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Holocaust Education

The Holocaust, led by Germany's Adolf Hitler, was the systematic slaughter (1941–1945) of 11 million people, including 6 million lews (lV2 million of whom were children) and 5 million others, including homosexuals, disabled people, Roma (Gypsies), lehovah's Witnesses, and political prisoners. This entry briefly summarizes the facts of the Holocaust and discusses how it has been treated in schools.

Historical Background

As the Nazi war machine rolled across Europe during World War II, lews and others in each successively conquered country were identified, registered, removed from their homes and held in ghettos, rounded up, and shipped in cattle cars without proper food, water, or sanitation to more than one hundred forced labor, concentration, and extermination camps. They were held in inhuman conditions, starved, tortured, and disease ridden. Many died from these conditions; others (particularly the elderly and children whose labor would have no value to the German state) were immediately sent to gas chambers. Hitler wanted nothing less than to eradicate the Jews, to render them an extinct race. He very nearly succeeded; one in ten Jewish children in Europe survived his murderous rampage.

In the sixty years since the end of the World War II, it has become clear that Hitler redefined the meaning of genocide through his efficient use of technology. In Bosnia, Chechnya, Rwanda, and the Sudan, to name but a few locations, genocide has proceeded with little outside intervention. Moreover, in spite of the world's horror at what Hitler wrought, a revitalized, more virulent strain of anti-Semitism (often conflated with anti-Zionism and criticism of the state of Israel) has gathered momentum in Europe, the Middle East, and North America, particularly in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.

This has taken place despite efforts to provide education about the Holocaust. Because some have viewed the Holocaust primarily as a Jewish issue rather than a human one, Holocaust education has rarely been central to public school curricula. History textbooks may devote only a page or two to what some argue was the defining event of the last century; many teachers, hesitant to approach this difficult history, choose to ignore it entirely. A recent poll of 4,000 people in Britain revealed that half of them had never heard of the Holocaust.

Educational Approach

Guided by John Dewey's vision, contemporary education is often reluctant to examine the darker side of human history and behavior. Nel Noddings notes that American curriculum veers away from treating anything that suggests grief. Against this, theorist Maria Morris posits the model of a “dystopic” curriculum that would admit the presence of the Holocaust and the darker, more realistic view of human nature that entails. This is uncertain ground for teachers whose own pedagogical training may have provided little experience with engaging complex moral dilemmas.

Holocaust education has generally not been included in the antiracist curriculum developed and implemented in the last twenty years. Where race is construed narrowly as determined only by skin color, anti-Semitism is not included. Prevailing opinion prior to 9/11 was that antipathy to the Jews was a thing of the past, that the world would “never again” target them for violence. As a result of this, some assert that anti-Semitism is the least explored “ism” in a politically correct world. Textbooks used in the schools of the Arab Middle East make no mention of the Holocaust; many North American Muslims have never heard of this event. Holocaust scholar Alvin Rosenfeld maintains that where there has been good Holocaust education, anti-Semitism cannot logically follow.

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