From: Edward T. Sullivan <sully>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:28:11 -0400 (EDT)

Maia asks: "What is it we (each) want in a book about the Holocaust? What do we want children to learn?"

I believe it was John Lennon who said: "We're all Christ and we're all Hitler." That is, in essence, the understanding I want kids to get out of studying and reading about the Holocaust. They need to understand that the Holocaust and other genocides have been (are, will be) perpetrated by ordinary people, and that we are all capable of doing evil. What I most admired about James Cross Giblin's Sibert-winning The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler was they way he portrayed Hitler as an ordinary person who made the choice to do evil.

At what age is it appropriate to introduce children to these ideas I do not know. What I do know is that children start thinking of people different from them as "others" at a very early age, and it is this human trait we have to categorize people as "others" that leads to anti
-Semitism , racism, and sometimes to genocide.

Ed Sullivan
Received on Wed 26 Apr 2006 02:28:11 PM CDT