Indian education pays little attention to global events that aren’t focused on nationalism or freedom struggles. World War II is given only cursory treatment in schools. When she decided to pursue studies on Eastern European Jewry, where the Holocaust figures prominently, she realized she lacked any foundation in the subject from her schooling in India.

“I had to start from scratch,” she said, adding that as a result there is a gap, “an ignorance of history.”

This ignorance, according to Jael Silliman, a member of Calcutta’s once-sizeable and prominent Jewish community, is what allows Indians to limit their opinion of Hitler to what they see as his positive attributes and discuss them without any of the stigma that surrounds Hitler in the West. Silliman believes that those Indians who admire Hitler do so because they view him as a post- World War I patriot who tried to rebuild his nation.

“Those who like Hitler, I know it has nothing to do with me and other Jews. It doesn’t bother me. I just think, oh God, you’re so ignorant.”