Dear Editor,

My friend, Jimmy D, is an emotional guy. His wife is from Czechoslovakia. Her family had personal experience with German and Russian atrocities in World War II. No surprise they visited Auschwitz on a European trip. Some 1.1 million people died there.

They weren’t alone. The museum draws many visitors, including students from Germany.

Jimmy, of course, struck up a conversation. The students told him study of the Holocaust and German atrocities in World War II is mandatory. Every German student must visit either a concentration camp memorial site or a Holocaust museum as a field trip.

Really? Jimmy was emotional. Is it true? So I checked it out. He was right. Study is mandatory. And almost every student makes the trip.

It is ugly history. It has to be painful. They know it is their grandparents and earlier generations of their families that gassed millions to death because the life of that Jew or gypsy wasn’t even worth a bullet.

They know their church redefined itself to justify the “cleansing” of the world.

Why would a country subject this history to its youth? Maybe so it doesn’t happen again? Maybe to understand how hatred and persecution of a minority can lead to unrest, false nationalism, and war?

Is Germany strong for being able to face its periods of dark history? Strong by admitting they have not been perfect? Or weak because they can’t find the will or the means to brush this history under the rug.

What about us? We have a dark past. Chattel slavery. It happened. It was ugly. And the Jim Crow that replaced it was in some ways worse. And it is not over yet.

So we try to hide our sins? It’s “woke.” It’s Critical Race Theory. We have to spin it. We don’t want to hurt our children’s feelings.

Spin the tale all you want. It happened. Slaves were shipped across the Atlantic. Wedged into boats. No sanitation. Little food. Tossed overboard if sick, dying, or dead.

The Founding Fathers owned them. With glee. They stopped importing them only because it was more profitable in breeding them than shipping them.

Chained. Whipped. No rights. That’s the way it was.

We have museums. They show it all. Jackson, Miss. Memphis, Tenn.

Should our students have to visit them?

Here’s an interesting fact: In the 1800s, when King Cotton was flourishing in the Mississippi Delta, canals were dug for irrigation and travel. They were dangerous. Collapsing. Flooding. Risk of death from being buried alive or drowning. So who do you think dug them? The slaves?

Heavens no. A slave was worth $900. Too much risk of an asset. No, they were dug by the Irish. An Irishman wasn’t worth anything. History.

America is the greatest country in all humankind. But we have warts too. Learning from them makes us stronger. Ignoring our true history leads to misunderstanding, discord, and far too often violence.

James Spangler, OD,

Warren