Imagine the following classroom conversations:Student in a world-literature class: “I’d like to write my final paper on Holocaust poetry. I’m trying to decide whether Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s ‘Babi Yar,’ Paul Celan’s ‘Todesfuge,’ or Jorie Graham’s ‘Annunciation With a Bullet in It’ is the best poem. “Faculty member’s answer: “You cannot take up that question unless you recognize that the poems are all flawed fantasies. None are based on fact. The Holocaust never happened. “Student in a political-science or philosophy class: “Which man-made disaster is worse: Bhopal or the Holocaust?” Faculty member’s answer: “There’s no excuse for Bhopal. It didn’t have to happen. But the Holocaust didn’t actually happen at all. Give me a better comparison.”I could generate numerous similar scenarios. A student in a medieval-history course, for example, might contrast a natural catastrophe, the Black Death, with the Holocaust. Nothing in those syllabi might suggest beforehand that the Holocaust will arise, but it can—and does.