Teaching Four-Year-Olds About Hitler
I’ll never forget the spring day many years ago when my 4-year-old son began coming home from kindergarten chattering about someone named “Eet-er.”
This kid, whoever he was, seemed make everyone miserable. I wondered who he was and where he came from. Who in the world was “Eet-er” and why was he getting away with such terrible behavior? It took a while, but I finally pieced it together. “Eet-er” was none other than his interpretation of his Israeli teacher’s pronounciation of Hitler. They said “Heet-ler,” he heard “Eet-er.”
I was shocked. How could it be, that at such a tender age, the children were beginning to learn about evil in its most unfathomable dimensions? And so began one of my most difficult cultural adjustments. In middle-class American life, being a mother means protecting your kids from the more disturbing aspects of life until they can handle them. At least, that’s the kind of mother I intended to be.
But in Israel — and specifically during this particular week, punctuated by Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and the Victims of Terror — children are fully and rather relentlessly exposed to the impact of the worst imaginable side of humanity. The entire country stops its normal routines and takes time to honor those who have lost their lives, and to stand in solidarity with their families.
But little is done to shield children and their delicate psyches from the impact. The smallest children learn to stand silent as the memorial sirens are sounded, even before they know what they mean. From age 6, in first grade, they sit through somber ceremonies in their public schools, and listen to the stories of Holocaust survivors and parents of fallen soldiers in their classrooms. As a result, I’ve had to cope more than once with a sleepless, anxiety-ridden child, and had to explain to them that Nazi reign is unlikely to make a comeback anytime soon, and that their father is not a combat soldier.
My Israeli neighbors here, however, look at me uncomprehendingly when I express my discomfort with exposing children to so much grief at such a tender age. They, naturally, can’t imagine it being any other way. I understand that harsh realities are part and parcel of life in the State of Israel. I just don’t know if they need to be faced quite so early in life.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 4
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
In Case You Missed It
-
News Who would protect New York Jews better? Cuomo and Lander trade attacks on the campaign trail
-
News Rabbis revolt over LGBTQ+ club, exposing fight over queer acceptance at Yeshiva University
-
Opinion In Qatargate fiasco, Netanyahu’s ‘witch hunt’ narrative takes cues from Trump
-
Yiddish די הגדה ווי אַ לעבעדיקער דענקמאָל פֿון אַשכּנזישער פּאָעזיעThe Haggadah as a living monument to Ashkenazi poetry
אַמאָל זענען די פּייטנים, מיסטישע דיכטער־וויזיאָנערן, געווען אויבן־אָן בײַ די פֿראַנצויזישע און דײַטשישע ייִדן.
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.