In this area where I live, the Jewish community is absent and in order to explain to my students who the Jews even are, I have to engage in the following kind of dialogue that annoys me beyond what I can express.

Me: Have you heard of the Holocaust?

Students: Yes.

Me: So what is it?

Students: When many people died?

(Note the “died.” Like they just got old and died, or didn’t take their vitamins and died.)

Me: What people?

Silence.

Me: Why did they die?

Silence.

Me: Who killed them?

Students: Bad guys?

Me: Yes, you could put it that way. Bad guys.