Artie spoke slowly and told them—slowly—that for as long as man had been on Earth, men had somehow found it necessary to be at war with one another. He spoke about World War I, describing the trenches that men had fought from and died in; then he spoke of the Spanish Civil War, discussing Franco and his Nationalist regime, which led him to speak about Mussolini and the rise of fascism in Italy.
Artie turned and wrote the word on the blackboard: FASCISM.
And then he spoke of World War II and Germany and Hitler, and the concentration camps, and Artie saw then that even though the students should have been taught this by now, during their sophomore year by another teacher, some of them did not seem to really know about this, not the details about the yellow stars, the roundups, the tattoos. As Artie told them in detail about Jews being taken on the trains to the death camps, as he spoke quietly to them about the gas chambers, they watched him.
Tamera, with her pale face and long red hair, raised her hand. He nodded at her.
“Okay, but, Mr. Dam, can I just ask you? Why didn’t the Jews revolt? Why didn’t anyone revolt?”
“Right.” Artie walked around to the front of his desk. “Some did. They tried. There was, in some instances, resistance. But the speed and magnitude of the support for the Nazis overwhelmed them.” He told them how he thought it had happened, the effectiveness of the Nazis. “In one month and three weeks and two days, Hitler managed to change the entire government, the entire country.” He told Tamera that her question had been asked by many, and he saw her receive this with a sense of gratitude—an understanding for a moment that she was not stupid.
(Excerpted with permission from The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout, published by Viking; 2026)
