Tacky Selfie: Over Reaction?

[patiokitty]

...

Uh... come again, please? Do you SERIOUSLY believe that the Holocaust is not taught to German students? And, if so: where on Earth would you ever get that idea?

Several German students I have spoken to, actually. Both online and face to face. Not to mention family that I still have over there.

[Canarr]

Okay... color me confused.

Please forgive my persistent questions, but this really baffles me. What, exactly, was it they said on the topic? That the Holocaust wasn't covered in their History lessons in school? So, was the period of 1933-1945 excluded completely, or did they cover the Nazis, but leave out the Holocaust?

[patiokitty]

I was told that their history teachers gloss over it for the most part, never really going into any detail. There are never any lesson plans that specifically cover the Holocaust or Hitler's rise to power.

[bex1218]

I feel compelled to restate my previous point: She's the one specifically fame whoring it up with the selfie. She is not some poor victim being bashed by the internet. She's attention whoring this and retweeting it. As well as retweeting anyone that supports her.

Which has led to her inadvertently retweeting some anti-semetic neo-Nazi shit.

You should find my other post where I stated where she went wrong. This was in comment to the new link where people were giving her death threats.

[Gravekeeper]

I think the smiling could have been forgiven had she explained herself. Captioning the photo with "Selfie in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp " on the other hand I think really irked people. Her story about her dad is completely undercut by her behaviour and she's proven herself a hypocrite and an attention whore thus far. Don't think its a matter of there being set rules so much as her throwing fuel on the fire.

She actually threw out the first death threat herself. She's the one retweeting racist crap. She's the one reviling in her fame. She even posted a happy party hard selfie of herself in front of the TV when her Auschwitz selfie came up on screen during a story about it. She links news stories about herself. This really isn't about the original picture anymore.

She's proven she's insensitive, ignorantly racist ( She hates fake "niggaz" for example -.- ), tone deaf and self absorbed. The very things people accused her of over the initial photo. She has done this to herself and pushed it far beyond the boundaries of anything the Internet might have collectively forgiven or forgotten about after a few days of outrage.

Instead, she's completely insured she'll be forever known as that miserable girl who took a selfie at Auschwitz. Going so far as to embrace a hash tag about herself. Good luck with getting a job outside of McDonald's or a scholarship or anything with the kind of smoldering crater Google footprint she's leaving.

[Canarr]

I was told that their history teachers gloss over it for the most part, never really going into any detail. There are never any lesson plans that specifically cover the Holocaust or Hitler's rise to power.

Okay... my confusion increases, because that is completely and utterly untrue.

Now, I wouldn't know where, exactly, the people you spoke to went to school (lesson plans vary from state to state), but Germany's Nazi-past is one of the cornerstones of any history class in school. I went through German highschool, and we covered

1. WW I, from the assassination of the Austrian Heir to the Contract of Versailles, and how these events shaped Europe generally and the German people specifically, to set the stage for the NSDAP's rise to power.
2. That rise to power, after a first failed coup in 1923, finally culminating in Hitler's election to Chancellor in 1933 and the subsequent destruction of the Republic of Weimar by effectively eliminating all traces of Democracy from the system and establishing Hitler as Dictator.
3. The systematic reduction of the "Unwanted People" - Jews, Gypsies, physically and mentally handicapped - to second-class citizens in preparation for the eventual "Final Solution" - through methods like the so-called "Aryan Laws" and the "Reichspogromnacht".
4. The takeover of "German Homeland", such as Austria, the Rhineland lost after WW I, and the Sudetenland in clear violation of the Contract of Versailles, and the failure of the Allies' "Appeasement Policy".
5. The rearming of the German military, and following, the beginning, the development and the end of WW II.
6. The Holocaust.

So, yeah: we cover this period extensively. Not just in History lessons, but also in Social Studies - which methods and tricks did the Nazis use? How did their propaganda work? What role did the scapegoating of Marxists and Socialists (the "Dagger Legend") play? How could they do what they did? Which hopefully explains my confusion as to how not just one, but apparently multiple Germans can claim they weren't taught about that.

Possibly interesting side fact: publicly denying the Holocaust - propagating the so-called "Holocaust Lie" - is a felony in Germany. May bring up to five years in prison.