Sidra, my granddaughter, ten years of age, has a school assignment. She must read a biography and report about it. She also has to make or buy five objects related to the person and show them. She chose to report about Anne Frank. I asked Sidra what she already knew about her. She said that she knew that Anne Frank lived in Germany during the time of the Holocaust; that she hid in a house until somebody ‘ratted her out’; that she wrote a diary that became very famous after her father got freed and published it; and that she died at an early age.
This is the cusp, the tipping point of childhood – by definition. How is it possible for a child to understand the systematic brutality of monstrous political powers? A child cannot. Therefore, to get an inkling of the horror, one has to cease being a child, and understand some unbelievable things.
Sidra is a wonderfully compassionate person, who organized a memorial recently for a teacher who passed away. Sidra said:
“One of my favorite supervisors at my school passed away because of a late case of breast cancer. Because I never got to see her again, I decided to ask my class if they would bring something like breast cancer ribbon or pieces of the rosemary plant to help honor Rosemary. In our class we all wore breast cancer ribbon and we all wore pieces of the rosemary plant and pink bracelets. We passed them out to the other supervisiors too and they are still wearing them.”
Sidra’s parents are both very positive people. It is clear that they provided a good foundation on which Sidra can continue to develop as a warm and caring person. I hope she can absorb the knowledge about the events of the Holocaust without too much trauma.
I’m not really sure there’s a way to explain that kind of atrocity to a child. Nor, do I think if I were a parent, would I want to. It’s inhuman, and while it’s a part of reality, imagine a world where those kinds of things were simply unheard of. No one had ever heard of war, of murder, of the holocaust. Maybe there would still be violence, but I think our awareness of evil opens the possibilities, opens Pandora’s box. I hope Sidra can understand Anne Frank with the same compassion she shows for her teacher, and will always experience the world with that wonder and see the beauty in it. There’s far, far more beauty than we think.
Thank you for your comment, Pearson. Surely no parent wants to expose his or her child to the truly horrendous things that happen in this world. But I think that it is very important to be aware of what can happen. Remember that adage, “Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it.” The Nazi regime began innocuously enough and metastasized to perpetrate unbelievable evil, where most citizens said they were not aware of what was happening. Evil flourishes when people do nothing to stop it. The innocence of childhood must give way to awareness. Thankfully, Sidra’s childhood has prepared her to be a responsible, compassionate person who does and will appreciate the beauty of the word but will also speak out against evil.
Thanks again.
Jack