How Apathy Killed Our Neighbors.
When I was eleven, my mother bought me The Diary of Anne Frank. I was learning about the Holocaust in school, and she wanted to supplement the education. I remember deeply relating to Anne and knowing she was going to survive. There was no way, in my youthful innocence, that she could die. The end of the diary shook me to my core. I cried so hard my eyes were still puffy the next day at school, and I couldn’t explain to my classmates what had upset me so much.
How was I supposed to explain to middle schoolers what I had learned about humanity and what we can justify doing to our neighbors?
In school each time I learned about the Holocaust, I thought of Anne, and I wondered how that sort of atrocity could have ever happened. I wondered how her neighbors looked the other way and let these acts go on. I learned in school that Adolf Hitler was a widely popular leader, and his hateful rhetoric was well-received by the German population. He spoke of inequality among the races and believed deeply in the superiority of the “Aryan” race. I couldn’t fathom how that rhetoric could be adapted by an entire society.
