Holocaust

I was a young adult at that time and I knew all about it. Lived in the middle of Illinois at the time.

1959-61 I taught at a high school that had only three identifed Jewish by origin students out of 1300 (two came from a Christian Science family) -- but they knew much about the Holocaust, partly or mostly because they could read for book report credit Leon Uris' best seller, Exodus. One Olympic gold medalist swimmer ( two big name student athletes won more gold than most countries) is said to have wept when she described its contents during her presentation in class.

Check to see when the Diary of Anne Frank (book and movie) came out. That really heightened knowledge.

Yes, we in the US had a pretty good idea of the extent of the holocaust in 1966 and even before that. Some of the pictures you still see had been published; there had been magazines stories about the events; it was covered in history books.

I think the attitude you might want to capture, Cooee, is knowledge of what happened, but that "it can't happen here" which is the way I think many people in the US viewed it. In 1966 we were in the midst the Cold War with dubious eyes cast on all of eastern Europe, primarily the Soviets, but including East Germany. Puma

ETA: I seen Donroc mentioned Exodus - also a powerful way of getting knowledge out to the people, especially the movie.

Eichmann's kidnapping, trial and subsequent execution would have been remembered by many as it happened from 1960-1962. The events were widely covered in the media worldwide.

I can remember my mother telling me that she saw news reports in the cinema about the liberation of the camps. There was a horrified silence. Richard Dimbleby, news guy, sent a recording of described Bergen Belsen, ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/holocaust/5115.shtml ) and the bosses at the BBC thought he was drunk; they could not believe what they heard. The BBC Archive has quite a few eyewitness accounts and they are all dated. There were well known people, for example Yehudi Menuhin (see here: http://www.theviolinsite.com/violinists/yehudi_menuhin.html ) who went to the camps.

I grew up and lived in New York City and that may have made a difference, but I was never NOT aware of the Holocaust. I even had a classmate with a tattoo on her wrist. The movie The Pawnbroker, about a holocaust survivor, came out in the early 1960s, Meir Kahane founded the JDL in the 60s as well, and there was Eichmann's trial and Hannah Arendt's book.

I think one would have to make an effort to be ignorant.

If you...

want a Australasian view, the answer is 'oh, yes.'

During the 1950s many of the refugees who came to both our countries, were survivors from the camps. In NZ there was a special history unit taught in schools from the '50s onwards.

During the '60s there was quite a stir with the Nazi hunters looking for war criminals in both our countries.

cooeedownunder said:

if a 41-year-old character in 1966 who was not part of those events and lived far away, could have a full understanding of the Holocaust.

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Far away from what? I lived in a little town in Canada, far away from everything, but I knew about it. Maybe not in 1966, because I was only 6, but I knew there was 'The War' and bad things had happened in 'The Old Country'. My mother (Polish Catholic) had immigrated from Poland after the war, my father always followed the news, and half the town was refugees and immigrants.
A lot would depend on exactly where your character is living, and what sort of life he leads.

Many of the children of the 50s and 60s fathers, uncles, older brothers fought in WWII. Many of them were on the European front, some liberated the camps, some came later and saw what remained, some were involved in the reconstruction. I would expect that most of them told their children some of it when the children were old enough.

Also in the US, between WWII and Vietnam, there was McCarthy.

Hey coooeee,

One thing to consider about your character is how far away is far away, if you know what I mean? I don't heh heh.

But a lot of countries had National Service, i.e. forced conscription into the armed services. Bill Wyman out the Rolling Bones springs to mind.

So if they were doing service, they'd have heard stories.

Regards

Whacko

My father served in the US Army during WWII and was at Normandy. He was one of the many US soldiers who participated in the 'liberation' of the concentration camps. But I learned about the Holocaust not from him (he pretty much refused to talk about his experience) but from school, Anne Frank, the movie 'Exodus' and just reading magazines like Look and Life.

But though my father didn't talk about what he saw, he would often confirm what I was learning. I'd asked him, did this really happen? And he'd say yes. When I asked if it was as bad as I read or heard, he'd say it was worse.

There were many men of his generation (born in the 1920's especially) who were there and were middle-aged men in the 1960's. They had very vivid memories of what happened and some shared more (with their families) than others.

I don't have an uncle or grandparent who served in the wars either, Cooee, but - my brother in law was in the Normandy invasion and my Dad worked with military supply as a part time second job - he was on the too old side, and my brothers were on the too young side. It's was all a matter of ages in families whether people served or didn't.

If you remember, last fall I was working on a book(let) on our township in World War II. What I found out was that many of the men wouldn't talk about their experiences at all - a few of them did start talking as they got up close to 90, but even then, they'd talk about funny things that happened and avoid the horrors they'd experienced. They'd acknowledge they were here or there, but not much more. It was a traumatic experience. Puma

Puma said:

If you remember, last fall I was working on a book(let) on our township in World War II. What I found out was that many of the men wouldn't talk about their experiences at all - a few of them did start talking as they got up close to 90, but even then, they'd talk about funny things that happened and avoid the horrors they'd experienced. They'd acknowledge they were here or there, but not much more. It was a traumatic experience. Puma

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With regard to the men not talking about their experiences...

What happened to these young men (my father was 18 and pulled out of high school to serve) was so traumatic, and so out-of-the-ordinary, that to come home and start talking about it? With who? Your mum and dad? Your girlfriend or young wife? Your kids?

My dad did say he wanted to forget all about the war, but once when we were watching a talk show (Merv Griffin, I think) and a very tall actor was talking about his experience at Normandy - he said he watched men all around him drown because they were short and couldn't swim! I turned to my dad and said: What? There were soldiers being pushed out of boats and they couldn't swim?

