->Will mankind actually ever cease to war by him and others reading this book?

->After 1945 have wars actually stopped along with it's violence? (I served in one my self for the U.S)

->Living in America why not touch the subjects of Native American Indians (Trail of Tears) , Slavery and Racism in America and The Dicovery Of America or Was it the Invading of America by Europeans sponsored in part by the Catholic Church.

Conclusion: I feel that mankind will not change or evolve spiritually no matter how many religions come and go look at the facts. So why expose an innocent 10 yr old almost virgin mind to horror of that extent?

There is NOTHING worse.

And, we call ourselves civilized?

Is it because it was the greatest tragedy to happen to france? I doubt it.

Looks to me like Nicholas Sarkozy is trying to win the votes of the jew community. Smells like ellections.

When I was in elementary school three of our teachers had survived the holocaust as children. Now that I think about it, they're probably 70-80 years old and kids today, and even many Neatorama readers who are adults had no or maybe just one holocaust survivor for a teacher. Let me tell you though, nothing woke you up like Mr. Schmetterling rolling up his sleeves to work on a project and seeing this faded old tattoo on his arm. Then that pause while some idiot girl who never gave history a moment's thought asked why he had a tattoo of numbers on his arm. Then we heard about the last time he saw his mother, father and his three sisters and how he was strong, so strong that the Nazis needed him to dig sewer ditches and then it was off with his shoes to see his two remaining toes on his right foot. Kids can't deal with that? Try growing up in an integrated neighborhood in the 1970s, holocaust survivors were everywhere.

I'm not sure what Veil's problem is, unless he just thinks 10 is too young but 12 is OK. Might have a point, but I think the average 10-year-old could handle this pretty well. You simply concentrate on learning the child's life. Their death is only mentioned, never studied in depth. No big deal, and it would actually mean something to them.

The comment from Madam Veil makes no sense to me, “unimaginable, unbearable, tragic and above all, unjust”?

Would she prefer no mention of the holocaust? No mention of the French role? No personification of the victims of What part is unjust? Maybe if she was Roma, I could see it, but what part is so offensive to some with the title: (honorary) president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust? I don't get it.

But if Mr. Sarkozy's intent is to instill a sense of empathy for these children, what's wrong with using as the example the living children of Darfur, or the child-soldiers of Rwanda, or Afganistan, or Iraq, or Tibet? What about the children of the Trail of Tears, or American slavery, or the Irish famine, or the British workshops? Our history is replete with examples of children killed or traumatized by the subjugation of one group by another.

Now I'm bummed out.

Life is not a nice soft bubble, and kids should not life in some kind of concrete bunker erected by their "caring" parents - which includes sex ed!

Children should learn about war, but how much do they really absorb when they're really young?

We live in time when you can call teaching about holocaust a psychological torture. Not so long ago the age of reason was 7 years old. Reason? Because you could start to work at that age.
I believe we should rejoice (at least in the so called western world) about the possibility of this dialog.

Nonetheless I disagree with Simone Veil. I met a French IT consultant recently who told me he discovered the holocaust in history class, when he was 17. Isn't that a little bit late?

Nazism, Communism, Terrorism : give your kids facts, so history does not repeat itself.

Maybe children would have a little more empathy if they learned something like this instead of dry dates and facts that don't really mean anything to them. And maybe they wouldn't grow up to want to kill each other. We can always hope.