Adult Themes

So, last night we watched the film adaptation of The Book Thief. When I say "we," in this instance, I mean the entire family. Anyone who's seen the film and knows that I have kids as young as 4 likely thinks I'm a bad, bad man. The movie deals with brutality, prejudice, hatred, genocide, mass hysteria and murder, slaughter and mayhem--in short, the propaganda machine and the war it evoked in Germany.

Truth is, it gave us a lot of opportunity to discuss those difficult topics. Though we talk constantly, we'd never explored the root causes of war, WWII, anti-antisemitism, etc. It was the first film in which my son ever became teary eyed.

I realized I was in the deep end of the pool when my 6 yr old asked me, "Why would anyone be so mean to someone just because of what they believed in? is it bad to believe in things?"  My 8 year old commented sagaciously at another time late in the film, "I hate death." Quoting the film, one of my kids asked, "What's it mean when that guy said he was reminding people of their own humanity?"

It was so challenging to convey all that information without being too judgmental, too pat, or too definitive in my responses. It would have been easy to just say, "Germans went mad and Nazi's were the embodiment of evil."  Being mindful of all we still do not clearly know about that period, and realizing I was not there, that I do not know the full context--all that made my answers complicated, but I always tried to distill them down to something the kids could grasp without making them all abandon mankind.

It was a teachable moment--well, more like 4 hours due to interruptions for clarification, etc--but it was a moment I'll likely not forget.