern era.

[sarge43]

41. Same here

The first I heard(saw) of the camps was the short scene in Victory at Sea.

Edited to answer question. I believe I encountered the first mention of the persecution of gays o/a mid sixties - my own reading.

[Marr]

64. Same here. But I have to say that my public school history classes

were practically useless anyway. They taught very little, and almost nothing that I would consider relevant history. They spent weeks on lines of monarchical succession, for instance, and about 10 minutes on the Magna Carta. They spent weeks on the transcontinental railroad, and no time whatsoever on labor movements.

[rebel with a cause]

68. where did you go to school.

I went to school during this time and I was taught it neverending. That and the cold war filled our lessons. Oh,and I am from Southern Illinois, northern immigrating hillbilly country to those in Chicago. ;-)

[Shallah Kali]

90. Somehow all the history classes ended with the industrial revolution

this was the 80s. I was always frustrated because I wanted to know more of modern history.

[muriel_volestrangler]

122. That's about the same as me

I was learning history at school in the late 70s and early 80s - and most of it was 1815 or earlier, with some 19th century stuff, and the causes of the First World War. I think we had precisely one afternoon on the Second World War, which was basically "Hitler invaded Poland, then France" etc. It's quite possible the death camps weren't covered at all. I think the attitude may have been that if the teachers were alive at the time, then it didn't count as 'history'.

Then one teacher gave us a term on modern Japanese history, in an attempt to do something different - so the Japanese involvement in China, Pearl Harbor etc. were covered.

[NW_BEAST]

4. I was taught

That the Nazis in their mission targeted anyone that was not on board with the Nazi machine, this was gypsies, jews, gays, blacks, the handicapped (mentally and physically, and homosexuals aswell.

[verse18]

9. I was taught the same.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

79. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[NuttyFluffers]

108. i was taught the same thing in my catholic schools

people often forget the mentally and physically handicapped were also slaughtered. i guess i had a really good school if i learned about all of this. apparently i'm in some minority with this experience, which is sad. also had to learn about japanese internment camps in WWII, read Farewell to Manzanar. learned about the rape of Nanking, Batan Death March, battle for Stalingrad, how german POWs were treated in USA (quite better than our own Japanese American citizens), controversial beginnings to get us into WWII and Pearl Harbor, and how WWII led to the set up of wars later such as Korea, Vietnam, and our support of questionable characters such as Suharto.

though there was quite a lot that i wasn't taught, too. that was ameliorated by college and further reading. and there's still plenty i'm sure i don't know.

[KiraBS]

117. Yes.. I was taught that too

Because it was part of the aim in creating an Aryan race of pure, strong, blonde men and women. So any group that disrupted that aim was removed especially the handicapped, gays, gypsies, blacks and those ideologically opposed. Such as certain denominations of Christians, Communists and those that were disobedient too the Third Reich.

[YOY]

5. Gypsies is kinda offensive...call them the "Roma" people

That's what and who they are.

and you left out communists, the mentally disabled, or generally anyone who disagreed with them.

[TahitiNut]

8. Be sure to tell Roma Rose Lee.

:rofl:

[YOY]

48. That and we now have to worry about "Roma" moth infestations...

:shrug:

[babylonsister]

92. Your sense of humor is really strange.

:evilgrin:
And don't forget that song, "Romas, Tramps and Thieves".

[rebel with a cause]

73. Oops, I forgot the communist. Also...

Look, in the fifties and sixties they were called Gypsies. It may be offensive now, but I grew up with members of this group and they called themselves that then. It was not a derogatory name to us by any means. How they came to live in my village was they use to camp every year in a field only about three or four blocks from where I grew up, but it was across the railroad tracks where the farm land began. This all happened before I was born. When they camped they would have a carnival like, and all the people would go there. One year a young man went to the camp, fell in love with one of the girls and stayed with them when they left. He traveled with them for a while, I think it was until his mother was dying or had died, but then came back home with the girl as his wife, and settled into his families house. I was born during this time and when I was a child I remember when he started a business and some of his in-laws came to work for him and live there. One of his in-laws was the Queen of the Gypsies and when she died she was buried there in the town's cemetery and every year they have a big gathering out at her grave site. everyone is envious of the amount of honor that is shown to her and of the flowers that are placed on her grave. The last I knew her daughter was the Queen and lives there still.

edited for spelling.

