Yes, there were two sides to the Holocaust

Some people have brought up the topic of whether or not students should be taught both sides of the Holocaust. A popular criticism of this idea is that there weren't two sides to the Holocaust. If that's the case, then how did the Holocaust ever happen?

Without both National Socialists and members of the Jewish faith, there wouldn't have been a Holocaust. That doesn't mean we should treat the sides as equals. It means we should acknowledge that different sides did in fact exist.

I have repeatedly stated that history lacks value. This is especially true in a school setting where you can tell that history has been edited to control what students are supposed to get out of history. In the case of the Holocaust, the reason that National Socialists targeted Jews was never even discussed.

The argument that people like to make in support of history is so that we learn from the past. How is it possible to prevent another Holocaust if you have effectively been prevented from knowing why the Holocaust happened? How are we supposed to learn from history if we are being sheltered from history?

Yes, there were two sides to the Holocaust. Thanks to the schools, we are usually only presented with a single side. Acknowledging two sides is not even close to equating two sides. If we truly want people to learn from history, we need to stop pretending that only one side exists. We need to replace carefully curated history misportrayed as honest history with history that is actually portrayed in an honest manner.