We’re only teaching half the Holocaust. Here’s the lesson our kids are missing

The stories of the Righteous should be central to what we teach the next generation because remembering evil must also carry a responsibility to recognize and practice goodness. Children deserve to know what evil has done. They also deserve to know the names and choices of people who refused to surrender to it.The Righteous Among the Nations were non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Their actions offer something every generation needs: evidence that conscience can become courage, and that one person’s decision can change the future of people they may never meet.We ought to treat that inheritance as a responsibility. A recent conversation with Jonny Daniels, founder of From the Depths, brought that responsibility into focus for me. His documentary, The Righteous Road Trip, follows his visits to rescuers whose extraordinary choices deserve to be carried into our families, communities, and public life. Their stories give us a way to speak about goodness with the seriousness it deserves.One story Daniels shared concerned Jozef Jarosz, who was a boy when his family hid Jews in the Polish mountains. According to Daniels, Jozef’s father encountered Jews seeking help while visiting a nearby town for market day. He brought two people home. Eventually, the family was sheltering 14.For close to three years, Daniels recounted, those Jews remained hidden beneath the family’s home. Discovery could have brought death to the people in hiding and to those protecting them.Jozef was only 12. His responsibility included keeping a secret on which lives depended. He could not share his family’s courage with friends or seek recognition for it. Even an innocent remark could put everyone in danger. His contribution required discipline, restraint, and loyalty, qualities we can help the next generation develop long before any great test arrives.The detail I keep returning to is that, according to Daniels, Jozef’s father had little contact with Jews before the war. When people approached him for help, there was no long-standing friendship obligating him to act. He could have decided that their suffering was someone else’s responsibility. Instead, he brought them home.That is the inheritance I want us to pass down: a sense of responsibility that reaches beyond our own circle. Teaching children to care for their families and communities is essential. We should also teach them to recognize when someone outside that circle needs their help. These rescuers did not consider themselves heroes, yet they accepted an obligation that so many others refused. Their humility leaves us with a difficult question: How much suffering do we allow ourselves to overlook simply because it belongs to someone else?Daniels described people who believed they had simply done what was right. They did not ask for gifts or consider themselves entitled to special attention. That makes our responsibility to remember them all the greater. People should not have to seek recognition for their courage in order to receive our gratitude.His visits demonstrate that gratitude can become a responsibility of its own. He described rescuers who had tried to bring hidden Jews candles for Hanukkah. Decades later, when some of these elderly rescuers could no longer carry Christmas trees into their homes, he began bringing the trees himself.There is something profoundly moving about that exchange. People who helped preserve Jewish life and dignity are having their own traditions honored by a Jewish man who remembers what they did. Gratitude becomes a visit, a gift, an attentive friendship.“Thank you for remembering,” Daniels said rescuers have told him.We should take those words seriously. Honoring people means caring about their lives beyond the moment that made them historically significant. It means asking about their families, noticing what they need, and ensuring that remembrance includes affection.As a journalist, I believe storytelling carries an obligation. The stories we choose to amplify help shape what people admire and what they believe is possible. We should give acts of decency enough attention for their lessons to take root, sharing these accounts at family tables, in congregations, and in classrooms.None of this diminishes the obligation to teach the Holocaust honestly, including the murder of 6 million Jews. The rescuers’ courage can be understood only against the evil they confronted. Their stories deepen that history by showing the choices people made within it.We cannot promise that hearing a story will make someone courageous. We can give the next generation examples worthy of its admiration and opportunities to practice the qualities those examples reveal.JUSTICE OVERDUE: AN AMERICAN HERO WAS MURDERED ON OCT. 7. ISRAEL JUST HUNTED DOWN HIS KILLERThe Righteous left a legacy in the lives it saved and the generations that followed. We have a responsibility to carry its example forward, with gratitude and purpose.Our children should grow up knowing that people chose goodness even when the cost was immense. And they should hear, from us, that choosing goodness is a responsibility they can begin to fulfill today.Ariella Noveck is a journalist specializing in antisemitism and Middle East affairs, with extensive experience covering Jewish communities worldwide. She can be followed on X and Instagram @AriellaNoveck