Is Ignorance really bliss?Can someone please explain and give me some examples of this question reffering to the novel "The boy in the striped...

"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise" - so
says Thomas Gray. In reference to this novel, it means that the people that lived in the
vicinity of the concentration camp claimed to not know what was going on in the camp, so
they could be "blissfully ignorant" of the Holocaust happening around them. This means
that they did not have to live with the guilt of knowing what was going on and not doing
anything. That is why they would be called "blissful". The quote means that if we are
ignorant of something, we don't have to deal with it and are therefore
happy.

Remote African tribes, for example, are ignorant of
the terrible wars going on elsewhere on their continent. So, they are happy. They are
ignorant, and they are blissful. In the modern world, there are few places where this
situation exists anymore, however. So, too, in World War II. We didn't have the Internet
then, but there were other ways to find out what was going on in Nazi
Germany.

Do you think it is feasible that the Germans did
not know what was going on? Do you think they were "blissful" because they were ignorant
of the situation? A lot of them tried to claim this after the war was over. "We didn't
know!" Most people do not buy this. How could they not know? Come on! The stench of
burning bodies was everywhere. Perhaps they PRETENDED not to know -- they were in denial
-- and if this were the case, they were not ignorant, although they may still have been
"blissful" pretending they did not know. In their hearts, though, how could there be
bliss?

The ones that did know and did something about it
(like Dietrich Bonhoeffer) were put in concentration camps themselves, so there was the
element of fear involved to explain a lot of peoples'
inaction.

There is a lot to think about with this and the
degree of guilt over the Holocaust is still being debated. Who knew, when, how much did
they know, why didn't they do anything, why didn't the U.S. do more, who was
responsible? This was a blight on world history and we are all responsible. Claiming
blissful ignorance is a cop-out, I think. There was plenty of information available,
everywhere, to what was going on. People had been escaping from Nazi Germany for years,
telling the story. Jewish groups in the U.S. were continually putting pressure on FDR
and his administration to do more. If you do some research, you will discover
this.

So, what do YOU think?