A Swastika in Suburbia: What Happens When We Stop Teaching the Hard Parts of History
- Gary Toyn
- Oct 13
- 7 min read
I was enjoying a gorgeous autumn afternoon bike ride on a paved trail near Layton, Utah. The air was clear, the mountains stood sharp and tall, dusted in snow. For a couple of hours, I couldn't imagine a better escape from the world.
Then I rolled up to this: a large, bright orange swastika spray-painted across the middle of the trail.
It stopped me in my tracks. I stood there staring, cycling through disbelief, sadness, and disappointment. Layton is a peaceful, upscale, patriotic community. This felt so out of place.
I snapped a photo to report it to the city. But the more I thought about it, the more disappointed I became.
I doubt the person who painted that symbol has any idea what it truly represents. More likely, it was a young person, maybe a teenager, trying to provoke a reaction or look rebellious. But even teenage ignorance can be dangerous when there's no pushback.
So, this is my pushback.
When History Fades, Empathy Fades With It
I grew up in an era when the Holocaust was not a distant abstraction. We watched black-and-white newsreels that still haunt my generation. Images of skeletal bodies, of bulldozers pushing human remains into open pits, of emaciated corpses and cremation ovens.
These images were not shown solely for their shock value, although they were shocking. They were used in context of a challenging discussion about the Holocaust and what led up to it.
When images are used in proper context, they become the most effective, visceral and impactful way of teaching about these important lessons. They are also irrefutable evidence of what a generation fought against in World War II. They fought against tyranny, hatred, and mob rule, and they were determined to make sure my generation would never forget.
But today, those same images are rarely shown in classrooms as teachers aim to protect students from these uncomfortable and disturbing images. Parents, rightfully so, want to protect their children from worry and distress, so schools in turn become overly cautious about teaching history through these powerful images. We err on the side of comfort, and in doing so, we lose something essential.
When used appropriately, Holocaust images can be one of the most effective tools in helping young people learn the consequences of bigotry and hatred.
The challenge goes beyond the classroom.
Even on social media, algorithms often suppress meaningful dialogue about the Holocaust. Posts that include words like "Nazi" or "Hitler" can be hidden or flagged, even in legitimate educational contexts. Creators who teach about the Holocaust have learned to censor themselves, replacing words like "killed" with non-words like "unalived," just to avoid penalties.
The same problem exists with image searches. Recently, I searched for historical photographs of Dachau's liberation to use in educational content. What I found instead were blurred images marked "explicit content" with SafeSearch warnings.
These weren't gratuitous images. They were documentary photographs from the Imperial War Museums, the kind that once appeared in history textbooks and newsreels. The very images that taught my generation the weight of history, are now hidden behind content filters, treated the same as pornography and violence. We've become so focused on protecting people from discomfort that we're also protecting them from truth. When historical evidence is automatically censored, we make it easier for future generations to deny, dismiss, or simply make up a new narrative about what really happened.
In trying to prevent hate speech, we've made it next to impossible to use history to teach about the consequences of hate. We've made it harder to teach how hateful leanings lead to hateful speech and eventually hateful actions.
When difficult topics are suppressed, even by good intentions, ignorance finds room to grow.
When students don't see the full reality of what the swastika stood for, the symbol becomes shallow and mundane. It turns into a curiosity, a meme, or graffiti on a bike trail. The emotional connection to history fades. And when that happens, so does empathy.
Why "Just a Dumb Kid" Isn't Good Enough
Some might shrug and say, "It's just a dumb kid with a spray can." But ignorance is not harmless, and the data proves that point. The Anti-Defamation League reports that antisemitic incidents in the U.S. have increased 344% over five years and nearly 900% over the past decade, reaching record highs in 2024.
All over the world, we're seeing a resurgence of antisemitism: graffiti on synagogues, hate speech online, attacks on Jews, even public officials making excuses for extremist ideologies.
One of the great moral risks of our age is not open malice, but indifference. When people stop recognizing evil for what it is, they stop resisting it.
