I don't care that I'm weird, dammit.

I am profoundly amused by a conversation going on over at Jewschool.

WTF is wrong with people?

Taking a page from the Jewish Museum’s Nazi bondage fetish playbook (I’m referring, of course, to the Mirroring Evil exhibition), The Holocaust Council of MetroWest brings us the latest and greatest in Holocaust youth education:

Join Livingston architect and educator Stephen W. Schwartz and use 50,000 LEGO blocks to build a 400 square foot model of the Warsaw Ghetto, the scene of one of the greatest and most inspirational Jewish uprisings during World War II. Please wear socks and be prepared to get down on the ground for this unique, educational experience.

Recommended for ages 6 and up - Adults must accompany children

Oh, golly!

You know, when I think about the senseless slaughter of 10,000,000 innocent Jews, Roma, queers, political dissidents and other undesirables, I think LEGO. Because the sheer shock and stupendous horror of history’s most brutal, horrid genocide are so effectively communicated by children’s toys.

Say what you will about Zbigniew Libera’s LEGO concentration camp (pictured at right). It at least is presented in a context which gives way to discussion, whether on the position of the Holocaust in popular culture, the marketing of violence to youth, or even the participation of mainstream German corporations (the proprietors of popular household brand names) in the Shoah. It’s supposed to be controversial.

Six year-olds reconstructing the Warsaw Ghetto with LEGO as an educational activity? That’s senseless and tasteless.

This tickles me quite a bit, because I remember playing with Playmobil quite a lot as a kid and through my mid-teen years (see title, you jerk). And, like many a child, I played "outside the lines"- I made my Playmobil into whatever I was interested in at the moment. I made little Hasidic Jews getting mugged for their diamonds; I re-enacted my family standing on line at Ellis Island; and, after first reading it at age ten, I acted out the plot of MAUS.

Hey, that's the look I got the last time I told this to someone in person!

My point is that I played games I thought were interesting. I related to knowledge and experiences, especially history, by setting up my own mirror world to it and jumping in and wading around in there. I also played Maccabees once (the hardest part was finding enough pirate bandanas for turbans), and I can't imagine anyone would be pitching a fit over that. In fact...

I was fascinated by Eastern European Jewish history as a kid. It killed me that you could buy eight dozen different kinds of fireman or policeman, but no orthodox Jews- those I had to make myself. (The only exception to this I ever saw was this figure, which, predictably, was never made, after Jackie Mason decided it might be offensive to Haredim, which is pretty funny if you've ever heard Jackie Mason.) It didn't matter that we weren't Orthodox; in fact, that was why I wanted one so badly- I had these people in my head and mind that I needed to act out.

And the same was true with the Holocaust. I recreated my own ghetto- mostly made out of videotapes that I had Spiegelman's family live in, until deported to the camps. I even tried to change their clothes when they arrived at Auschwitz (years later, I saw these, and was extremely annoyed, as I knew they would have been great).

Weird? Sure. But offensive? Hardly. If playing with Legos actually makes kids interested in the Holocaust, so much the better- personally, I'd be damn interested to make a Warsaw Ghetto out of Legos (my father's family had a branch that lived-and died- there), and if anyone had asked me when I was twelve and deep in my Holocaust phase, the only objection I would have had would have been that "Legos sucked" compared to Playmobil. I would argue that the Warsaw Ghetto, in particular, lends itself to children's fantasy (and adults', for that matter) because it is primarily a hero narrative- good guys and bad guys, pretty simple. The really grisly stuff is in the concrentation camps themselves, which is why I have far more serious misgivings about this artist's Lego concentration camps- particularly the use of the living skeletons. But again, that's the difference between art and play. There are different limitations to these things, and it's incorrect to conflate them.

These kids are basically playing war, and the Warsaw Ghetto was basically that. I can see how it would disturb people who want to canonize the Holocaust (I'm thinking particualrly about Arthur Hertzberg's comment that the US Holocaust Museum in DC was the "National Cathedral" for American Judaism), but there's nothing inherently wrong with this idea, and it might even get Jewish children interested in the period and particularly in Jewish heroism during the Holocaust. No, not every aspect of the Holocaust- or of any historical period, frankly- is necessarily appropriate for children's play- anyone want to make an opium den out of duplos?- but the idea that "kids playing Holocaust" should automatically evoke disgust and attack is moronic. The descision-process by which this activity was reached may indeed be questionable, but the idea itself is legitimate.

My only issue would be with the ages of the people involved- I don't think that six-year-olds are on the level where they can really understand something like the Shoah, much less try to interact with those stories on a personal or unconventional level. But for, say, ten-year-olds? Why not?

If I have to be the lone voice in the wilderness, I'll do it- I get it, Holocaust Council. I get it.