Sage of the Chuchus

We teach history like it's a work of fiction where the characters act the way they do because they were written that way. And not like the real world with real people who were just as human as us and had reasons to act the way they do. And that the same mistakes and foibles they had could happen to us too.

I was fortunate enough to have some great teachers growing up, in a small, fairly well-funded school system (and during times when everyone still agreed that fascism was bad). In 8th grade, our school had an interdisciplinary unit for about a month focusing solely on the Holocaust. Every class taught something related to it, even math. For a month, we read horrifying stories and watched documentaries and did research assignments on the Holocaust. By the end, any one of us would have said we were experts on the subject.

And at the very end, our entire grade (about 100 kids) was broken into four groups, and we were told that as a reward for all our hard work on the Holocaust unit, we were going to compete for a trip to Disney World. Only one team could go, but the entire team would get to travel there and spend a few days in the park, all expenses paid.

The competition was simple: the group with the most team spirit would win. We were instructed to come up with a team name, a catchy slogan, and a logo (something simple and easy to draw). We were allowed to prove our team spirit however we wanted. That was it. That was all of the instructions. The competition would last a week, and short of stopping physical violence, the teachers stepped back and let us have at it.

It was terrifying.

At first, everyone just hung up posters in the halls and cheerfully recited their slogan whenever the teachers were watching. Within a few days, posters were being torn down and shredded. Verbal fights were breaking out in the hallways. It wasn't enough to say your team was the best, everyone had somehow decided. You also had to prove that everyone else's team was inferior. People started making up lies and gossip, saying that everyone in a particular group was lazy or ugly or smelly or what have you (we were 13). Slurs were thrown around. (Again, we were 13.)

By the final day, the groups were marching down the halls in formation, shouting their slogan in unison. Shouting slander against the other groups. The floor was covered in tattered paper.

I was shy and introverted and weird and unpopular and mostly stayed out of it. But those images are burned into my memory. These kids had turned into vicious monsters, all for a stupid school project.

The teachers had us march down the hallway to the auditorium to announce the results of the competition. The groups were little armies now. Most students marched in lockstep, shouting their slogans. We were seated together in our groups. The teachers dimmed the lights, quieted us down, and the teacher in charge of this whole project said that before he announced the winners, he had something to share with us about the person who was responsible for this entire competition. He turned on the projector and displayed a portrait of Hitler.

Everyone lost their minds. Kids were booing and throwing things. We knew that Hitler was a Bad Guy.

The teacher calmed us back down, and then explained that there was no trip to Disney World, and the fact that not one student questioned for a moment that such a massively expensive and complicated prize would be granted for such a silly competition was honestly kind of disappointing. This entire week, he said, was our final exam. The final exam for the Holocaust unit.

We had spent a month learning about this. About how this "bad guy" inspired a whole hell of a lot of people to march in lockstep shouting slogans and plastering their symbol all over everything. That one bad guy had told them that they were special, and other groups were trying to take away what was rightfully theirs for being the best, and they ultimately got extremely violent. We had learned all about the Hitler Youth and the SS and book burnings and, of course, the concentration camps. We'd all read the Diary of Anne Frank. We'd been marinating in this information for a month, in all of our classes.

But we hadn't learned. We hadn't really understood what they were trying to teach us. Not that this happened. But that this happens. It can happen very easily, especially if people aren't watching out for it.

The kids were furious. They shouted that this wasn't fair, that we were only following instructions. The teachers had lied to us. They had told us to do this, and now they were mad at us for following directions?

He was ready for this, of course. Calming us back down again, he pointed out that all they'd done is tell us to give ourselves a name, a slogan, a symbol, and demonstrate "team spirit." That was literally it. No one told us to rip posters down. No one told us to march in the hallways. No one told us to spread rumors and shout insults. No one told us to fight each other.

They didn't have to.

All it takes to get people to behave this way is to tell them that their group is special, they deserve good things, but the good things aren't there because those other people are taking them from you.

The Nazis were not uniquely evil people. They were just encouraged to demonstrate their team spirit. And there were no teachers to stop it from getting violent. Because the person encouraging them wanted things to get violent.

The Holocaust was not the story of Hitler the Bad Guy. He was there, and he was responsible for a lot, but that wasn't the point. Germany during the Holocaust wasn't suddenly, by total accident, full of evil people.

It was just full of people like us.

This time, it just was a lie about Disney World and a week of chaos. But if we didn't watch out, the next time fascism started to rise, we would get swept up on the wrong side of it. We had just proven that we would. We'd be too swept up in making sure that our special group got the prize they deserved to notice that we were being lied to about the prize in the first place.

That could happen. If we weren't careful. If we forgot the lesson we'd just learned.

After he'd let the horror and shame and embarrassment and indignation of that week sink in properly, he reassured us that it wasn't our fault. The point wasn't for us to prove that we understood the lesson of the Holocaust. It wasn't actually a test after all, it was our final lesson. The most important lesson.

He'd known that this test would go this way, because it always did. He did this every year. He said in all his years of teaching, only one student, one student, had ever questioned it. Pulled him aside in the hallway and said straightforwardly that whatever was going on was messed up and he wanted no part of it.

And you know what? That is how you teach history. You give students the facts of what happened. And then you show them how easily it can happen again.

Sadly, most schools don't have the resources for this sort of thing, and these days they'd probably not be allowed to run this little experiment. But I'm extremely grateful to that teacher, grateful that I was part of that experience. It was harrowing, and it made me and a lot of other people vigilant for the rest of my life in a way I know I would not have been otherwise.

It was over 35 years ago now and it still makes me emotional to think about.