[KiraBS]

118. It was at school with a family of gypsy....

One of them was in my class from nursery until GCSE's. They called themselves Gypsy's, this girl was the daughter of the King of the Gypsies, they lived locally. I never heard the name Roma's but the only racism and hatred that was suffered was between Gypsy tribes, they would fight each other in the classrooms as young as seven years old.
Anyone that did call Gypsy's names was in trouble as were those that were racist to the Pakistani children

[YOY]

120. I'm not making it up

In our culture it has a connotation of romance and mystery. In most others they are pretty well despised and 'gypsy' is oft a derogatory term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy

[KiraBS]

121. I know I am just talking about the

Gypsies that I grew up with but then they were red haired or blonde and fair skinned, though from a different ancestry to the Roma Gypsies that are mostly from Switzerland, Hungary, Romania etc and the gypsies that I grew up with would have been offended by being called Roma. The same way that hated travelling Gypsies and bullied them in the playground, when they came to school for a few weeks.
Not all gypsies are from the same tribes, therefore Roma is offensive to those that are not.

[TahitiNut]

6. Yes, of course. Grade school in the 50s was far better than today, it seems.

In the immediate aftermath of WW2, the infoparmation was abundant and the interest widespread. We learned, not only in school but in the news media, that 6 million of the 11 million killed were Jews, Of the remaining 5 million, gays, gypsies, and the mentally retarded were the most significant demographic groups targeted.

[mzteris]

13. Where did you go to school?

I never even knew there was such a thing as a homosexual until I was practically grown.

[TahitiNut]

25. All but 2 years in the Detroit suburbs.. (Two years in Glendale, California.)

I don't remember NOT knowing about homosexuals. Clearly, however, when we were taught about the people killed in the Holocaust, homosexuals and the mentally retarded were always mentioned together. I guess it must be emphasized that this is the community that includes Shrine Parish - Father Coughlin's (the "radio priest") bailiwick. As such, folks here were possibly hyper-aware.

At the same time, my maternal grandparents were Norwegian immigrants so there was even more awareness of the Nazis. I had three uncles who served in Europe in WW2, one was in the Battle of the Bulge. I grew up learning to read the newspaper headlines before I was 4.

[Wickerman]

31. Exactly

Growing up in Iowa I never heard of Homosexuality until about sophomore year and that was through reading counter-culture stuff - on the non-approved reading lists. It was strictly the Jewish people who died at the hands of the Nazis.

[DemReadingDU]

97. I led a sheltered life also

[KiraBS]

119. My middle school headmaster was a gay man....

All the parents and teachers knew because it was never a secret and looking back anyone that had the information about gay people could have picked up the clues.
He didn't talk about it, it was just who he was all we knew was he was a tough headmaster, taught French, wore terrible aftershave which would warn us to disappear before he got to see us misbehaving and he would twirl his whistle on a string around his finger. Oh and the Freddie Mercury haircut and moustache. Which is enough information when you are nine years old. Nothing about it being sinful or hell.
Heaven and hell weren't taught in school either.
The school was over subscribed and his deputy heads were both good solid Christians and I think it taught us that gay people are normal people, that live and work with others, nothing to be prejudiced about. He was not weak on discipline either and he was the one that did assemblies without hymns and The Lord's Prayer, that we all liked best.
Of course school kids have a degree of innocence but we knew the words gay and lesbian before we know Homosexual. They would say the Poof but not understand it and the boys teased each other when one got their ear pierced.

