Holocaust Education Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The Holocaust, led by Germany’s Adolf Hitler, was the systematic slaughter (1941–1945) of 11 million people, Group’s model also recognized and validated the importance and role of teacher-practitioner knowledge including 6 million Jews (11/ million of whom were children) and 5 million others, including homosexuals, disabled people, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah’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, Jews 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 Marla 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.

The two pivotal points of cultural reference for the existence of the Holocaust are the extermination camp at Auschwitz and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, the journal of a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl in hiding from the Nazis. Anne’s Diary has sold 31 million copies in 67 languages. Across the boundaries of culture, gender, and time, students continue to recognize Anne’s name, know that she wrote a diary, and want to read it. As such, this text may provide a worthwhile entry point for approaching the complex topic of the Holocaust across a variety of classroom subject areas and grade levels. Anne’s struggle to believe that people were fundamentally “good at heart” reflects her moral choice to embrace goodness while understanding the potential for evil residing within each human being.

An abundance of testimony and excellent curricula have been developed to aid teachers in teaching about the Holocaust; much of this is easily accessible through the Internet. George Santayana warned that those who fail to remember their own history are doomed to repeat it. Thus, Holocaust education has a critical role to play in mainstream human rights education.

Bibliography:

Blair, J. (Producer). (1995). Anne Frank remembered. [Video]. Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures.
Frank, A. (1989). The diary of Anne Frank: The critical edition (prepared by The Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation; D. Barnouw & G. Van Der Stroom, Eds.; A. J. Pomerans & B. M. Mooyart-Doubleday, Trans.). New York: Doubleday. (Original work published 1947)
Freedom Writers, with E. Gruwell. (1999). The freedom writers diary: How a teacher and 150 teens used writing to change themselves and the world around them. New York: Broadway Books.
Miller, J. (1990). One by one by one: Facing the Holocaust. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Morris, M. (2001). Curriculum and the Holocaust: Competing sites of memory and representation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Oliner, S. P., & Oliner, P. M (1988). The altruistic personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. New York: Free Press.
Rosenfeld, A. H. (1991). Popularization and memory: The case of Anne Frank. In P. Hayes (Ed.), Lessons and legacies: The meaning of the Holocaust in a changing world (pp. 243–278). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Strom. M. S. (1994). Facing history and ourselves: Holocaust and human behavior. Brookline, MA: Facing History and Ourselves.
Anne Frank Museum, Amsterdam: http://www.annefrank.com
Facing History and Ourselves: http://www.facinghistory.org

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