Are There Two Sides To The Holocaust?

If one searches “The Holocaust” on Twitter right now, they’re bound to find many users talking about a bill in Ohio that would require schools to “teach both sides of it.” The specific controversy involves a bill introduced in the Ohio Legislator which claims to have the goal of preventing teachers from “teaching divisive concepts.” However, one of the main sponsors of the bill, state legislator Sarah Fowler Arthur, said in an interview back in March that people should understand both sides of all political events — the Holocaust included.

In the film The Matrix, Morpheus informs Neo that “everything happens for a reason.” Notice how the quote is not “good things happen for a reason, bad things just randomly happen out of nowhere.” The Holocaust — which could easily be qualified as the most evil event in the twentieth century — was done for a reason, and schools that teach about it should be required to explain why so many Germans were okay with it taking place.

Of course, teaching why Hitler believed his genocide was justified is not the same thing as accepting the notion that Hitler was correct. For example, an education on antisemitism in Europe should point out that one of the main documents Hitler used as justification for his action — even referring it favorably in Mein Kampf — was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was proven to be a hoax a decade before Hitler rose to power. It should also be taught that Hitler was a firm believer in the long debunked pseudoscience of eugenics, and that his antisemitism led him to dismiss multiple important fields of science as nothing more than “Jewish controlled.”

In general, the public seems to have a bizarre fascination with Adolf Hitler. In 2017, an annotated version of Hitler’s famous book and manifesto Mein Kampf became a bestseller in Germany. Up until 2015, the citizens of Germany had no way of reading this famous work in the native German Hitler wrote it in, because the people who actually owned the copyright to the book were refusing to print new copies. If you are someone who owns a copy of Mein Kampf, even if its just for the purposes of research and reference, you quickly find that it’s the only book anyone seems to notice you own. In a 10/21/2021 article for Current Affairs, Nathan Robinson notes the following regarding his experience as a Mein…