[BluePatriot]

7. Yes.

But, I was in high school AP history, and my teacher taught us about many things that even my peers in college didn't know about -- like My Lai and homosexuality in the Wild West. He was one of my best teachers. I got a 5 on the exam, the highest score, which let me get 6 college hours with an "A."

[bryant69]

10. In fairness, most nations targetted the Gays in the 1940s

Best you could say about us is that we didn't really try as hard as the Nazis; but our national stance on Gays and Lesbians was pretty clear and not much better than the Nazis.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[msongs]

20. and many still do including the USA nt

[deutsey]

11. I took a course on the Holocaust in college that was pretty comprehensive

In high school, however, I don't recall learning about gays and other groups victimized. I don't recall going into Nazi atrocities in general during high school...I knew a lot about them because I used to watch "World at War" a lot when I was a kid.

I do remember there was only a vague paragraph about Watergate in my US History textbook and Vietnam got a very watered down treatment as well.

[gollygee]

12. I am quite sure we learned that in high school

I think it was written in our textbook even. Not a lot but I seem to remember a bit about the different groups of people the Nazis were after.

[LynnTheDem]

14. Yes. And liberals, intellectuals, artists.

Rightwingnuts have always targeted gays, blacks, liberals etc; be they Nazis or neocons.

Same shit, different assholes.

[fasttense]

15. I was taught that anyone different was targeted.

Jews, Gypsies, Gay and Lesbians (though I wasn't sure what a homosexual was back then, they didn't call them gay and lesbians). Mentally handicapped or physically disabled people, and people with darker skin colors were also targeted. They also taught me they imprisoned people who objected to their point of view and policies. The Nuns were very thorough in educating us about the Holocaust.

[endarkenment]

16. In the 50's and early 60's we didn't learn much of anything about WWII.

In school.

On my own I read Shirer's Rise and Fall and that book covered this issue fairly extensively, so I knew. I rather doubt many of my peers knew.

[sinkingfeeling]

24. Where did you go to school? I had about 3 history classes between 8th. grade

and junior year of high school, all concentrated on WWII. I used to know every code name for every battle in WWII and the winner, generals, and number of troops for both sides.

[endarkenment]

27. New York

In 8th grade our american history course did not cover WWII. This would have been 1964-5.

[sinkingfeeling]

40. Wow. My American history class, where I knew about every single battle, was in 1961-1962. I attended

a tiny, rural school, set in a corn field in Ohio.

[rebel with a cause]

75. evidently us rural people were all about the war.

I was 1962-1963, right between you and New York. We learned it all also, although I refused to memorize the battle dates. Had to learn them for the test, but then they were gone. Some people say they didn't know what a homosexual was back then, but that is what church taught us, all the people that other spoke of in name only. ;-) Going to church around five times a week growing up gave me plenty of opportunities to learn about all the "sin and sinners" in our presence. I didn't know how to have sex, but I sure knew how not to have it. ;-)

[TechBear_Seattle]

17. I helped with a Holocaust Memorial display while in college

At Humboldt State University in California, I was with the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual Student Association. The universty's Jewish student association invited us to help put together a Holocaust Memorial display, which was up in the universty library for 2 weeks (the maximum time allowed by library rules for a student-sponsored display.) Part of the display was representations, made out of cloth, of the badges internees had to wear: yellow for Jewish, pink for homosexual, blue for Gypsy (Rom), purple for Jehovah's Witness, red for political prisoners, green for criminals and black for "undesireables" (often put on lesbians for refusing to submit to their reproductive duties of producing children.)

There was a small but vocal group of students who objected STRONGLY against the inclusion of the pink triangle. The controversy brought a lot of publicity to the display and opened the eyes of many students, who had apparently been taught that only Jews had been put into Nazi concentration camps.

I learned about the persecution of gays as part of my own studies and definitely NOT from school. The other groups came as a surprise to me even in my educated mid 20s.

