i just can't get over how surreal it is to be teaching the holocaust right now to my 4th grade classes who by and large are learning about this for the first time. (i have four jewish kids across three classes, they all have known for years.) for the non-jewish kids, even the ones who already knew a little bit did not know much until we started this unit. and just like every year i teach this, the question that comes up over and over again, the one that is SO triggering for me and so difficult to keep my teacher cool during, is "why didn't they just...?" and they are young, very privileged kids and they are asking it innocently and they ask it when we study slavery and they ask it when they study the trail of tears and they ask it when we study the dust bowl. why didn't the jews just take off their jackets that had the yellow stars on them. why didn't the dust bowl farmers just buy new houses in a different state and move. why didn't the enslaved people just say no. and worse is the kid i got today, the "well, if *I* were a jew during world war two, here's what *I* would have done."

and today i just got really serious with them and said, "i know that you do not mean it in a disrespectful way, but when you say that you could have done something differently that would have led to you surviving when so many others did not, it is offensive to the memory of the millions of people who were killed when they were doing everything they could to survive. i promise you that there is not a single strategy imaginable that was not tried by someone at some point. some of them worked and some people escaped, because they got lucky. other people did the exact same thing and were caught and killed. we also have the benefit today of knowing what was going to happen. they didn't have that. some people did not want to take actions that today we look back on as heroic because they did not want to break the law. they were law-abiding citizens, even when those laws discriminated against them. some people did take actions and escaped when it was still early enough to do so, and others at the time thought they were overreacting and that it wasn't that bad."

every single day i wonder if i'm the one is staying until it's too late to get out. every single day i look around and wonder if i'm only still here because i think others are overreacting. every single day i worry i'm not learning enough from the past.