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I don't think anything would have made it real for them. None of them had any personal connection to it. They just couldn't look at those people who'd died over sixty years ago, and feel any empathy. To them, it really was history, and not their history.
To those kids and me though, it was a family history lesson. I suppose we looked at the people crying and screaming, and saw our own relatives. I saw my Roma relatives, wearing long sleeves to hide their forearms, even in Texan heat. I saw pictures of second-cousins and great-aunts who were rounded up. I don't know what the two Jewish kids saw.
Looking at any of the war tapes makes me shake though. I had to cover my eyes through half the Vietnam ones. I just don't understand how they could disconnect themselves.
Teachers are scared to teach their students a lot of things for those reasons I think. They're scared of students like me having breakdowns, and they're scared of other students claiming the whole thing is a lie.
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