[bullwinkle428]

18. My family practiced Reform Judaism and we attended weekly

religious classes at our temple for years, so we certainly learned more about the Holocaust there than through my public school education. Having said that, I can still only recall the persecution of gays by the Nazis mentioned only in passing. I was really touched by the visit to the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau on last night's TAR, and it obviously affected many of the competitors as well.

[cali]

19. No. Not until college

did I learn about the Nazis targeting gays. Your post reminds me of a story I just read in the Guardian about some schools in England dropping all mention of the Holocaust from the curriculum. I'll find it at post it as an OP.

[Jonathan50]

21. That was forty years ago, I can't even remember learning about the Holocaust in school

The Nazis also targeted the Romany.

[begin_within]

22. One teacher mentioned it in a passing remark. Otherwise, it was all about the persecution of Jews

[Lars39]

26. I didn't learn about it until college, and then it was kinda glossed over.

I really didn't learn about the full extent of the persecution until a few years ago when I watched the documentary Paragraph 175.

http://www.triangles-roses.org/telling_pictures.htm

[Smarmie Doofus]

28. Of course not. Lying by omission.

In exactly the same way that NOT teaching about homosexuality in PS in US&A today is lying by omission.

[porphyrian]

29. Yep. Jews, Gypsies, gays, blacks, all of them had their own star. - n/t

[WCGreen]

30. Only they called the gays homosexuals back in my school daze...

[bigscott]

35. it was easy for them to do so

gays were actually allowed to register in pre-Nazi Germany - when AH came to power and persecutions began it was easy to find them. If you can take it I strongly recommend the movie "Bent" which was a very powerful portrayal of the homosexual community in Germany

[WCGreen]

86. I heard about that movie...

[dsc]

32. I found out during high school

but only due to my own research. I was in the Diary of Anne Frank and read extensively about the Holocost in prepearing for the role. I remember the last night of the production I just started crying uncontrollably after it was over because it finally hit me that I would have been in a death camp a scant 40 years earlier. But my school didn't purposely teach me this.

[slackmaster]

33. It was mentioned briefly in high school world history

By the mid-1970s the existence of homosexual people was starting to be acknowledged.

[DCKit]

34. No such thing when I was in school

Late 60's through the late 70's

Nothing controversial was EVER talked about. Even Watergate was glossed over.

[Le Taz Hot]

37. Don't be silly.

There weren't any gays back in the 50's & 60's. No premarital sex either. :evilgrin:

[RFKHumphreyObama]

38. Yes and I was taught they targeted the Roma, political opponents, the disabled

And many other groups as well

They were a truly sickening political order with a revolting ideology and not enough of them were punished for their evil deeds

[WinkyDink]

39. I wasn't taught about WWII at all. But then, I was a senior in h.s. only

21 years after it, and I don't think my district had the latest texts!
(On the plus side: My "Rroblems of Democracy" class had an awesome unit on the rise of labor unions.)

On the other plus side: My father was a WWII Army vet, and taught me much about the war, Nazis, etc. I learned when I was about 13 how Werner von Braun was a Nazi brought over here for NASA, e.g.

[treestar]

42. I learned zero about the Holocaust in school

We would start with Colombus and rarely get any further than WWI. All I know about WWII I picked up from the media, books, museums, movies.

But when I did first learn about the Holocaust, it was only Jews who were the victims. Once I read the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I learned about the gypsies and the gays - also there is information about that in the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

This would be roughly the 70s. I would imagine the answer is different for more modern eras, hopefully. When I was in school they told you about sex in health class, but never went into anything about homosexuality - in those days it was a miracle they covered the subject of birth control.

[gollygee]

44. They didn't talk about homosexuality in sex ed here

I'm positive about that.

But we did learn about a bunch of groups that were targeted by Nazis, including gay people. I graduated HS in the mid 80s in Michigan.