What Ponary Taught Me
My new novel, From Malice to Ashes, tells the story of the Ponary Massacre in Lithuania, one of the least-known atrocities of the Holocaust. In a quiet forest outside Vilnius, over 75,000 Jews were murdered, many by their own neighbors.
That's what makes Ponary so haunting.
The killers weren't faceless soldiers or foreign invaders. They were local folks: laborers, tradesmen, teachers. Ordinary Lithuanians who turned against their Jewish friends.
What makes someone pick up a gun and shoot their neighbor?
It doesn't happen overnight. It begins with something much smaller: a symbol, a slogan, a joke, a rumor. It begins when people stop seeing others as human.
The swastika on that trail may have been a prank. But the same symbol once marked the path to genocide. It stood for a belief system that sought to erase an entire people, carried out by everyday citizens who suppressed their moral conscience.
The Burden of Bearing Witness
During my research for From Malice to Ashes, I made several visits to Lithuania, and walked through the real Ponary forest many times.
It's eerily beautiful, with sunlight filtering through trees and birds singing above ground that covers mass graves. There are also small memorials now, simple stone markers and plaques written in Lithuanian, Polish, and Yiddish.
Standing there, I tried to imagine the sounds that forest once heard: the gunshots, the cries, the silence that followed.
Those survivors are gone now. As they pass, the burden of remembrance falls to us. We must stand as their witnesses now.
That's why I felt such heavy sadness seeing that spray-painted swastika. Because it reminded me that forgetting is not passive. It's dangerous. Every generation that grows up without understanding of the Holocaust is a generation at risk of repeating some version of it.
What We Can Do
Whether you're a parent, grandparent, teacher, or leader, you have a role to play. We can't leave Holocaust education to a few pages in a textbook. We have to talk about it honestly, and often.
Here are four concrete ways to start:
Start a conversation. Next time you're with a young person, ask: "What do you know about the Holocaust? Have you learned about it in school?" Don't assume they know. Create space for honest questions.
Share survivor stories. The USC Shoah Foundation has thousands of video testimonies available online. Watch one together. Let young people hear directly from those who lived through it.
Visit a Holocaust museum or memorial. If you can't go in person, many offer virtual tours. The experience of walking through exhibitions, of seeing the faces and reading the names, creates understanding that textbooks cannot.
And yes, sometimes that means showing hard images, not to traumatize, but to teach. Shielding young people from discomfort doesn't protect them. It deprives them of understanding.
Read a book together: I know of a book I'd recommend. Otherwise, hit me up and I'll give you a long list of recommendations.
Hope in the rising generation
Here's what gives me hope. For every ignorant act like that graffiti, there are thousands of young people who do care, who are reading, learning, asking questions, and standing up against hate.
I've met them.
They're the students who volunteer at homeless shelters, who travel to developing countries to build schools. They aren't afraid to visit Holocaust museums and allow themselves to be impacted. They're the readers who message me after finishing my novels, saying, "I had no idea this happened. Thank you for writing this."
That's why I write the books that I write. Not to dwell on horror, but to honor the resilience of those who endured it. Even in humanity's darkest moments, there were sparks of goodness. Acts of quiet defiance. People who hid their neighbors, who shared their last scrap of bread, who documented the truth at great personal risk.
Those stories whisper back against the noise of hate. They remind us that compassion is stronger than cruelty, but only if we choose to keep it alive.
A Mirror on the Trail
I don't know who painted that swastika. I probably never will.
But I can dream that some day someone will expose them to some historical images related to the Holocaust. That they will be confronted with the reality that those who used the swastika were committed to an ideology that wasn't harmless. It became a symbol that led to millions of mothers, fathers, and children perishing under its shadow.
As I stood there that morning, looking at the bright orange symbol against the black asphalt, I realized something. It wasn't just graffiti. It was a mirror. A reminder that history is never as far behind us as we think.
We can choose to brush it off or ignore it. Or we can use it as a learning experience: confront it, teach it, remember it, and make sure the next generation understands why I'm making such a big deal about it.
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Have you had conversations about the Holocaust with young people in your life? What approach worked for you? I'd welcome your thoughts in the comments.
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