He said, yep, and if the water went over their heads, they drowned. My dad was over six foot and a country boy so he could swim like a fish. He made it to the beach where most of his unit was killed. He was promoted on the beach and put in charge of a unit because so many officers had been killed.

He was also one of many young soldiers who were told by their commanding officers to 'look around and remember' what they saw in the concentration camps. But imagine how traumatic, how horrible this all was for them? There was no way to prepare for something like this. There was no TV so you couldn't turn on the news and see what was happening. You had to rely on newspapers and magazines. There were news reels in the movie theaters, but those were limited.

My dad preferred to tell us about passing out ice cream to German soldiers. (He later was an MP at a prison camp.) Or how he and some friends killed a swan when they were stationed in England. They were so sick of K-rations, they wanted some fresh meat. The swans were the property of HRH, so they got in trouble for doing that.

But to talk about the reality of war? How he saw his friends die before they even had a chance to fight? How he lost half his hearing from being so close to some large guns (cannons) on the beach. Nope. We had to pry this info. out of him and he gave us very little.

Finally, when the TV series, "Holocaust" was broadcast, he did open up a little with my sister. They sat and talked about the war, but I was married and not living at home. My sister has told me that our dad revealed some truly horrible things he experienced or witnessed, but she has never told me what they are.

I certainly remember discussion about it in the 60s (I would have been seven or eight at the time).

The other thing that was big around that stage was footage of Communist atrocities in (I imagine) China or Vietnam - the nuns used to love making us watch that. Tiny asian christian children bravely marching off to be hanged for not renouncing Our Lord: fade to black: show a rope and swinging little feet - that kind of thing. Terrified us. We were supposed to pray to God to give us strength to be brave like the asian tots.

I just went all wobbly thinking about it...

I was 32 in 1966, lived in California, and was very much aware of the holocaust. Part of that, I think, as it would have been for your 41 year old character, is because we lived through WWII and most of us had family fighting in that war. Because the entire country was heavily invested in it, through rationing, victory gardens, bond drives, etc. (unlike wars that came later,) it truly became "our war." We greedily read everything we could find about both the war in Europe and the war in Japan--not only at the time, but for the rest of our lives.

This is my first post here (besides on the "New Members" thread). None of my family members or relatives fought in WWII. Everyone was either too old, too young and not born yet. I did talk to a Holocaust survivor once, who lived five years at Dachau from ages 8-13. The horrors and stories he told me, I'll never forget...ever.

I had a friend who was born in 1965 and grew up in NYC in the '70s. He said he remembered seeing a lot Holocaust survivors around then. My mom graduated from high school in 1969 and she remembered learning about it then (in the mid-late '60s).

When my grandpa was alive, he told me years ago that he remembered seeing pictures of the camps being liberated in the newspapers and newsreels at the theater. He was a teenager then. He tried to sign up for the service and go to war, but his parents wouldn't let him (they wouldn't sign the papers).

When I was a junior in high school and in an American History class we read the book Night by Elie Wiesel. That had come out in 1960. The Diary of Anne Frank was first published in Holland in 1947 and in the U.S. in 1952. The movie with Millie Perkins came out 1959, but I believe there was a play prior to that.

In college, I tried to do a paper about the U.S. and what we knew about Holocaust in the '50s and '60s. After several weeks of research, I had to scrap that idea because I did not find enough information. Like others said, not many, if any talked about their experiences in the camps or during the war (until much, much later in their lives, if that). Many of them carried their untold stories to their graves.

It was like PTSD, in those days, 'battle fatigue.' Many soldiers returning home had it, but didn't know it. A lot of them found out soon enough that things were different at home and why was the war still close at hand, when they were home now? The doctors in those days told you to "act normal and return to the normal things of life." How could they after experiencing battles like Anzio, Normandy, The Battle of the Bulge, Iowa Jima and others. You cannot be "normal" after seeing places like that and liberating those camps.

I could say more, but this is getting quite long. The Depression and WWII eras are my favorite historical times to study and write about.

-Kristi

I'm surprised that there's not many people have mentioned knowing survivors or their families. Perhaps living in the UK is different.

I'm not Jewish but I was brought up in a town with a large Jewish population. My first girlfriend's grandmother had fled Vienna ahead of the Nazis. They had been a wealthy family and they lost everything. At least she got out alive: her husband was one of the Jews the Nazis made scrub the streets.

Later I married another girl whose father was Jewish. He and his mother lived through the war in Brussels, using faked papers. Practically the whole of the rest of their extended family died.

Knowing survivors is a whole "nuther" story. I'm not Jewish, but I worked for several years at Jewish Family Services helping Soviet immigrants find jobs after Gorbachev opened the door for them to leave. I met with the families after they arrived and listened to their stories (with the help of an interpreter) which in some cases went back to WWII. There were many times I ended up in tears - like at the story told by an older woman of being loaded into train cars to be sent to Siberia before the Nazi's arrived, and at the last moment her mother remembered something she'd forgotten and ran back home to get it - the woman never saw her mother again and had no idea what happened to her.

But, as part of that experience I also dealt daily with members of the community who had escaped before, during, or after WWII. There was one older man who could not talk about the orphan ship (can't remember the actual name of it) of Jewish refuges who tried to find some place to escape to and were refused everywhere without breaking down in tears. And he was a tough guy.

A wake up call for me was discovering how much fear these people had been living in for the 45 years after WWII and in some cases, what horrible conditions they'd had to deal with. There were still pograms, seizures during the night - one of the haunting images a 50 year old woman told me was about listening to the footsteps walking on the streets at night and worrying whether they were coming to take you. The constant fear they dealt with was almost incomprehensible.

I guess what I'm saying is that we away from the scene aren't necessarily correct in assuming the Holocaust ended with the liberation of the concentration camps. Puma