[meldroc]

43. I got the short course about the Holocaust in school...

Yes, I did get a decent amount of WWII material when I was in school, and I got a couple weeks on the Holocaust. We learned that the Nazis targeted mostly Jews, and also Roma, the handicapped and political prisoners. I didn't learn that the Nazis targeted homosexuals and made them wear pink triangles until college. :mad:

Being born with club feet, I shudder to think that I would have been one of the Nazi's targets. Ever watch Swing Kids? Remember Arvid?

This is why I own guns.

[TygrBright]

45. Yes. Also disabled people. It was quite the list, really....

...although Jews were certainly the most numerous. But also Roma, gays, communists and other political opponents, and disabled individuals. I think also Jehovah's Witnesses and a few other small religious groups as well.

I'm sure if they'd had many Muslims in Germany back then, they'd have been for the camps, too.

sadly,
Bright

[On the Road]

46. Not Sure if it Was in School,

but I learned about the gays and the Gypsies simultaneously.

[Ediacara]

47. When the Holocaust was introduced as a subject, the victims were only Jews

But as my schooling progressed, I came to find out that not only were Jews murdered, but gays, gypsies, Hungarians, intellectuals, anarchists, and the mentally challenged were also incarcerated and killed. The Nazis are the originators of the pink triangle, which is why I'm not terribly fond of it as a symbol for the gay community.

I am glad that Joe and Bill mentioned the fact that gays were rounded up in concentration camps in Nazi Germany, because the other teams didn't seem to know anything about it. I thought perhaps it would be another "totally not mentioned" fact about a place they were visiting, like how they had just left one of the most homophobic places on Earth (Zanzibar) but none of the gay teams (or anyone else) had said a word.

[meldroc]

51. I like the pink triangle.

The Nazis are the originators of the pink triangle, which is why I'm not terribly fond of it as a symbol for the gay community.

I rather like the symbol - wearing it openly and proudly is a great gesture of defiance - it says "Even the Nazis can't break us!"

Take that for what you will...

[Morrisons Ghost]

49. Yes

Yes, Gay people along with the mentally and physically handicapped

[helderheid]

50. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[Morrisons Ghost]

56. Thank you

Thank you, good to be here:)

[newyawker99]

59. Hi Morrisons Ghost!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Morrisons Ghost]

123. Thanks

NY99. I have lurked for a long time and finally decided to interact:hi:

[ET Awful]

52. All I remember being taught at first was about Jews and "political prisoners"

That was in Jr. High and early High School. Later, I had a much better teacher (I think it was my Jr. or Sr. year) and learned of the persecution of gays, Gypsies (or Roma if you prefer), Jehovahs Witnesses, etc.

I'd almost forgotten about the later teacher until I remembered the experiment he did (which wasn't entirely unlike "The Wave" which became an after school special).

[chimpymustgo]

54. Anyone see a movie, "Bent", starring Clive Owen? Round-up of gays in Nazi

Germany, then life in concentration camp. Haunting, brutal, love story.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0118698/

[AllegroRondo]

55. dont forget the Jahova's Witnesses

they were nearly 100% eradicated from Germany.

[xchrom]

57. no -- as far as the holocaust was concerned -- it was never mentioned that

there were other groups other than jewish folk in the camps.

and it was years before i learned how many millions period were killed in that war.

[Igel]

58. In 1970s Baltimore County, we were taught that

the Nazis killed Jews in the camps. Period. No Roma, no Slavs, no gays, no dissidents. But the US was responsible for WWII because of what we did to Germany and Japan.

Then again, we also didn't touch on much about Lenin or Stalin, or Islam or Mao--just that Lenin liked workers and liberty, and Mao was for the peasants. The American South was evil, the Catholic Church was bad. Europe (and just a bit later the US) were bad, if only because they were responsible for originating the ultimate evil, slavery. Islam was good, because all the old Greek and Latin books that Xians had abandoned were preserved and given back to the Europeans.

