Great strides have been made in teaching the Holocaust, but with an abundance of unrestricted information and a resurgence of anti-Semitism, teachers must remain vigilant in how they approach the topic, experts say. speaks. newsweek.
January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazis' largest concentration camp, by Allied forces 77 years ago. It is also seen as a stark reminder of the six million Jewish victims, the persecution of millions of others, and the rise in anti-Semitism worldwide, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Rising anti-Semitism has been blamed for the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants kidnapped approximately 250 hostages and attacked and killed approximately 1,200 Israelis. . As of Friday, more than 26,000 Palestinians had died since the war began, the Associated Press reported, citing the Gaza Health Ministry.
The day's events sparked tense debates and protests over Israel's military response in the Gaza Strip, amid allegations of genocide against Palestinians.
This follows recent events, such as the 2017 Unity the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one person dead and many injured, and which has been overshadowed by various racial and nationalist overtones. The video contains footage that has sparked a national debate.
More materials than ever before
Steven Goldberg, director of education at the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center in White Plains, New York, began teaching Holocaust-related education in a suburban New York school district in the early 1980s.
he said newsweek I told him by phone that it was a special time to teach Holocaust history, given the closeness between the end of World War II and the decades that preceded the Internet age.
“It's kind of the dark ages, because before that you could hardly find anything.” [Holocaust] In the course itself, and even in the integrated regular world history course. One thing to understand is that the closer you get to the event, the less likely you are to be taught, so there wasn't much going on. ”
He said that even 40 years after the war, information was relatively limited, adding that the trickle-down effect from university studies to secondary schools was the opposite of rapid.Apart from the graphic 1965 French film night and fog Although basic teaching materials such as Anne Frank's diary and other old literature and anthologies were available, high school students were not able to fully recreate the era.
“It gives you a very harsh perspective on the Holocaust…and if that's your only exposure to the Holocaust, which it was for a lot of kids in the '60s and '70s.” “Like, you have a very, very, somewhat limited view of what it is,” he said.
Current Holocaust education throughout the American school system depends on which grade level material is presented, and is primarily dependent on state standards, state curricula at each grade level, and state legislative mandate requirements. , said McGraw-Hill spokesman Tyler Reed. One of the largest publishers in the United States, providing educational materials from preschool to graduate school.
he said newsweek We said in an email that it is difficult to provide comprehensive answers about Holocaust-related materials because there is no easy way to easily access obsolete programs and perform detailed comparisons. McGraw-Hill employs historian and educator reviewers to review materials before publication.
“In general, we believe it is accurate to say that requirements for Holocaust education have increased over the past several decades, both in terms of the specifics of state standards and demands from educators,” Reed said. “Additionally, in addition to state standards that have long required Holocaust instruction, many states now require K-12 Holocaust education by law.”
said Andreas Daum, a history professor at the University at Buffalo. newsweek The caller said the institutional infrastructure has changed, citing a center dedicated to developing curricula and allocating textbooks for teaching school-age youth.
“It's very different from the 1950s and 1960s, when the Holocaust was basically embedded and called Cold War history or Nazi history, and was taken as the pinnacle of Nazi terror,” Daum said, adding that people like himself The educator added: We have a responsibility to properly disseminate complex information and pass it on to younger generations.
“Now that we know that non-Germans were involved in the killing of people in the Holocaust, it is no longer an anonymous device. Now it is a multiplicity of actors on the ground.”
Accountability is needed in the information age
Danny M. Cohen, a professor at Northwestern University and a member of the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission, said there is now a resurgence in old accounts of the Holocaust in the United States, and topics that were once considered taboo, such as women's experiences with the Nazis, are now being revived in the United States. He said that even themes that had previously been used are being revived. Concentration camps, abortions in concentration camps due to sexual violence, and the exchange of sex for food.
“There was a lot of content out there, but people didn't know what to do with it, they didn't know how to teach it, they didn't want to teach it…very informal visits to our schools and classrooms. “Some of the teachers were war veterans themselves,” he said. newsweek Via phone. “Some of them chose to tell their stories, while others chose to remain silent and not tell their stories.”
Cohen, who trains teachers on how to teach about the Holocaust and also conducts public programs and student workshops across the country, said Holocaust education should go beyond traditional graphic images and videos. students of a certain age.
There's also the question of how to begin teaching a topic, such as emphasizing historical chronology and the general dangers of Nazism. Or they may even cite survivors, their families, and their stories to provide personal context.
“We know that when children are exposed to graphic images, even middle school students, they can experience so-called vicarious trauma, which can actually impede learning. ” says Cohen. “Sometimes we see students looking at these images and closing their minds and going into what we call a state of shock. As a result, they are unable to actually ask the questions that we want to ask, and they almost never ask. It puts up barriers to questions.'' These are the conversations we want to have about humanity, about resilience, about perpetrators and bystanders, about survivors. ”
Furthermore, he added: “So if you force young people to look at these images before they're ready, and they're not adequately prepared, you're actually hindering their learning. And you're actually hindering their learning in Holocaust education. It undermines the goal, which is to investigate and investigate how violence, genocide happens, and the red flags of atrocities.”
Goldberg said the information has advanced significantly because he had to personally conduct a huge amount of research and research on his own to put the course together.
“In contrast, today we have almost the opposite situation, with a plethora of educational materials, resources, teacher guides, films, and other materials,” he says. “If a teacher has the opportunity to teach a course like this, where do they start? How do they obtain the materials? For most people, these are extremes.
“Teaching the Holocaust has to be integrated into existing world history, or very often American history, usually world history lessons, and only for a very, very limited number of days. The question is how do you teach something when you don't have the luxury of a day or a week…We've gone from one extreme to the other. ”
Daum discusses how higher-level education can reverse all of these trends, an institutional context away from the vanguard of totalitarianism and toward genocide studies, more original teaching materials, and the study of victim groups. He said he has seen first-hand how this is reflected.
“We, historians, installers, teachers, have turned our faces to both victims and perpetrators in a way that we just couldn't do in the 1950s and '60s, because we all said, 'This is what we do. It's a big machine.''' I didn't know so many people were starting to write memoirs.
“This is a really fundamental change, and it means that both groups at both ends of the spectrum have acquired a new dimension, and in that sense they have become diversified, although it may not be practical. We can say that our extensive education has made us sensible and sensitive to large numbers of people's experiences. ”
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