The following is via CNN:
An online textbook, which blames Holocaust victims for failing to tap into their strength, is required reading for nearly 19,000 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students.
“21st Century Wellness” is part of a one-credit hour Lifetime Fitness course all UNC undergraduates have to take before graduation. The course is meant to teach students how to stay physically fit and make healthy lifestyle choices.
But along with handing out advice about leading a healthy lifestyle, the book delves into other subjects. One excerpt says Holocaust victims who died failed to find their inner strength.
“The people in the camps who did not tap into the strength that comes from their intrinsic worth succumbed to the brutality to which they were subjected,” the book reads. The text was contracted for use for two years, but it is currently under review for the fall, a school spokesman said.
Ryan Holmes, who took a Lifetime Fitness weight training course last fall, was one of a number of students who criticized the book.
“Some of the stuff they said seemed almost like pseudoscience, and it kind of blurred the lines between what I recognized to be real factual information and things that may or may not be true. It put a lot of emphasis on the connection between mental and physical health, more than normal,” he said. “I thought that it was an oversimplification that didn’t account for situational factors.”
READ MORE: CNN
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5 Responses
A bit bizarre to say the difference between the survivors and the victims was who had inner strength. But obviously among the survivors, the ones with more inner strength fared better, especially afterwards.
It’s outrageous. But let’s not forget that is exactly how the zionists treated survivors as well. They were only capable of glorifying the Warsaw uprising
For a tiny example, take look at the beginning of the famous book INCREDIBLE! By rabbi Wallis.
To mlyb2010, you are so filled with sinas chinum, nebech on you.
By the way it was the “zionists” who saved your Rebbe, but you cannot show any hakaros hatov.
There’s nothing offensive or antisemitic about pointing out ways in which people could have saved themselves if only they’d known, or in explaining why those who survived did and those who didn’t didn’t.
What I object to is the pseudoscientific nature of this book’s premise. Where is the scientific evidence that there exists a physical “strength that comes from their intrinsic worth” into which a person can “tap” as described? It’s made-up pop-psychological nonsense. Yes, those with a stronger will to survive did better than those with a weaker one, but that’s a long way from this sort of claim.
Milhouse, well put