Fortunately, most kids ignored the history classes. Better no history than history so distorted that a graduate could only think the US is the fount of all evil, and all other nations (apart from W. Europeans) were all good.

[Apollo11]

60. Not forgetting progressives and labour union organizers

Communists, Socialists, Social-Democrats, Trade Union Officials ...

Translate that list to 21st Century America (instead of 1930s Germany), and you can be sure that all of us here on DU would have been in danger ...

[notadmblnd]

61. Nope, wasn't taught about the persecution of gays, or gypsies

or blacks nor anyone outside of the Jews that the Nazis' deemed subhuman.

[rasputin1952]

62. The list is long....

Jews
Gypsies
Communists
Gays
Slavs
Russians
Blacks
"Free" French
The Mentally Ill
The physically impaired
Marxists
And just about anyone else who spoke out against the "Party"

Many religious types, including Catholics and Protestants were targeted as well. Many Gerrmans, and others, including somein the US were Nazis...but not all Germans were Nazis, many took on the mantle to survive, if a neighbor decided you were not a "true believer", you were investigated and sent to a rehab camp, few survived.

It was the dehumanization of people that led to the carnage. When one adds what Stalin did to his own people, The Nazis did to those they subjugated, the Japanese did in Asia...the cost in human life runs close to 40 million when all is told...:(

[EstimatedProphet]

63. Nope

From what I was taught, they only targeted the jews. You'd think the entire war on the Eastern Front never happened, to listen to how it was represented in school when I was younger.

[Forkboy]

70. No...learned that from my own reading when I was seventeen.

[Behind the Aegis]

71. I learned about it in Hebrew school.

We weren't taught about "homosexuals" in public school. However, in Hebrew school we were taught about all groups of people, their triangle designations, and special punishments. The yellow triangles/Stars of David and the pink triangles/Stars of David, were one-third larger than all other triangles so they would be easily identified from a distance. Though hate for the Jews was strong, it was almost as strong, in some cases stronger, against gays. A good book to read is "The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps." I would also recommend watching "Bent."

[IndyOp]

91. I watched "Paragraph 175" a few months ago - heartbreaking, powerful

I rented it from Netflix.

PARAGRAPH 175 is a documentary about the 10-15,000 German men who were arrested because of their homosexuality between the years 1933-1945 during World War II. Some of the men were sent to concentration camps to be killed; an estimated 4,000 survived. PARAGRAPH 175, from directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (THE CELLULOID CLOSET), tells the tragic story and includes interviews with seven of only nine living survivors. It was Klaus Müller, curator of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, who convinced directors Epstein and Friedman of the urgent need to make the film PARAGRAPH 175. Despite their small number of survivors who remain to tell the tale, their accounts unearth a rich trove of anecdotal history. The stories of their treatment are both lyrical and horrific. These 20th-century gay Germans lived freely through the Weimar years. In the 1930s, they were initially ignored by an indifferent Hitler. Then, with the implementation of an obscure legal statute (Paragraph 175) which aimed to exterminate homosexuals entirely, they became the victims of a brutal persecution. Rupert Everett's solemn narration puts the stories in context, as do photographs, footage, and music that remind us of the eerie wistfulness of pre-Nazi Germany. The filmmakers also put the text of anti-homosexual laws and political statements right on the screen, along with a chillingly complete chart of symbols to be worn by camp prisoners (gay men wore a pink triangle). Ultimately, the film is a chance for a forgotten group of victims (they have never received reparations) to tell their story. They very nearly did not get the chance.

Theatrical release: September 13, 2000 (NY) The film was screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Turin Gay Film Festival. The interviews were shot on location in Germany, France, England, and Spain. 100,000 people were arrested as homosexuals under Paragraph 175. Of that number, 10-15,000 were sent to concentration camps, among whom only about 4,000 survived. Paragraph 175 was used to make arrests until 1969, when it was finally repealed.

