It's hard to pinpoint when you learned certain things, isn't it. I'm not talking here about fundamentals like the alphabet, or the seven times table, or bladder control. I'm referring to events, to moments of shared human experience, and in particular, to be honest, to the less triumphant moments in the history of homo sapiens.

Let's start again - if we cover just the last hundred years there's two world wars, just for starters. Bombings, murders, assassinations. Lockerbie, Dunblane, Hungerford, the World Trade Centre... Somewhat of a morbid topic perhaps (and those of you more accustomed to my allegedly-humorous amblings might just want to pretend I'm having the week off and skip this one entirely) but, perhaps in part brought on by my previous musings on memory, I have been wondering this past week just exactly when I learned of these things. Obviously in the case of the World Trade Centre, for example, I learned of it as it happened; similarly with the events in Lockerbie and the like - these can all be pinned to specific dates, when I know that I heard of them as the news broke. Indeed there's probably very few people reading this who can't at the very least say exactly where they were when they first heard about the attack on the World Trade Centre, nearly three years ago.

But what about other human atrocities, 'historical' events from before I was born? The slaughter in the fields of Europe during the Great War, or the almost unimaginable fact of the Concentration Camps during the 1930s and 40s, are surely far worse than any of the events that I have been alive to witness. I know of them, of course, and yet I have no idea when or where I first heard about them, nor how old I was.

OK, that's perhaps not 100% true. I do have a recollection of watching a programme at Primary School, probably in the very early 80s, which was about the life of an average, home counties-based, family in England during WW2. I can't remember much detail, other than the theme music and the fact that the mother was played by 'Mrs Bates' from "Emmerdale Farm" - but I imagine it must have covered such homefront issues as rationing, the use of gas masks, the Blitz, and probably the evacuees. Actually this last is an interesting topic, because although I don't know when I first learned that children were evacuated from London, I do know that it is only over the intervening years that I have discovered more details. It was, I think, quite a while after I left Secondary School that I realised, or that it first registered with me, that the evacuation started the day war was declared - previously I thought it was only initiated once the Blitz began. Even more recently (and in fact, perhaps rather shamefully, only when I watched John Thaw in "Goodnight Mister Tom") I twigged that the evacuees were 'forced' on people. I think I had assumed it to have been a volunteer thing only, but the reality seems to have been that the children were billeted rather than offered up to those willing to have them.

But whatever else that old schools programme covered (I seem to think it was called "Family at War" although I may be wrong) I'm certain it would have made no mention of the Holocaust, and in fact, other than passing references to 'the Germans' I don't suspect it dealt with Hitler, the Nazi movement, or fascism, at all. When did I hear about those? Adolf Hitler, as a name and a face, probably from any one of a dozen comedy shows or war films over the past thirty years - but the Nazis? Fascism? The mistreatment of the Jews? I have no idea where I first heard about any of these things - for that matter, as a slight aside, I'm not entirely sure when the Concentration Camps became public knowledge anyway. Did 'we' know about the horrors going on there during the War, or did the truth only emerge after the Allied forces could get into Germany and see for themselves?

There is, in a sense, a reason behind all this, and of course it's tied up with Miss Curnow (currently asleep). When will she first hear about the millions of young men who were killed for no apparent reason in the Great War? She's seen the War Memorial in the village and the larger one in town, and she knows that people sell and wear poppies in November, but I don't think she knows what they are for, other than in the most abstract sense. She does know what the word 'war' means I suppose, and that people get killed, but not in a practical, 'real' way.

In 2002, for whatever reason, she did learn a little bit about the September 11th 2001 attacks at school. On, or very near to, the first anniversary, they were told about it at school, albeit in very simplistic terms. She recounted to us that "some bad people crashed two planes into some buildings and killed a lot of people" and she was, in that bizarrely heartfelt way that children have, very sad about it. Although that description is probably an oversimplification, it's certainly enough to get the scale of the event across to her at that age. Although it's indefensible that anybody should kill so many innocent people, that doesn't automatically mean that it is indefensible for them to be anti-American. Slightly tangentially, I suspect that Mr Bush's interpretation of events is more akin to my daughter's. That is to say, I think he simply sees them as 'bad people' whose views are of no relevance.

Owing to my brother's previously-reported habit of only watching his favourite parts of films, I have over the years seen the climactic court scene in "JFK" more than once. At one point Kevin Costner's Jim Garrison says that as children we think that right & wrong, that justice, occurs automatically; in other words, if something is wrong it will just be stopped. As adults we of course realise that these things don't happen of their own accord, but rather that we have a part to play in making them happen. And perhaps that's the point I'm getting at. It isn't significant that I don't know when I discovered about the World Wars, or the Hiroshima bomb, it's only important that I did.

And anyway, by no means do I know a lot about these subjects. In fact, even just writing this now I find myself full of questions about the dropping of the bomb in 1945. Did the world really know what the threat in the ultimatum was, or just that it was 'a big bomb'? Did the Americans hope that the Japanese would not call their bluff? Or conversely were they banking on the fact that the traditionally proud Japanese would not give in, and thus allow them to drop their new weapon? What was it like to wake up the day after, and feel (as we probably all did on September 12th 2001) that everything was different? But regardless of my lack of specific knowledge, it's enough that I know of these things...

...just as one day it will be important for my daughter to know too. The full quotation, of which part forms the title to this week's missive, is that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. One of the things that has worried me over the past decade or so is the apparent resurgence of fascism in Europe, coupled with the fact that Germany's Nazi past is no longer to be mentioned. Although it may not be very PC of me, I don't believe it was appropriate for there to be German veterans and/or representatives at the recent D-Day Commemorations - a separate event, perhaps, but there is something somehow... uncomfortable, even vaguely offensive, about inviting the Allied Veterans over to mourn their dead, but at the same time asking them not to dwell on it for fear of offending the German visitors. Without wanting to raise a laugh here, we're back to Basil Fawlty's famous instruction "Don't mention the war." There are probably a lot of British Veterans who have come to terms with the changed world in which we live, and who aren't worried about the representation of Germany at the Commemorations - but if there are those who can't accept it, and who do still hold (admittedly outdated) feelings of resentment, then surely it's not only understandable, but also something they should not be condemned for. If the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s are no longer suitable subjects for discussion, then aren't we in danger of forgetting, of not learning from that history. How awful would it be to get dragged back into all that simply because politicians don't want to be impolite?

As I mentioned many months back, one of the 'watersheds' for childhood is learning the truth about Santa Claus; but another is surely learning of how human beings can be very bad, wicked even. It's an important lesson, albeit hardly a very pleasant one, to know that unfortunately it isn't all ice cream and ponies.

Sorry kiddo.