Holocaust Denial 2.0

This is about a different variety of Holocaust denial. The unwitting kind.

The industrial scale murder of Jews during the second World War had become common knowledge, or so I thought. But a generation later, common knowledge has become uncommon.. The way I learned about the new ignorance? I was getting stretched by a physical therapist. She was 30-ish.. I thought that session might be an ideal moment to establish some rapport with her, maybe even to keep my limbs connected to my corpus. I informed the PT that my father had also been a physical therapist, his reward for being thrown out of medical school for the crime of being Jewish. She said, "Whaaaat?" in genuine disbelief at the expulsion. She was no Nazi. She was an otherwise thoughtful and kind woman. But there was a huge gap in her education. She didn't know that Jews endured unspeakable cruelty during the war, not the least of which included mass expulsion from universities.

I was so stunned I mentioned the PT's obliviousness about the Holocaust to another Gen Z-er who I thought had more on the ball. Upon hearing it, he also said, "Whaaat?" He didn't know about it either. This generation which will call you out on an incorrect pronoun didn't know the extent of history's greatest crime?

What do I recommend? Wise up. Watch the Ken Burns documentary, "The US and the Holocaust." In its own entertaining way, it lays out the criminality in fascinating detail. You can stream it on PBS.

If you live in LA, you have a choice of Holocaust museums. The one on the west side of LA contains a surprisingly disturbing re-creation of the Auschwitz gate. Walking through the gate with my mother, herself an Auschwitz survivor, was a chilling experience. Even the nearby Ronald Reagan Library has an Auschwitz exhibit on display for the next few months. There's even a Holocaust Memorial in Washington, DC. I was astounded to discover there are approximatrely fifty countries with Holocaust memorials. Wikipedia offers a list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Not that long ago, Rachel Weisz starred in "Denial," a movie about a lawsuit over Holocaust denial. She played the part of Deborah Lipstadt, a real life Holocaust scholar. Lipstadt had been sued by an actual Holocaust denier for libeling him because he did in fact deny the holocaust. Here's the trailer: https://bleeckerstreetmedia.co...

Or you can have a look at "The Uniform," a novel based on my father's experience as a labor camp prisoner in 1944. It contains the scene where my father was actually thrown out of his medical school class just as he was about to graduate. People tell me it's an exciting read. Check it out at http://www.ggruen.com