[etherealtruth]

77. I'm not sure whether it was at home or at school ....

... or both.

"We" covered the horrors of Nazi Germany pretty thoroughly in school.

My parents (born in '37) were very sickened by Nazi Germany, as well.

[crappyjazz]

80. I didn't hear a thing about the Nazis in school

but I learned about them and the camps and hitler from my grandparents

i learned they targeted gays

they targeted jehovah's witnesses too

a different colour triangle depending on who they were

[jesus_of_suburbia]

81. I went to a mostly affluent public school in the 90's and I was not taught that gays were Holocaust

victims

[AliceWonderland]

82. I studied Anne Frank in convent school

Actually, the nuns I was schooled by, the Sisters of Mercy, were radical defenders of social justice in a lot of ways, and WWII was cast in terms of sorrow, and always bookended in hushed terms with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's so odd, that paradoxical mix -- they revered the Pope, too, go figure. In any case, that was how I was taught in Canada. Much sorrow for the suffering of innocents. And yet, it was not until I went away to university that I learned about gay victims of the Holocaust. I remember being shocked when I heard about the pink triangle.

[donco6]

83. Gays didn't exist when I was in school.

They were invented in 1972. :sarcasm:


Actually, I read about them in a book I snuck out of the public library. And realized I was one!

[MrSlayer]

84. No, not in school.

I learned almost everything about WWII from my brother who is a self-taught expert on the subject.

[Fierce]

85. Wasn't taught they went after labor unions, either.

FWIW.

[MountainLaurel]

87. If our teachers would have mentioned the word homosexual

In a classroom setting, the fundagelicals in the community would have been all over that place like white on rice, screaming about the homosexual message being spread in the public schools. (This was at a time when our U.S. senator was stating publicly that the state did not need funding for AIDS programs, because there were no gays in our state.) Hell, in an accelerated English class in high school, we discussed a particular book (chosen because the author was from our county) for weeks and never was it mentioned that the two central characters were gay. (Only later did I read something about it.) And if such issues were going to be discussed anywhere in my school, it would have been there in that group of people.

[UrbScotty]

88. I didn't even know that until I OPENED THHIS THREAD!

What does that tell you?! :wtf:

Of course, I'm not surprised.

[pepperbear]

93. I do not recall them teac hing us that in school..I do remember

learning it in Synagogue at Sunday school.

[Colobo]

94. I found that out myself.

I was never satisfied with what I was told at school.

[eridani]

95. An age breakdown would be interesting here n/t

[murielm99]

109. It would be interesting.

I went to school in the 50s and 60s.

I learned quite a bit about WWII from my teachers. Many of them were veterans. I had teachers in junior high who had saved newspapers from the war. They showed us all the headlines. I can't remember what was covered in the textbooks of those times. But the teachers filled in the gaps. One teacher brought his own books, and showed us pictures of the leaders back then. He talked to us about how the Russians were our friends in those days.

I learned about the concentration camps in seventh grade. But I had known previously, because we watched The World at War, and my parents talked about them. I knew homosexuals were targeted. I am pretty sure I learned that in high school for the first time. Our teacher mentioned it, along with all the other groups, and the colors of the triangles they wore. When he mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses, everyone in the class turned around and looked at the one boy who was a Jehovah's Witness.

There were a few snickers when he mentioned homosexuals. He met them with a stern look. Of course, my freshman year in Latin, several of the boys hooted and joked when we learned that the Latin word for man was homo. The teacher had heard it all before. She cleared her throat very loudly.

Maybe the GI Bill made a difference. Many young men came back from war and took advantage of the opportunity to get an education. Quite a few of them became teachers. The war was fresh in their minds.

[FVZA_Colonel]

100. I knew about it, but not from school.

Actually, it was entirely original research that taught me that.

