By Lindsay Marshall
In the early 1940’s one of the greatest atrocities to mankind was committed when Nazi forces exterminated approximately 11 million people who were considered to be racially inferior. As a result, a campaign was launched named “Never Again”, as a promise to past and future generations that we will do everything we can to ensure the horrors of the Holocaust are not repeated. However the United States Education department does not require that the Holocaust be taught in the history curriculum. Out of 50 states, only five states require that the Holocaust be taught. That being said many students go on to college, and have no knowledge of this genocide. How are future generations be expected to move forward, if will not accept the mistakes we made in the past?
I sadly found myself equally uninformed about past injustices when arriving to District six in Cape Town. When arriving to the district six museum, I had to ask my professor where I was and what the significance of district six was. District six was once a lively community filled with many people of different races and religious backgrounds that lived in harmony. However on February 11th 1966, it was declared a whites only area under the Group Areas Act of 1950. Due to this legislation more than 60,000 people were forcibly removed to other areas, and their houses were flattened by bulldozers. I was immediately reminded of how Jews were forced out of their homes and into ghetto during the Nazi regime. I questioned how the world let this happen. How could people stand by and watch thousands of people be forced out of their homes just due to the color of their skin? Hadn’t we learned anything from the previous mistakes that occurred throughout Europe? Millions of people may have not been mass exterminated, but it just the mere fact that the world stood by while thousands of people were forced out of their homes and separated from their friends and family that upset me.
What made me even more upset was the fact that I had never heard of district six before visiting the museum. In fact I don’t remember learning about the many injustices of the apartheid regime in any of history classes. I am very proud of my home state of New Jersey because it is one of the few states that includes holocaust education in the curriculum. However, I was completely unaware of this community that functioned well and the apartheid structure that stifled it’s success, and many of my classmates shared the same lack of knowledge. How can we expect for history not to repeat itself if our education system does not find value to learn from these mistakes? Nelson Mandela stated that, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” I believe that we cannot expect to change the world and stop social justices from reoccurring if we do not admit that they have been committed in the past. What can we do to make ensure that this never happen again?
Sources
District Six Museum. http://www.districtsix.co.za. January 2015
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. http://www.ushmm.org/learn. January 2015.
