Truth and Lies - The Holocaust 

A response to a recent incident where a top administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake advised teachers that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also offer students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective, according to an audio recording obtained by NBC News. You can read more about the story on NBC News. 

Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, was caught on audio saying, "Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” Peddy said in the recording, referring to a new Texas law that requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial” issues. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust,” Peddy continued, “that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”
“How do you oppose the Holocaust?” one teacher said in response. “Believe me,” Peddy said. “That’s come up.”
What was her motivation here? Was it about House Bill 3979 and fear from the Texas legislature/governor? Was it about entertaining conspiracy theorists who demand that there be room for their 'alternative facts' (that's code for lies) in the curriculum? Is she hiding behind 'that's come up' to hide her own doubts about the Holocaust? Or is Holocaust education so bad in the U.S. that she had no idea what it was? 

We take the truth about the Holocaust for granted. Ben Ferencz, who came to be known as the prosecutor of Nuremberg, was instrumental (arguably singularly) in bringing many of the horrors of the Holocaust to light. He prosecuted numerous Nazis and exposed their lies. There was one part of the movie, Prosecuting Evil Movie, that relates to this issue. There was one German officer that Ferencz had a little bit of pity for. The officer was sentenced to death, and Ferencz visited him in his cell to ask if he wanted him to deliver a message to his wife and children before his execution. Instead of giving him a message to give to his family, he told him the same thing he had been telling the courts: Hitler told us that the Jews were a fifth column to be used by the Communists who were plotting to take over, that they would kill us all if they won, so, you seen, we had to murder 6 million Jews! Ferencz shook his head in disgust and left the room. The Nazi was executed, death by hanging, shortly after. Think about this - the man could have said goodbye to his children, and instead, he chose to perpetuate a lie…sorry, I meant, ‘the other side’.

In Midrash Yalkut Shimoni, a rabbinic work, we read the following about truth and lies. The text takes the Hebrew words for truth, emet, and lie, sheker, and looks at them alphabetically. Emet contains the letters Alef (the first letter) Mem (a letter roughly in the middle) and Taf (the last letter) but Sheker (Shin Kuf Reish) are all bunched together in the middle. Truth has three legs to stand on, but lies only have one. When you put a lie to the test, it falls pretty quickly. The midrash says that same thing about truthful actions: they stand firm, while actions based on lies fall. 

We need to have a serious conversation about Emet, Truth, and we have to be careful about saying, “well, that’s my truth” for everything. The lies that permeated Nazi Germany and the world led to the murder of my great-grandparents, my great-aunts and uncles and cousins, along with six million Jews. The lies have led to the persecution of Jews throughout time. Lies are seductive - they tell us what we want to hear; truth is a bit harsher but necessary - truth tells us what we need to hear. 

I hope and pray that Gina Peddy is reprimanded for her actions, but that it will solve the age-old problem of the lies that perpetuate society. We must be truth-tellers, we must hold people accountable even when it is inconvenient, like Ben Ferencz who should be viewed as one of the greatest Jewish and non-Jewish heroes of all time. 
I would love to hear your open and honest words. Opinions are welcome, but lies are not. The Holocaust happened, and if you’re looking for the ‘opposing view’, it could be found on the hangman’s noose in Nuremberg.