[kevinbgoode]

101. I went to school in the 1960's and 1970's. . .and never had it mentioned at all

the only time gays were mentioned was in taunts or the occasional joke by a faculty member (yes...teachers would sometimes make disparaging remarks). We did see a movie in English during my junior year that had a few gay scenes (in a bar) and it freaked some students out - the jokes went on for days and days and I remember feeling very self-conscious.

Even in college as an ADULT student, it was very rare to get much information about gays, particularly about the Holocaust. I remember one college teacher making a "joke" about the "gays"...and by that time I was beginning to resent the unprofessionalism. I also became one of the first people who did papers in classes about gay issues at the time.

When I went to Amsterdam in the early 1990's, I made a point of visiting the Anne Frank House and the memorial dedicated to the gays who were taken in the Holocaust. I learned more from later movies like "Bent" and more recently "A Love to Hide" (a French film about a gay couple and a good woman friend during the Nazi occupation of Paris). . .the latter film is in French with English subtitles, but was riveting in its detail in a way that we never seem to get in our presentations.

But no, all during high school and college, I got little information about the gays in the Holocaust. That reflects the standard con-servative attitude about freedom of speech and the presentation of truth - anything they don't want to know about, hear, or read is branded "immoral" and thus must be censored. That idea is at the core of "conservatism. . .and they make no bones about that belief.

[jcrew2001]

103. I never learned about Gays in any subject in high school

I guess it was never brought up.

[Alamom]

104. 8th grade, 1966-67. Taught much more than was in the history book.

Our history teacher was a retired vet who had been in Germany. He taught us the truth and the whole truth.
We also were taught at home. My grandmother (b.1896 - d.1984) and my mother filled in where anything was missing. Both were very intellegent women who wanted us to learn everything possible.
My granddmother had life experience and intelligence that went beyond my comprehension as she only had a 2nd grade education. She was self taught and remembered everything that happened during her long life. She knew about the wars, politics, other countries, cultures.....she was an incredible woman.

[AshevilleGuy]

106. In 1964, that subject could NOT be mentioned, ever.

Not in polite company, anyway. Even in what we called sex ed, taught by the football coach (who else?), homosexuality was not mentioned, even derogatorally.

[libnnc]

107. Homosexuality was never discussed formally in our school

I learned about Nazi atrocities towards homosexuals on my own.

[DarkTirade]

110. To be honest, I don't remember whether it was mentioned in school or not.

I knew it, but I went to crappy schools so most everything I learned from ages 7-18, I learned on my own.

[krispos42]

111. Other: I read non-school books about it, so I don't remember

I knew they put pink trianges on homosexuals and yellow Stars of David on Jews, but I had bought a Time-Life book called, simply "WWII" which had a fair bit of coverage on the Holocaust, so I don't remember if I read it in school or in that book, or both.

[timtom]

112. I selected "Other"

Oddly enough, I read a few books on the subject when I was a teenager and it was mentioned that several top Nazi leaders WERE gay (Ernst Röhm and Hermann Göring come to mind, for example).

(on edit)

I just Googled the two of them, and it appears that I was mistaken about Göring. I could've sworn that I read that somewhere.

(second edit)

on second Google it seems that there may be some substance to my original impression.

http://editrixblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/history-does-not-change-but-what-we.html

So, it's not an open-and-shut issue.

[lostnfound]

113. Yes, even at my Catholic school in the 70s

It was on the liberal end of the spectrum of Catholicism back then.

[Solly Mack]

114. I think, yes

but I knew before I entered school.

It was a topic (the Holocaust) that did come up early on in my childhood.

[happydreams]

124. Hitler "targeted" gays after Ernst Rohm got him into power

Rohm, an avowed homosexual who hated women, was a psychopath who did the streetwork for Hitler in the 20's as head of the notorious Brownshirts. Then Hitler turned on him in the "Night of the Longknives" when he suspected Rohm may challenge his power.

Try putting this info on a gay website and see how long it stays there.